Creating a culture of workplace volunteering: Deutsche Bank's Esther Liu

Discussions of the employee experience often focus upon the employee as the customer, the consumer of workplace culture. What's less often addressed is the concept of the employee as giver: returning something to society under workplace auspices. And having the opportunity to give, whether through volunteering or simple monetary donation, can indeed add a layer of satisfaction and motivation to life at work. Research from Deloitte, for example, has consistently found that workplaces which support and encourage volunteering tend to have higher morale and a better atmosphere. And academic studies over the last decade have also found that volunteering improves employees' emotional state and nurtures a sense of belonging.

People Matters asked Esther Liu, who manages CSR strategy for Deutsche Bank Singapore, to share her experience with supporting a culture of volunteerism in the workplace. Deutsche Bank has previously been accoladed under Singapore's Champions of Good national framework for its corporate philanthropy efforts, and Liu has managed all the bank's CSR programs across its 14 Asia Pacific locations for the last decade. Here are the key practices she highlighted.

1. Build employee engagement into projects from the beginning

If corporate giving projects are to effectively include employees, they should be designed to have room for employee engagement from the start—factoring employees in as a part of the giving effort and ensuring that they can play a meaningful role if they wish.

"We focus on education and engagement, enterprise, and building strong and inclusive communities," Liu told People Matters about Deutsche Bank's approach. "One of our criteria when evaluating projects is to ensure there is scope for employee engagement."

2. Make volunteering a formal part of the organizational structure

The bank's corporate giving strategy is interwoven into various key points of the employee experience, Liu said. For example, new employees are introduced to the CSR strategy during the onboarding and orientation process, and told about the various programs and ways they can get involved.

Another policy is to treat volunteering as a formal benefit: all employees, she said, are given one day’s paid volunteering leave per year, which they can use to volunteer with a non-profit of their own choice. The bank also matches their efforts by awarding cash grants to those non-profits, essentially supporting the causes they give their time to as a further incentive to volunteer.

3. Make it easy and accessible, and keep people informed

Besides ensuring that volunteering is officially recognized and incentivized, it is important to keep it visible and also make it easy for people to participate. Liu shared that her team does this by sending out a monthly newsletter to all staff, containing all the upcoming volunteering activities—six to 10 a month on average—to keep them updated. And to make participation smoother, there is an internal portal dedicated to CSR, where employees can view a calendar of upcoming events and sign up directly.

The HR and CSR teams have also worked together to enable automated payroll giving for those who wish to donate.

4. Empower people to choose how they want to give

Most importantly, a culture that encourages volunteering must do so in a way that allows people the autonomy to decide how they want to give. Besides empowering employees to choose, on an individual level, what initiatives they want to participate in, they can also be given the power to decide what initiatives the organization supports on a broader scale.

"We have a local CSR council that consists of employee representatives across business divisions and corporate levels," Liu said of the bank's approach. This council, she explained, plans, manages and executes local volunteering initiatives. In addition, individual employees are assigned to champion each non-profit that the bank works with. Their mandate is to manage employee volunteers and engage with the non-profits to determine their needs.

There are multiple other ways to let employees have a say in how they give: for example, Liu shared that Deutsche Bank gives employees the opportunity to nominate charities of their choice for its flagship fund-raising activity.

A good volunteering experience contributes to a good workplace experience

"The opportunity to use our skills to contribute to the community provides us with a sense of achievement and drives a culture of responsibility within the bank," Liu said. "We have also heard employees comment that participating in CSR initiatives is the best part of the job and why they enjoy working in Deutsche Bank."

For that matter, she said, volunteering improves performance not just by boosting morale, but by actually helping people refine their skills. According to the bank's global employee survey, 59 percent of respondents said that volunteering has improved their job-related skills.