Almost every company has its volunteering day, but not all of them know what it's for. In this episode of Jugando en Serio (in Spanish), Carlos Palacios, who led Telefónica's corporate volunteering program (more than 59,000 volunteers in 31 countries) and now heads the people area at Cáritas Madrid, explains how to turn it into an HR tool.
The first question: what do you want corporate volunteering for?
For Palacios, every company, small or multinational, should start there. Volunteering can support a corporate responsibility strategy, and it's more credible when your own employees get involved. But it can also be a powerful HR tool, built on three pillars.
Engagement: in his view it has become a hygiene factor, and it's odd for a company not to encourage it. Values: it shows your social impact and resonates with customers and employees. And developing skills that are hard to build any other way. That's why HR should play a leading role alongside CSR: it manages people's motivation, communication and involvement.
Photo op or impact? Choose your program model
The design depends on the goal, and Palacios gives two examples. One leadership team wanted photos and pride, «almost internal marketing, but with social impact»: a week of activities with children and a food drive, families included, simple and able to mobilize lots of people. Its impact is mainly about raising awareness, which social organizations also value.
Another wanted to show that technology has a real impact on people: ten volunteers trained people with severe brain disabilities in artificial intelligence, about 20 hours a month, and built a business case along the way. «Absolutely everyone won». And don't measure anyone by hours: a good program has room for everyone, from those who share a donation campaign to those who end up founding an association.
If you want to see impact, do volunteering that's closely tied to technical work, to people's technical skills and competencies, always led by the employees themselves and in small groups.
A platform to train what can't be taught in a classroom
Corporate volunteering has gone from trend to professional practice, largely thanks to HR. According to Palacios, some companies have measured up to eight points higher workplace climate among employees who volunteer: it's emotional compensation. And it builds pride and belonging through a non-competitive activity, which influences how long people stay.
It's also a great learning platform. What course develops empathy? Dealing with someone very different from you in socioeconomic, cultural or physical terms tests it naturally. The same goes for creativity, when you design a project with no business or KPIs behind it, or leadership: Palacios mentions an engineer who coordinates a technical volunteering group at Cáritas, negotiating, influencing and keeping unpaid people motivated. No risk, and no feeling of being watched.
From employer branding to retaining young talent
What a company did for society used to be a way to attract talent; today, Palacios says, volunteering is above all about retention. For people aged 17 to 35, giving back is part of their values, and they want to see where their help goes: the ad asking for money for a well in Africa no longer works. To attract talent, it's a must.
Schools and universities already include it: at some it's compulsory or counts toward credits. And when AI gives instant access to knowledge, what makes the difference is skills, values and ways of thinking. Palacios sees a parallel with gamification: just as training is gamified to engage people, experiencing a difficulty without work pressure makes learning exponential.
How to get started: advice for HR directors
Convincing HR is easy; the challenge is production and finance, who see 10 or 20 hours a year without output. You need to show the medium-term impact on development and productivity. And start small, without going overboard: weekend activities open to families, volunteering with no intellectual strain for people who code all day, and a small group of early adopters to win over the rest.
There's room for creativity, too: during the pandemic, his team gamified an awareness campaign where people earned points for doing good, like making a donation or doing a neighbor's shopping. Palacios didn't believe in it at all, but it worked and ended up winning a United Nations award.
We have to give our employees the chance to discover other realities that will make them better people. And when you're a better person, 99.9% of the time you're a better worker.
