Year by year, Poles are engaging in social activity more eagerly. Also employee volunteering is getting ever more popular - in 2015 the volunteers of Citi Handlowy and Citi Service Center worked 18,500 hours under 230 projects supporting people in need. For the sake of comparison, in 2010 there were 149 projects and 9,000 hours. The increasing popularity of volunteering is confirmed by the surveys conducted among employees - over 90 percent of them recommend getting involved in volunteering to others and 53 percent admit that their job gives them more satisfaction thanks to volunteering.
As many as 85 percent of volunteers have admitted that getting involved in volunteering made them more aware of social problems. Apart from the sole satisfaction that comes from helping others, volunteers have noticed that implementation of projects brings them benefits also in their professional life. The majority of them have noticed great improvement in their communication and organization skills. Respondents admit that volunteering has also had a positive influence on their motivation, and 53 percent of them find that their everyday job gives them more satisfaction thanks to volunteering. More than 70 percent of respondents perceive employee volunteering as a reason to assess their company in a more positive way.
Volunteering allows people to improve their project management and team building skills, to boost their creativity and enables them to get to know their colleagues better, emphasizes Krzysztof Kaczmar, President of The Citi Handlowy Leopold Kronenberg Foundation.
The works that are most popular among employees who get involved in volunteering include renovation, gardening and cleaning the surroundings. Volunteers also want to help others by, for example, running workshops for children or organizing special events.
It is virtually impossible to find any disadvantages of combining professional work with getting involved in helping others as much as time allows. Although 28 percent of respondents fear that getting involved in volunteering might exert negative influence on their performance of official duties, as many as 93 percent of respondents would recommend such an activity to others.
Whom are we the most eager to help? When asked about the kind of activities they would get involved in first, 68 percent of volunteers mention projects that benefit children. That is why the most popular actions are those organized at orphanages and care and education centers.
