Workers are Happier when they Give Back to the Community

By Taylor Dearnley //

Committee member Angela Wong showing some of the food made at the Ronald McDonald house (credit: Angela Wong).

A ‘Community Involvement’ initiative introduced by the Government Procurement divison of The Department of Finance has changed the way workers think about volunteering in the workplace.

GP has introduced a community involvement committee as a scheme to support and encourage their workers to volunteer in the community by dedicating two days annually for volunteering as part of their leave entitlement.

The two leave days give workers within GP the opportunity to be involved with many aspects of the community by volunteering with certain organisations either chosen by them or organised by the committee.

Executive representative on the committee and General Manager Lara Connor said employees were originally not using their volunteer days and the committee was created to encourage this.

“GP’S volunteer committee looked at a range of different charities and deliberately chose charities that were not as popular and encouraged people to volunteer with those through the committee,” Ms Connor said.

She said while working in the public service sector has a lot to do with the community, GP had quite a lot of direct involvement with the not-for-profit sector and so had more exposure to the community and understood the need for volunteer work.

“I do believe a lot of it has been driven through us being involved in that not-for-profit sector because these entities are so reliant of government funding and they are super lean organisations.”

“We volunteer with organisations like the Ronald McDonald House and Food Bank and do household collections for the homeless, work in homeless shelters, volunteer at Barbeques for the homeless… we do a range of things,” she said.

Ms Connor spent one of her volunteer days at Food Bank where the group cooked and prepared food that the organisation had either bought or had been donated.

“That was a really busy place and quite hard work, it makes you realise how much these people need the volunteers.”

Ms Connor said her next idea was to work with Dress for Success, an organisation that helps women in difficult financial situations who are trying to get back into the workforce by providing clothing appropriate for certain situations such as work interviews.

“I would like to talk to them about whether or not they have a mentoring programme, it’d be great to volunteer there.”

One of the founding committee members Ms Kristien Van Der Spoel said that being part of the committee has added to her work satisfaction levels and being able to contribute to the community has inspired her at work and in general.

“It’s so good to hear people talk about things.

“It’s about critical mass too, it’s about having enough people to make things happen, the committees; you need doers and thinkers and someone to keep it all on track.”

Ms Van Der Spoel said people generally want to help, but if they don’t have any avenues like the community involvement committee to show their support, they won’t get involved.

“It’s all about giving people the avenues to show their support because no doubt, people want to help.

“It feels good to help other people,” she said.

The number of GP staff involved in volunteering has increased from 28 to 69 in the past year and the total amount of money raised for charitable organisations increased by 14% showing the increase in involvement in just one year.

Ms Van Der Spoel said the committee has not only added to her satisfaction, but has also helped the whole of GP come together as a team.

“It would be harder to reach the whole organisation, but because the volunteering committee is within GP, you’re actually talking to the people you work with, people bond over it and it’s a team building exercise.

It has more of an impact in a smaller group of people as opposed to one business unit,” she said.

The committee’s next focus is to ensure the momentum continues and they hope to encourage an even greater number of staff to participate in this initiative