Employee's experience with Corporate Volunteering : motives and impacts

Abstract

In recent decades, companies have been facing the increasing expectations of shareholders and stakeholders to demonstrate more sustainable practices. Therefore, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) became a focal element of business philosophy in the 21st century. Firms have established a wide range of CSR programmes in order to reflect their socially and environmentally responsible behaviour. One of the fastest growing forms of CSR is corporate volunteering (CV) which differentiates itself from other forms of corporate social engagement by using the company’s human resources. Employees, as the main actors of CV programs, devote their skills, time and effort to support business-initiated charitable projects.

The present research explores the employees’ perception of workplace initiated volunteering projects. In particular, this quantitative study investigates the experience of employees with CV activities by analysing the participants’ motives to engage in these projects along with the impacts resulting from these. The empirical analysis was carried out in cooperation with OMV Aktiengesellschaft, an Austrian integrated oil and gas company, in order to reflect real-life results on this topic. In the course of the data collection, 144 OMV employee volunteers participating at the recent tree planting activities in Austria and Romania were asked about their CV experience through an online questionnaire.

The results of the study indicated that the primary motivation of employees for participating in CV was to express their altruistic values, acquire new knowledge and skills as well as enhance their self-esteem. These functions also strongly influenced the volunteers’ satisfaction with the CV project. Furthermore, the findings revealed that respondents’ attitude and skills highly improved through CV. Generally, the motivational satisfaction as well as the perceived impacts from volunteering highly influenced employees’ willingness to sustain CV in the future. The strength of OMV’s CV projects could be further developed by offering versatile and meaningful activities which attract a larger base of employee volunteers.