Do you find that, even though your company offers perks like volunteering hours, the uptake is low?
It’s pretty common for organisations to offer charity or volunteering hours and not see much engagement. Employees can have a multitude of different reasons for not taking up volunteering hours, and usually a one-size-fits-all volunteering policy means people get left behind.
This is why onHand is here to provide you with the do-good, feel-good benefits to keep your employees engaged, active, and satisfied, both in their roles and in their personal lives.
However, your organisation investing in onHand doesn’t necessarily guarantee an immediate uptick in corporate volunteering.
We boast an excellent first mission and download rate; for SMEs, we currently see 48% of employees downloading the app within 3 months of partnering with us. With almost half of employees interested in using onHand to do social and eco good, it’s clear that the demand is there for volunteering, even if the uptake numbers for traditional corporate volunteering don’t reflect that.
However, uptake can vary from organisation to organisation, which is why we want to show you some of the ways we can help you boost employee interest in volunteering and make the most of your partnership with onHand.
Make volunteering easy
One of onHand’s key features is just how easy we make it for employees to get out and do good in their local communities. Labelled the “Uber of volunteering” by IBM, we pride ourselves on taking such a sprawling, huge topic like volunteering and making it simple, easy, and – importantly – quick.
Through our app, volunteers can choose between a huge range of missions and pledges.
Missions generally involve getting out of your house and getting stuck in with an immediate action. This might involve making donations to a local food bank, doing a team eco clean or litter pick, or, for an at-home option, completing a companionship phone call with an older or isolated person.
Pledges, on the other hand, are promises you make and hold yourself accountable for that have an effect on your wellbeing, the people around you, or the climate. Pledges might involve washing your clothes at 30 degrees, turning down the temperature in your house, composting, journaling, or trying meat-free Mondays.
The reason we differentiate between missions and pledges is that we set up volunteers with whatever options their hearts desire; if your employees want to do actionable, community volunteering, they can pick up a mission. If they want to make a difference from the comfort of their home or the office, when they have five minutes to spare, they can browse pledges and commit to something that appeals to their values.
We combine local action with convenience; the onHand app offers something for everyone. We’re not a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, we’re a solution with a lot of sizes to offer.
Revisit your volunteering policy
While the onHand app is a great tool for kickstarting your organisation’s volunteering focus, it isn’t the be-all and end-all of your volunteering strategy. One action that you can take to make the most of onHand is to revisit your volunteering policy and assess the effectiveness of your rules.
One of the failings of low-uptake volunteering policies is the vagueness of the parameters. A typical volunteering policy may set volunteering out through ‘3 days a year’ or ‘8 hours a quarter’ quantifiers. While these time limits help employees understand how much time they have for volunteering, they don’t do much to inspire action.
For one, many employees may like the idea of volunteering but don’t know what to do with themselves during volunteering hours, especially when a lot of mainstream volunteering sets out expectations for weekly or monthly involvement. Some people simply don’t have the time for it.
Another thing is that employees may not be clear on what sorts of volunteering count towards volunteering hours. In recent years, there’s been a huge uptick in micro-volunteering, which is the idea of volunteering in small, bite-sized chunks – if you make it clear and actively encourage micro-volunteering as part of your volunteering policy, volunteering isn’t going to feel so daunting.
Measurements to take
Being able to track your employees’ volunteering is also key to proving how volunteering can make a difference in their lives. Any tool needs assessment; how can you prove that onHand is making a difference both in your employees’ lives and in local communities if you’re not tracking the impact you’re making?
Tracking is a must. With onHand, teams have access to their organisation’s dashboard, where they can see tracked figures such as number of missions completed, requests accepted, and CO2e reductions created through actions they’ve taken. By gamifying the app and giving users points for the good deeds they do, as well as a way to view and manage these figures, volunteers are far more encouraged to get out into their communities and make a difference.
Tracking is the first thing you should sort, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop there. Make the most of your time with onHand by doing things like setting annual targets for your teams. This could be a certain number of trees planted, a threshold of carbon emissions saved through pledges, or even just the number of missions and pledges picked up by employees within a certain timeframe.
Setting annual targets will ensure that you’re making the most of onHand and keeping your employees happy and satisfied, as well as nurturing the sense of competition that keeps users engaged in their volunteering.
So, what now?
It makes sense to be apprehensive about an employee volunteering tool if you struggle to get engagement from your employees during volunteering hours or days.
At onHand, we’re revolutionising corporate volunteering. Putting in the work will have your employees engaged and enthused about volunteering in a way they haven’t before. Your partnership with onHand is just the beginning of your volunteering journey.
So, if it sounds like we can help you with your volunteering ambitions, Book A Demo today!