It’s #wellbeingatworkweek and what better time for companies to reflect on the key part a well-planned corporate volunteering programme can play in improving the mental health of employees.
There is growing, high quality evidence that volunteering is positively linked to enhanced #wellbeing, including improved life satisfaction, increased happiness and decreases in symptoms of depression.
Whilst it’s not possible to state categorically that volunteering causes improved wellbeing, it is clear that volunteering can lead to positive changes in attitude – to happier and healthier people. And of course happy people carry those positive characteristics into the workplace as any CMPP Members would testify. It is for this reason that an increasing number of forward thinking organisations now provide all employees with 2 or 3 days of paid volunteering time each year.
Ask Ruth Pappadakis, HR Manager, about the benefits Amazon Filters staff have experienced after just a year of involvement as a CMPP partner: Volunteering has enabled colleagues to ‘bond through shared experience and what it meant to us meant to us. You just can’t do that a work context and you definitely can’t get a rounded perspective of someone in a structured team building environment.’
Corporate volunteering brings benefits which are hard to measure yet are tangible and highly valued by companies. Ruth again: ‘That is because they are about how people feel about themselves and their relationships with colleagues and their employer.’
Volunteers' positive self-esteem is boosted enormously through involvement in activity deigned to transform the lives of others. A day completed working with others on a shared experience generates a sense of satisfaction and good feeling that it is almost impossible to replicate in any other way.
CMPP Members identify these real benefits to business:
· Helping companies to increase the take-up of their corporate volunteering programmes
· Building interpersonal relationships across teams
· Presenting the human side of companies to the outside world
· Attracting new talent through a progressive staff benefits package
which goes beyond that expected
And of course, if corporate volunteering is good for the wellbeing of staff involved its of huge benefit also to the community. Many brilliant projects would simply be impossible to complete without the resources provided by an army of enthusiastic corporate volunteers.
Win/win? Absolutely – and it’s so easy to get involved through the fully managed programme of opportunities organised throughout the year by CMPP.
If you would like to know more about partnership opportunities with CMPP call 0300 777 2019 or email hello@cmpp.org.uk.
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