Royal Voluntary Service unveils consultancy to transform employee volunteering into business performance driver
Charity’s consultancy service and new Diagnostic Tool will support businesses embed employee volunteering into their strategy and culture and unlock measurable performance, wellbeing, retention and social impact benefits
- Services are part of the charity’s Volunteering Marketplace which also includes a soon-to-launch digital platform that makes volunteering flexible and frictionless
- All profits from client income will be reinvested into the new platform and support Royal Voluntary Service to deliver its community services
Royal Voluntary Service, one of the UK’s largest volunteering organisations, has launched a new consultancy service to help companies realise the full potential of employee volunteering.
The offering is designed to support organisations harness employee volunteering as a strategic lever for tackling key productivity, wellbeing and employee engagement and retention challenges, while delivering measurable social and ESG impact. The charity will help businesses develop volunteering programmes that align with their values and culture, simplify management and increase employee participation.
The new consultancy proposition comes as recent research by Royal Voluntary Service and the Centre of Economic and Business Research (Cebr) suggests 62% of businesses now offer volunteering to employees, but uptake remains low 1. 140million hours went unused in the last year alone. 2
Further analysis presents a compelling case for growing participation. Businesses with higher usage of volunteer days report stronger outcomes than companies with under-used programmes, from improved employee motivation (53% vs 42%) and stronger wellbeing and engagement (52% vs 37%) to increased employee skills and confidence (37% vs 33%). 3
Consultancy is tailored to each client, whether they’re just starting out or scaling an existing programme. Services encompass business case development, policy design, internal engagement and partnership strategies, as well developing robust reporting frameworks for clients to track and evidence impact and meet stakeholder expectations
In addition, Royal Voluntary Service has designed an innovative Diagnostic Tool, to conduct data-driven, deep dive assessments of the maturity of client’s volunteering programmes and alignment with company goals and strategy. The diagnostic provides a fully comprehensive review of current activity, surfacing missed opportunities (such as unused volunteer hours or unlinked ESG objectives) and benchmarking performance against best practice standards.
Insights are used by Royal Voluntary Service to develop a strategic roadmap to support clients embed volunteering more deeply across their organisation and build a stronger case for senior leadership buy-in and investment.
The services form part of the charity’s new Volunteering Marketplace – which also includes a digital volunteering platform Royal Voluntary Service is building thanks to support from players of People’s Postcode Lottery. The platform aims to expand volunteering nationwide and help charities reach the volunteers they need, by making participation more flexible, accessible and frictionless, including within UK workplaces.
"Volunteering isn’t just good for society, it’s good for business. Our research shows that if employee volunteering hours were fully utilised, the UK economy could see an annual productivity uplift worth £32.5 billion. 4
"Our new consultancy service is about helping employers transform their volunteering programmes and those millions of unused hours into wellbeing gains, stronger engagement and meaningful ESG outcomes. Even better, companies that choose to work with us will be giving back from day one.
"All profits from our commercial services will be reinvested into the platform and our community support activities."
Emma Gervasio, Chief Operating Officer, Royal Voluntary Service
"More and more organisations are recognising employee volunteering as not just a nice-to-have but a commercial opportunity. It’s an effective way to build employee engagement, strengthen resilience and drive social impact.
Our consultancy and Diagnostic Tool are designed to help businesses harness more of that great potential, creating volunteering programmes tied to their organisational goals, that deliver value to employees and communities and contribute to commercial outcomes”
Saima Rasool, consultant at Royal Voluntary Service and development lead for the consultancy offer and Diagnostic Tool
Royal Voluntary Service’s consultancy services are available immediately. The digital volunteering platform will launch in the Autumn.
Data footnotes
- “We currently do this and have been for over 12 months” and “We introduced this in the last 12 months” answers combined
- According to a Censuswide survey of 2000 UK Adults aged 16+. 30.06% of UK workers are offered paid volunteering days. This equates to 10,176,504 people being offered volunteering days in the UK.* The average number of days offered to all UK workers is 2.34. This equates to an average of 23,794,124 days a year being gifted, or 190,352,994 hours (based on 8 hour day). The mean percentage of volunteering days taken in the last 12 months is 26.22% = 49,907,338 hours taken in the last 12 months with 140,445,656 going unused.
- Volunteer Leaders are defined as the top 20% of businesses in terms of volunteer day usage, with employees volunteering on average 1.44 days.
- This figure represents the added productivity to the UK economy in 2024 per employee, if all individuals in professionals and managerial roles offered volunteer days fully utilise the volunteering days available to them. This provides an indicator of the productivity gains from corporate volunteering.
