Is Volunteer Work Putting your Workers—and Your CSR Integrity—at Risk?

Providing your employees with volunteer opportunities can be an important part of your corporate social responsibility (CSR) and community engagement strategy. But if you aren’t careful, sending your employees into the community to do good things can pose unanticipated hazards. You don’t want to end up paying medical claims because a worker was injured while building a wheelchair ramp, or covering missed shifts for an employee who twisted his ankle in a gopher hole while he was participating in your adopt-a-highway program.

Don’t let the things that are intended to benefit your triple bottom line do more harm than good. Here are some suggestions for keeping your workers safe while they’re keeping America beautiful.

Put a Policy in Place

A written policy establishes the importance of volunteering to your organization’s goals, but it also establishes that you are first and foremost concerned with the safety and well-being of your personnel. It should clearly define procedures for volunteering that will protect workers and your organization—because, in addition to the direct harm that can come to your workers as the result of a poorly planned volunteer opportunity, a mismanaged opportunity can damage the reputation of your entire organization, which is counterproductive.

Do a Risk Analysis

Volunteer work can have hazards just like a worker’s job—so make sure that you identify risks and hazards in the same way that you would within your workplace. It may mean learning some different skills: workers participating in construction activities, for example—building houses, playgrounds, or other structures—may face a set of hazards that don’t exist on the job, like using powered hand tools or climbing on roofs. Workers picking up litter along the roadway need to take the same precautions as any road crew, so you might need to familiarize yourself with the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices for your area. Don’t forget to cover basics like fire control, emergency response, and insurance coverage for participating workers and for any liability that might arise from the project itself.

Provide Training

Many volunteer organizations provide training to volunteers. If you’re working with another organization, you’ll want to coordinate training with them, and make sure that they’re covering all bases. In addition to basic safety practices and procedures, like dressing for the weather, wearing safety gear, and being aware of their surroundings, training for volunteers should cover:

• The planned scope of work. When volunteers go beyond the planned scope of work, they may get into risks that they’re not prepared for, or create liabilities that you are not prepared for. If they are cleaning up litter alongside the highway, for example, they should not attempt to remove debris that is actually in the road. If they are serving food at a soup kitchen, they might not have the training to prepare food safely, so they should probably not try to operate the fryer or grill.
• Site management procedures. Who is in charge of the work on-site? Are your employees answerable to this individual? To what extent? Make sure that it is clear who has authority to make decisions at the site.
• The stress or emotional impact of the work. Some types of volunteer work can be extremely stressful or have a powerful emotional impact on workers. Make sure that they are prepared for this and that they understand that they cannot fix everything—but that even the smallest good they do will have a positive impact. You may want to provide debriefing for employees after the work is completed, if you expect that it will be difficult for them to process.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at some additional considerations that may apply when your workers will be volunteering after a disaster.