By Lonneke Roza and Karoline Heitmann
Almost 94 per cent of the biggest European companies offer their employees company time to volunteer[1], but too often the conversation about employee engagement in corporate social initiatives is about the ‘business case’.
We talk about how these programmes contribute to employee professional development, their commitment towards the company and talent recruitment and retention. These are all very relevant to get top-management buy-in, but by now this should be a given as there are numerous studies showing these outcomes.[2] Hence, the time has come to critically question if programmes are actually making a difference for the vulnerable communities which they sought to support. To remain credible and legitimate among stakeholders such as customers, clients, media and social purpose organisations (SPOs), corporate social investors thus need to rethink their current practices and design social impact-driven engagement activities.
Based on our research we offer three suggestions to do so:
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