Charlotte Hill, chief executive of Step Up to Serve, and Julie Bentley, chief executive of Girlguiding UK, urged the government to make its plans for three days paid volunteering leave flexible, at a fringe event held at the Conservative Party Conference.
The Conservatives unveiled plans to make all businesses with more than 250 employees offer three days’ paid volunteering leave per year and after the election Rob Wilson, minister for civil society, confirmed that the initiative would go ahead.
Hill (pictured) said she wanted companies to “make work more flexible” and urged the government to “think of it more as 24 hours rather than three days”.
Bentley added that her organisation had 80,000 girls on waiting lists to and that “much more flexibility in the workplace” was needed, for example people leaving one hour early so they could volunteer as a leaders in its guiding units.
She said the charity sector should lead the way and be “role models” for other sectors.
“We support our staff to volunteer but many charities don’t,” she said.
Staff at Girlguiding are given the equivalent of three days per year, or five if they volunteer with Girlguiding plus an additional five to go on camp activities.
Employers say they encourage staff to take up
Ian Peters, director of customer facing strategy at Centrica, said that one in six of British Gas employees volunteer and they are hoping to increase this to one in three by 2018.
He said that British Gas had recently launched an online portal offering a range of volunteering opportunities to staff. He said that making it as “easy” as possible was important.
Mike Westcott, head of human resources at Centrica, said: ““One in five of our employees volunteer – we don’t set a maximum or a minimum as people tend to be sensible about it.”
He added that it was important that the introduction paid time off for volunteering did not lead people to feel they are being forced to do it.
“Internships got a bad name and we can’t afford for volunteering to go down the same path,” he said.
Peters and Westcott agreed that encouraging staff to take up the opportunities available to them was a challenge for employers.
