Question about Volunteer programs!

[Bianca_P]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if any one had been successful in launching a new PTO-based, employee volunteerism program over the summer? Is it harder with everyone prioritizing most of their time off for vacations?  Should we wait until the fall?

Thanks!

Testing for edits.

[lkeeler]

Hi Bianca - Good question! I don't know that time of year matters as much as making sure it's tied to some company-wide thing (an anniversary, etc.) and there are some resources or things planned that people can easily plug into. We launched our programs and when we announced them we also shared updates to our rewards program and had a handful of volunteer opportunities people could sign right up for. 

[Bianca Penaloza]

Thanks for that insight! That definitely alleviates some concern. Regarding resources your teams prepared, and something like a rewards program (that sounds really great)— did this go hand in hand with a technical implementation of some tool to host/distribute your resources, or a site of some sort to house your rewards program ? You’ve shared an interesting approach and I’d be curious if there’s a way to do it without too much tech effort.  
Thank you for sharing!

[lkeeler]

We did tie it to the launch of Benevity - but I think it depends on what your needs are. We needed a system to easily distribute rewards and track time. What action are you hoping people take? As long as you have something to point people toward - I don't think it needs to be tech-heavy. 

[SarahFarris]

I think each company is different and also depends on location of your offices. A good percentage of our employee base resides in Europe, so it's pretty typical to see a downtick in engagement in August when a lot of our European colleagues are on holiday.  Conversely, summer months are a great time to leverage nicer weather (in most parts of the world!) where it's a good time of year to get outside for beach/trail cleanups or to find ways to involve your kids who are out of school. Fall can be a busy time of year for strategy and operations planning ( + EOY sales goals), so you may have to consider how to message opportunities that have low time commitments and design in a way that's super simple for folks to get involved.