Founder and CEO at Goodera, the world's leading CSR, ESG and corporate virtual volunteering company.
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In a world that's seeing a mass exodus of employees quitting their jobs, reinforcing a sense of purpose and community could help your company avoid becoming a victim of the "Great Resignation."
Over the last year and a half, companies worldwide have witnessed employees quitting their jobs. A primary cause for this has been the effect that Covid-19 has had on employee psyches, as they reprioritize their goals to align with personal satisfaction and values.
According to the American Labor Department, a record 4.4 million employees resigned in September 2021. Dubbed the "Great Resignation," this phenomenon has triggered companies to look at creating stimulating work experiences to avoid falling into the trap. It's a pertinent indicator that employers must rethink their employee retention campaigns for 2022 and beyond.
What is the Great Resignation?
The Great Resignation, also called the Big Quit, is a trend where employees are willingly leaving their workplace positions to search for more engaging, immersive opportunities. According to an Adobe research study, these departures are primarily led by the millennial and the Gen-Z workforce, who constitute a sizable chunk of the active force in corporations.
Millennials are projected to form 75% of the global workforce by 2025, and by 2030, Gen-Z will make up an estimated 30% — with higher engagement within the workplace being a crucial factor in their allegiance. Research by Gallup actively points toward higher disengagement among employees since the pandemic, reaching 34% in the U.S and Canada.
Organizations looking to formulate long-term retention strategies need to plant the seeds of better employee engagement today to avoid losing out on the talent of tomorrow.
Employee volunteering opportunities could be the key to engagement and retention.
Driving higher employee engagement can work in various ways, with volunteering right up there on the list. Indeed, according to a Deloitte report, 89% of employees "believe that companies who sponsor volunteer activities offer a better overall working environment."
Promoting a culture that fosters volunteering can assist companies in boosting employee morale, the workplace environment and, in a broader sense, brand awareness.
However, engaging distributed teams in today's digitally connected workplace is the biggest challenge companies need to overcome. How do organizations offer engaging volunteering opportunities to motivate WFH/distributed employees? The answer lies in meeting them where they are with "virtual" volunteering opportunities.
Virtual volunteering is the "new normal's new normal."
It's well-established that major corporations are moving or have permanently moved toward a more virtual working ecosystem, with work-from-home becoming a customary practice. Hinging onto this, companies can now allow employees to access full-fledged volunteer-from-home activities.
While the pandemic has made it more challenging to organize more in-person volunteering activities, it's noteworthy that virtual volunteering has developed into a preferred mode for many organizations over the last year and a half. In working with community leaders within organizations, I've learned that many of them have moved to virtual volunteering permanently.
There are benefits and challenges associated with virtual volunteering.
Virtual volunteering can be an excellent way to engage employees and provide them with the time, resources and expertise to connect them with meaningful volunteering experiences.
Of course, there have been challenges associated with this. Virtual volunteering cannot replicate the same level of gratification and experience that an in-person event can bring. It's important that organizations are able to make peace with this fact and take virtual volunteering at face value.
We'd also suggest attempting a free or open event to truly get an idea of how virtual volunteering works. There are subtleties and nuances associated with it that you'll need to be able to understand. Once this hurdle is cleared, however, it should become a process that I believe your organization will enjoy working with.
It can help companies complete their requisite volunteering hours and also involve their employees' families and friends in the process. Virtual volunteering can also help save on operating costs, logistics and other overheads that come with in-person events. The activity list for virtual volunteering also has a broader scope, as nonprofits and activities worldwide are available to choose from.
Also, impact measuring can become more accurate and more straightforward, helping you accurately assess the hours and resources being used for your volunteering activities and optimize the same moving forward. The employees are also directly in touch with the beneficiaries so they can interact better with them and understand their pain points from a closer perspective.
Virtual volunteering is off to a promising start despite its notable challenges.
At Goodera, we ran a survey on virtual volunteering in 2021. Several noteworthy figures emerged, including 52% of surveyed firms worldwide switching to virtual volunteering — two and a half times more volunteering experiences since 2017 and an increase of up to 110,000 more volunteering possibilities since 2017.
Apart from that, the top reasons for corporations adopting virtual volunteering were more robust employee engagement, more community impact and improved employee mental health and well-being, to name a few. According to Mercer's 2018 Global Talent Trends survey, "75% of thriving employees ... say that they work for a company with a strong sense of purpose (almost double those who don’t feel like they are thriving)."
For companies to retain their best talent in 2022 and beyond, I believe it's time for them to begin easing their way into the virtual volunteering process.
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