A quarter of employees (24.7%) responding to a recent survey did not know how much time their employer gave them for volunteering.
“This alone shouts very loudly that many employers are not promoting effectively employee volunteering to their employees,” the report reads.
The report by social enterprise Works4U also found the number of employers offering workplace volunteering initiatives increased fivefold after the pandemic.
It found that 10% of employers offered employee volunteering in the 12 months before the pandemic, compared to 51% for the year 2022-23.
The survey found 28% of respondents who had not participated in employee volunteering before said that their employer allows it, but does not promote it.
Moreover, 19% said no one had asked them to get involved in a volunteering initiative.
Furthermore, 28% of respondents said that a barrier to them participating in employee volunteering practices was being too busy at work.
The survey received 546 responses from employees in a workplace with five or more staff in any sector.
Employers should do more to promote volunteering, respondents say
The report also shows 94% of survey respondents stated that employers should do more to promote volunteering opportunities.
Almost all the respondents that had volunteered at work before said they would do so again, with 1.6% stating they would not.
Of the respondents that did engage in workplace volunteering activities, 27% said they had to organise the opportunity themselves as opposed to their employer.
The survey found that the majority of employers offered one day for employee volunteering (39%), a third offered two days (33%), 17% offered three days, 3% offered four days and 8% offered five or more.
It comes after a recent report by Pro Bono Economics found that participating in a workplace volunteering scheme created an average reduction in absence of around 0.9 days per year for each member of staff that volunteered.
