When employees don’t balance their work with their personal life’s demands, fatigue, burnout, and stress ensue. As a result of this decline in mental health, productivity and relationships in the workplace are also bound to be negatively affected.
To help encourage a healthy work-life balance, employers are offering flexible working hours, remote working arrangements, and personal days. However, more is needed for employees to have a healthy balance between the two realms. In addition, incorporating volunteerism into the workplace can help improve work-life balance.
Volunteering provides individuals with a sense of purpose, connects them with community supporters, enhances their skill set, and improves their physical well-being: all contributing to the life component of work-life balance.
This guide breaks down the benefits of encouraging volunteerism and explains how volunteering can improve employee productivity and work-life balance.
How does volunteering lead to a healthier work-life balance?
Development of soft skills
Employees are able to learn a variety of soft skills through volunteering: such as time management, communication, leadership, and problem-solving. As employees develop (or enhance) their skill sets through volunteering, they will be able to apply these skills to their personal lives.
An employee might volunteer at a food drive with the responsibility of sorting and packaging hundreds of non-perishable items in three hours. Upon volunteering, that employee will have improved upon their time-management skills, which they can use to stay organized in their household.
Improved physical well-being
When employees sit at their desks day after day, working on completing upcoming assignments and attending endless meetings, their physical health is more likely to decline if they don’t schedule routine days off.
Although volunteering throughout the year won’t fully improve an employee’s physical well-being without contribution from diet and exercise, giving your employees a chance to physically rejuvenate through a volunteer day(s) has a major impact on their physical health.
Reduced stress
The majority of one’s workday typically consists of group meetings, emails, and independent projects. In order for employees to reduce stress and improve their mindset, it is crucial to encourage employees to shift focus away from their 9-5 regime through volunteering.
For example, when an employee volunteers with an environmental-related nonprofit and participates in a beach day clean-up, they are helping to contribute to a more sustainable planet—shifting focus on doing good in their communities. When they return to work after volunteering, they will find that this shift in mindset helps them tackle their work with more enthusiasm and less stress.
Increased fulfillment
Beyond meeting a deadline, receiving a job title promotion, or getting a raise—employees can also feel a sense of accomplishment when they volunteer.
For example, an employee who spends a morning reading to seniors feels a sense of achievement through:
- Helping others: An employee assists seniors who are visually impaired or have difficulty holding a book but enjoy listening to a story.
- Relationship building: An employee has the opportunity to develop social connections with some of the residents through engaging in conversations (before or after reading).
- Newfound confidence: After a couple of hours reading several short stories, an employee is now more confident in their public speaking abilities.
Added community connections
Volunteer work gives employees more opportunities to connect with supporters in their communities (which comprise of retirees, working professionals, and students). These connections allow for conversations to be sparked, knowledge to be shared, and insights to be gained.
An employee might volunteer one morning at a local soup kitchen among 10 other community supporters. As a result of engaging in genuine and meaningful conversation with other volunteers, they will learn what motivated these generous individuals to help at the soup kitchen and why they are passionate about giving back to the community.
Creating A Culture Around Work-Life Balance With Kambeo Hubs
Kambeo Hubs is a powerful tool that links employees to rewarding volunteer opportunities in their community. Employees will have the ability to discover volunteering opportunities that meet their specific interests, cultivate community connections, and track their social impact over time.
By encouraging your employees to discover and connect with causes they believe in through a platform enabled by your company, promoting a culture around work-life balance is attainable with Kambeo Hubs.
