Employee Volunteering: An Evaluation Toolkit

This toolkit was developed by Scottish Business in the Community and funded by the Scottish Governments Employability Team. It is aimed at employers who are interested in or who are already developing their people's soft skills in a way that also supports the long-term unemployed or disengaged young people. It will help employers measure the positive impact of employee volunteering on their business.

Skills based volunteering includes educational based activities, where staff work with young people in schools, and also activities designed to help the long term unemployed gain the skills and confidence necessary to return to work.

In recent years businesses throughout Scotland have got involved in employee volunteering in a variety of dynamic ways. This includes: mentoring young people, providing training schemes, work placements, job coaching and running workshops on CV and interview skills.

As well as benefiting the community, businesses have recognised the direct gains to their own business when engaging in these programmes. Along with the increased levels of commitment and motivation businesses report the excellent training opportunities these programmes provide for staff. In order to harness the benefits of employee volunteering companies need to manage the process probably.

This toolkit will provide them with concrete strategies and tools that will help maximise the positive effects of these programmes and deliver bottom line benefits.