Guardian volunteering week grew out of our ongoing community and volunteering programme. During Guardian volunteering week 2013, teams of volunteers, led by volunteer project managers, worked on 17 projects in London and Manchester. The week is not about parachuting our volunteers in for a one-off team challenge; the projects, developed with our partners, build on our existing relationships and aims to deliver lasting benefit.
Volunteering week was also developed to support key business aims. Outcomes are linked to company objectives and all projects have senior sponsors while the week's theme is developed with members of the GNM board. This helps to demonstrate to the business the value and benefit of volunteering and supports engagement with the week and the ongoing volunteering programme.
Volunteering week 2012 was designed with a digital focus, linking to our transition to a digital-first company. By sharing digital skills with our partners we hoped we could help staff to develop their own skills in that area. Feedback from volunteers involved showed that few felt that this had happened. But it was clear that the week had supported other aspects of people's training and development, as the following quote illustrates:
Being involved in volunteering week has been a fantastic experience and has helped me further develop some crucial project management skills.
Another important outcome, in terms of business needs, was that the projects had helped people from different departments to work collaboratively, which is another important focus for the business.
Volunteering week 2013
Collaboration was the theme for our 2013 volunteering week and its three main aims were to:
• Meet our community partners' requests to assess particular skills and support
• Promote networking and collaboration across functional and departmental boundaries
• Increase pride in working for GNM and promote a sense of well-being
During the week, which ran from 3 to 7 June, 257 staff signed up and of those 201 staff volunteered on the day for 17 projects. The majority took place in greater London, mainly in the King's Cross area, where our London staff are based, and one in Manchester. Projects (listed below) saw volunteers supporting our community and carbon reduction partners in activities ranging from conservation and gardening to social media workshops and web design:
1. Fundraising and publicity support for Age UK Camden's Great Croft resource centre
2. Social media session for staff and ambassadors of Opening Doors
3. Computer, mobile and tablet clinic for Age UK Camden
4. Communication support for Bemerton Villages' Management Organisation
5. Marketing support with The Converging World
6. Improving the facilities at Cricket4communities clubhouse, in Manchester
7. Leadership skills workshop with students at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School
8. Web design with Global Generation
9. Branding and writing skills workshops with Live Mag UK
10. Conservation work at Camley Street Nature Reserve, London Wildlife Trust
11. Media and press skills session with staff from London Wildlife Trust
12. Video editing and web design training at New Horizon Youth Centre
13. Writing workshops for Pentonville prison's Voice of the Ville newsletter class
14. Visualising data from carbon emissions reporting with Sandbag
15. Creating a video for Richard Cloudesley School
16. Supporting Team Cally's communication strategy
17. Guardian Education Centre newspaper editing workshop with Eastlea school
We reported the week's event in a live blog (day one and two, day three, day four, day five and pictures galleries from London Wildlife Trust's project at Camley Street and provided an overview of the week in pictures. We also published articles from two of the young people who took part from Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school and Live Mag UK, linking them up with mentors to support their writing.
Volunteers from each project were trained to film with iPhones and they documented what happened by creating short videos and pictures. We used footage of the schools projects to create a short article on the days' events. We also employed a video producer from Live Mag UK to create the volunteering week video.
Outcomes
As in previous years, we did post-event surveys to get quantitative and qualitative feedback from volunteers, project managers (Guardian volunteers who managed the projects) and community partners. The survey looked at four key areas which related to the week's aims:
• Community support – what did community partners think of our volunteering efforts and how well do they understand our business?
• Collaboration and networking – to what extent did volunteering week contribute to breaking down internal barriers and raise awareness of each other's skills among colleagues?
• Skills development – to what extent did project managers pick up skills as a result of the volunteering week experience?
• Employee engagement – how did taking part in volunteering week affect volunteers' views of GNM as a place to work?
Feedback survey results
Community support
100% of the community groups agreed/strongly agreed that:
• Project managers did a good job
• Volunteers were committed and enthusiastic
• They had benefitted from the skills and experience of the volunteers
A fantastic job done. Credit to the Guardian from the beginning of the project to the end. Thank you.
The amount of expertise and the support provided exceeded all expectations.
It was a fantastic project that couldn't be bettered really. The engagement of the volunteers has had a lasting impact on our girls.
Such good team work and very productive. Team leader and other staff were fantastic, very supportive to older people. All the support we have from the Guardian volunteers makes a huge difference to members' lives.
Collaboration and networking
• 90% of volunteers agreed/strongly agreed that: Volunteering week helped me to connect with new colleagues from across GNM
• 100% of project managers agreed/strongly agreed that: Being a project manager helped me to connect with colleagues from across GNM
• 78% of project managers agreed/strongly agreed that: Being a project manager helped me to connect with colleagues from across GNM
I met lots of people from teams who I certainly wouldn't have met otherwise, so it was great to meet them and find out a bit more about their roles.
I liked spending time with people who I would never contact or meet in my job. Many of us were fairly recent joiners to GNM.
Skills development
• 82% of project managers agreed/strongly agreed that: Being a project manager helped improve my leadership skills
• 72% of project managers agreed/strongly agreed that: Being a project manager helped me to improve my ability to maximise the performance of others:
Being a project manager helped to improve my project management skills.
Project managing for volunteering week was a very positive experience; meeting people from other departments is a big plus but also being able to do something really good for another organisation, that lack the skills or funding to achieve something, is a brilliant thing to be involved in.
Employee engagement
• 84% of volunteers agreed/strongly agreed:
Taking part in volunteering week has increased my pride in GNM
I think this has made me very proud of being part of an organisation that promotes their employees' engagement in projects like this. It feels great to help other people; being allowed to do that at work, while giving me a chance to network and collaborate with work colleagues, is great.
There was a fantastic sense of working together for a great cause.
Lessons learnt
The specific focus of some of the projects, such as marketing or video production, meant that it was difficult scheduling a day with a group of volunteers when only certain skills are needed at certain times:
Great that we could use the communications team's expertise in the afternoon, but I think some of the group felt rather surplus to requirements. In the event, some of our team took the opportunity to continue helping out with more jobs around the nature reserve so it wasn't a big problem, but worth bearing in mind for future years.
And it was also clear that some of the projects needed to be better organised before the day and volunteers needed a clearer brief:
It would be good to have the projects pre-approved and ready, so that it is a case of just managing the project to completion, instead of having to create a project in the first place.
We had some challenges working with our partner to scope down their vision to something achievable in an afternoon! But I am proud of where we got to in the end, after a lot of negotiation.
What we did differently this year
For volunteering week 2014, we were more thorough. We developed the details of the projects with our community partners before handing them over to volunteer project managers. We also made sure that the projects called on a variety of skills and that there was plenty for staff to be involved with if they wanted to do something completely different from their day job.
Were we successful? Early indications from comments and feedback are good. You can find out more about what happened by reading our live blogs of the week, watching the 2014 video or browsing the volunteering week page. We will publish a full report on the week on our site later in the year.
