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Corporate Volunteering in UAE
In many organizations, Corporate Volunteering (CV) also called Employee Volunteering (EP) became an integral part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Yes, a lot of abbreviations, sorry! But that is now out of the way..
CV programs became popular, because of perceived benefits for the broader community and employees, as well as for the companies themselves.
What is Corporate Volunteering?
Academic papers provide plenty of definitions when it comes to CV, but in the nutshell, it is an employee’s participation in volunteering activities, that are sponsored by the organization. It often relies on using the company’s resources, such as employee working hours, money, human capital, marketing, or public relations.
Corporate volunteering can take many forms. Companies have an opportunity to provide different ways for employees to get involved. In the picture you can see few examples.
CV practices in the United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the wider Arabic world, have a deep-rooted historical and religion-based culture of giving back, where charitable activities are considered a significant part of Zakat, one of the Islamic Five Pillars, teachings. In spite of this CV seem to be a quite new strategy to achieve Corporate Social Responsibility. Typically, the Holy month of Ramadan, as the most sacred month of the year for Muslims, sees a noticeable increase in people performing Zakat and engaging in voluntary activities to help the less fortunate. However, these activities are traditionally undertaken independently by individuals rather than organized at the organizational level.
Admittedly, in recent years, CV activities gained popularity, as many companies operating in the UAE started to organize this type of volunteering. One of the most comprehensive reports in the UAE context was published by IMPAC2030 in 2019. Here you can see great CV programs overview and survey results involving 48 companies, operating in UAE.
CV Target areas
It is worth to mention, that in order to develop a more engaging and purpose-driven volunteering program it is important to select the right SDGs and focus on the volunteering areas that make sense to your organization. To help you with the examples, the coalition “Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose” or CECP 2020 “Giving In Numbers” report showed that 27% of all total giving went to health and social services, and 16% community and economic development, and 14% went to Education and K-12.
Other ways to find the right areas of focus can be:
- area of choice is connected to your company’s vision, mission, and long term goals
- area of choice is connected to your company’s or any of your stakeholders personal story
- It is giving you a new purpose that eventually will be connected to your vision, mission, and strategic business development goals
What are the benefits?
First, of course, the benefits come from the efforts, resources, and services provided to the third party. However, in this article, we will be concentrating on employees and organizations themselves.
Research shows that Corporate Volunteering provides many benefits to its participants:
- It gives employees a sense of belonging and new connections
- Encourage creativity and sharing ideas
- Allows to see and understand different points of view
- Gives the sense of purpose
- Opportunity to change scenery and have fun
- Opportunity for collaboration
- Helps to increase self-esteem and self-integrity
CV programs have also been shown to benefit organizations, creating these opportunities by:
- Reinforcing employee acceptance of the organization
- Helping to retain employees (especially in a crisis)
- Reducing absenteeism
- Increasing employee job satisfaction levels
- Increasing employee engagement and productivity levels
- Increasing intentions of sharing value with the organization
- Increasing company’s ability to attract talent
- Increasing the collaboration opportunities
Taking all of this into account, there is no surprise that Corporate Volunteering programs are growing in popularity. If you want to know more about how to create an engaging and successful CV program for your organization, contact us and we will be happy to offer you leadership workshops and detailed planning, for long-lasting and impactful CV programs.
