Works4U Wins International Award for Leading Employee Volunteering in UK

For its work in a field previously without leadership Works4U won the ‘Best Business Support Volunteering Non-Profit Organisation 2023 – UK’ at Wealth & Finance International’s Management Consulting Awards 2023. As well as its practical hands-on role of supporting hundreds of employee volunteers to carry out impactful community projects, Works4U began strategic work to develop employee volunteering in the UK. 

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This strategic work has included setting up a national Employer Supported Volunteering (ESV) network for voluntary and community sector organisations to share information, best practice and resources. To complement their employee volunteering consultancy service for businesses, Works4U has produced a free guide for businesses giving expert tips to develop an employee volunteer programme, helping them to avoid common mistakes and pitfalls.

 

Works4U CEO Dominic Pinkney stated, ‘We are absolutely delighted to win this award as there has been no one leading employee volunteering previously. It is great recognition of the huge effort we have put in over the last twelve months to begin the long journey of developing employee volunteering in the UK.

 

As a nation we are nowhere near maximising the potential of employee volunteering. There have been slow gradual improvements, but most employee volunteering is small or one-off projects, ad hoc and uncoordinated across an area. We want to accelerate this progress by improving standards and enabling businesses to focus employee volunteering on social priorities to deliver the greatest impact.’

 

As part of its new work, Works4U has carried out new research and analysis. In October 2023 it published its ground-breaking report on ‘Monetary Value of Charity Trustees’ which shows the importance of this essential volunteer role and will encourage more employees to consider it. Earlier in the year, Works4U carried out a UK wide survey of employers on the practical aspects of employee volunteering with a report to be published in December.

 

In addition, it is launching the world’s first employee volunteering quality standard, Employee Volunteering Accreditation (EVA). Works4U hopes EVA will help increase good practice of employee volunteering whilst giving businesses the opportunity to demonstrate to their staff, clients, suppliers, partners and stakeholders they are a good business who offers and carries out employee volunteering well.

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Works4U has further developments already planned for 2024 including a launch of an employee volunteering network for businesses and its ‘super broker’ service helping businesses to find local voluntary sector brokers who can support them.