Corporate volunteering or responsible incentive trip?
What is corporate volunteering?
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Let’s start from the beginning. You’ve all heard of CSR, haven’t you? As a reminder, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is defined as the voluntary integration of social and environmental concerns by companies, into their business operations and their relationships with stakeholders. A company practicing CSR will therefore seek to have a positive impact on society while being economically viable. All companies can implement a CSR approach, regardless of their size, status or sector of activity. The CSR strategy is based on 5 main themes:
- Fair and transparent management
- Contribution to environmental conservation
- Improving customer satisfaction
- Achieving employee satisfaction
- Harmony with society
Corporate volunteering, a branch of CSR
Corporate volunteering is a simple and effective way for companies to contribute to the community. The principle is that companies give their employees paid time off and use it to volunteer with a charity of their choice. This allows employees to make a difference in just one afternoon, and with great potential for community impact. It’s a way to complement your CSR strategy in a different way and to convey your corporate values by showing example.
What is an incentive trip?
Again with the aim of motivating employees to invest extra effort at work, a company can offer them something more than just a pleasant experience. It is not just a simple trip of a few days, but an experience, a unique stay full of surprises, special moments and unusual events. Employees participate in a unique experience, regardless of their financial situation.
Incentive trips are a management tool that uses the trip as a source of motivation or a sign of recognition for the company’s staff. Unlike other types of initiatives (meetings, conferences, events…), “incentive” travel focuses on fun, entertainment and amusing activities rather than on training and work. It is often an opportunity to improve team cohesion in the form of team-building activities.
What are the benefits for a company?
In recent years, more and more companies have introduced corporate volunteering or incentive travel and have recognised their beneficial effects on the employee, the company and the community. This is now becoming the norm, and such a successful program is crucial when it comes to staying ahead of your competitors as it has many advantages:
- Reputation: the company can achieve a better brand image and a positive attitude from customers.
- Internal branding/employee satisfaction: Having your employees participate in socially constructive events can strengthen the bond between them and within the company itself. The health and well-being of employees is also increased, which automatically leads to…
- Improved employee productivity: Satisfied employees are more productive and more efficient. As a result, a company is able to achieve its goals by reducing costs per product.
- Recruitment and retention of employees: A stimulating environment can attract more candidates, and probably the best. This same environment also helps to retain employees, which is called talent retention (especially among young people). Thus, employee volunteering in the area of CSR is essential from a human resources perspective.
- Profits: All of the above benefits ultimately converge towards increased company profits, thanks to a better reputation, better know-how and reduced costs.
Platforms that offer corporate volunteering
There are many websites that offer corporate volunteering, of all durations, in all possible and imaginable sectors, and all over the world.
Among them you can find Haces falta, Volungo, Sapp ngo, or impactwithus.
Conclusion
As a company, what should you choose to integrate these concepts into your CSR?
Both volunteering and incentive travel have clear benefits for your employees or all your stakeholders. RuntheWorld adventures are an intermediate point between these two concepts. Closer to incentive travel than to volunteering, the impact on the local community, on the participant and on the beneficiaries allows you to contribute to society and to improve the motivation and cohesion of your teams. Participating economically in high-impact projects as well as giving them visibility seems to be an ideal compromise for pioneering companies.
