Championing Employee Volunteering Within New Zealand Businesses And Government

• In Event: Volunteering and the World of Work

Abstract

Employee or corporate volunteering programmes are an increasingly widespread corporate social responsibility activity. Leadership and a culture of engagement have been identified as features of successful employee volunteering programmes (Bhinekawati et al., 2021). The role of senior executives was emphasised in the latest IAVE corporate volunteering report (Foster, Allen and Krol, 2022), with senior executives leading as ambassadors and advocates for volunteering within their company, driving programmes and employee participation. Co-workers and line managers can influence employee volunteering participation, including through role modelling and both encouragement and pressure to volunteer (Dempsey-Brench & Shantz, 2022). However, the extent to which non-executives can actively drive employee volunteering has been less considered, despite ‘champions’ having been identified as a key driver and success factor for developing and implementing corporate social responsibility and sustainability into organisations (Hahn et al., 2010). These corporate social responsibility champions can operate a variety of levels within an organization and are not necessarily the most senior executives (Hemingway, 2005; Hemingway & Starkey, 2018).
This exploratory paper builds on studies of corporate social entrepreneurs (e.g., Hemingway, 2005) and sustainability champions (e.g., Wood et al., 2016) to investigate employee volunteering champions and their role in initiating, implementing, and promoting employee volunteering. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 employee volunteering champions within New Zealand businesses and public sector organisations. Champions were defined as someone who is involved in organising and/or promoting employee volunteering within their organisation, and participants were identified through purposeful sampling. Unlike the leaders profiled by IAVE (Foster et al., 2022), these champions tended not to be in senior leadership roles. Employee volunteering was typically not part of their role, and other personal and professional factors drove them to be facilitators of employee volunteering within their organisation. Initial analysis suggests their role and activities as champions were shaped by the nature and structure of their organisation’s volunteering programme, with champions finding their place in both highly structured and relatively informal programmes. For some of the interviewees, the opportunity to volunteer influenced their choice of role and employer when seeking new employment. The paper considers how personal and organisational values shape the identities of employee volunteering champions.

References

Bhinekawati, R., Daryanto, W. M., Indradjaja, A. M., Hasibuan-Sedyono, C., & Triwadiantini, Y. (2021). Employee volunteering. In Crowther, D. & S. Seifi (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility, Palgrave. (pp.471-498).
Dempsey-Brench, K. & Shantz, A. (2022). Skills-based volunteering: A systematic literature review of the intersection of skills and employee volunteering. Human Resource Management Review. 32(4), 100874
Foster, L., Allen, K., and Krol, M. (2022). Corporate Volunteering for a Post-Pandemic World. IAVE.
Hahn, T., Figge, F., Pinske, J., & Preuss, L. (2010). Trade-offs in corporate sustainability: you can't have your cake and eat it. Business Strategy and the Environment. 19(4), 217-229.
Hemingway, C. A. (2005). Personal values as a catalyst for corporate social entrepreurship. Journal of Business Ethics. 60. 233-249.
Hemingway, C.A. & Starkey, K. (2018). A falling of the veils: turning points and momentous turning points in leadership and the creation of CSR. Journal of Business Ethics. 151. 875-890.
Wood, B. E., Cornforth, S., Beals, F., Taylor, M., & Tallon, R. (2016). Sustainability champions?: Academic identities and sustainability curricula in higher education, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 17(3), 342-360.

Authors

• Karen A. Smith, Victoria University of Wellington

• Tania Jones