“Making a growing social impact, achieving both the experiential and professional development of the people who participate as volunteers, and strengthening the important factors of the companies – that’s the key to establishing employee participation in social actions.” These were the words of Ignasi Carreras, Director of the ESADE Institute for Social Innovation, at the session “Volunteering: New Trends in Employee Participation”, organised by the SERES Foundation and ESADE. Mr. Carreras also explained that companies can adopt three different models to promote corporate volunteering within their ranks: “Some companies choose to train and provide the necessary tools to their employees as a means of promoting volunteering, others channel volunteering within the company itself, and still others act as co-protagonists, in collaboration with NGOs.”

Lucila García, Deputy Director General of the SERES Foundation, commented that “participating and working with interest groups allows companies to advance decisively in their corporate volunteer projects”. According to Ms. García, “it is important to help companies in this transformation”. She added that “it is necessary to promote in the business world the concept of socially engaged firms with responsible DNA that want to become strong companies in a healthier society”.

Corporate volunteering initiatives

María Calvo, Director of Talent Management and Corporate Responsibility at the Vips Group, commented: “At the Vips Group, we have been encouraging our employees to volunteer for the past ten years.” She added: “Initially, the company promoted activities that addressed our own needs.” Later, however, the group “opened up another door and created a new opportunity to contribute through the Road to Employment programme, which targets young people who are entering the workforce for the first time”. Through this initiative, the Vips Group “provides these young people with advice and the skills they need to tackle this new stage of their lives”, she explained.

Another example of corporate volunteering was provided by the insurance brokerage Marsh, which has created an association where its workers share and propose various social initiatives that they would like to carry out. “In the beginning,” explained Javier Goizueta, Private Equity and M&A Manager at Marsh, “our employees tended to propose local projects, but little by little the project has evolved towards more active volunteering.”

Elisabet Faus, Director of Social Action at CaixaBank, discussed La Semana Social, one of the social actions led by her company. As a joint initiative of the “la Caixa” Banking Foundation and CriteriaCaixa, La Semana Social aims to encourage employees, clients and pensioners to take their first steps in the world of volunteering. “Through this initiative,” explained Ms. Faus, “we are able to promote and publicise the notion of volunteering.”

Benefits and challenges of volunteering

According to Ms. Calvo, “volunteer work has also served as a lever for attracting engaged talent”. In her opinion, the Road to Employment programme, which has more than 300 volunteers providing guidance to young people, achieves its objective “when the person is promoted within the company”. For this reason, she concluded, “our volunteering is increasingly focused on talent management”.

Mr. Goizueta, meanwhile, explained that “one of the benefits of volunteering is the sense of closeness that it fosters among the workers and the feeling of pride and belonging”. Along similar lines, Ms. Faus stressed the importance of occasional volunteering: “It adds value for the occasional volunteer and is also very positive for both sides.”

Turning her attention to challenges that have yet to be addressed, Ms. Calvo emphasised the need to involve senior management in initiatives of this sort: “The top brass need to convey to volunteers the importance of what they are doing, since their actions strengthen the company and spread its values.” Mr. Goizueta noted that “the way forward is to keep strengthening the pride of belonging”. Finally, Ms. Faus explained that the challenge is to “attract young and engaged talent in order to professionalise management”.

This event was part of the ESADE–SERES Foundation lecture series, which aims to explore the relevance of social action for society and business from a value-creation standpoint.