There are people who devote part of their time and knowledge to the objective of making of a better world. These are the protagonists of corporate community service, a phenomenon that is growing strongly worldwide, especially in the context of the financial crisis. Precisely, the year 2011, at the tail end of which we find ourselves, has been declared the European Year for Community Service.

Although there are no hard figures, the Plataforma del Voluntariado (Platform of Community Service) estimates that there are 800,000 workers who undertake such activity within their companies. But the phenomenon of community service is international.

The millions of corporate community service workers making efforts for others the world over are the hard proof that the immense majority of employees are motivated by something more than financial and promotion rewards. The sense of pride in belonging to an organization that promotes community service is one of the main reasons leading these people to devote a part of their free time to helping others.

This is a conclusion reached in a recent study by Adecco and the Club de Excelencia en Sostenibilidad (Excellence Club in sustainability) on corporate community service. “The growth of this type of activities plays an important role as a corporate culture reinforcement tool (internal reputation and commitment to company objectives), in addition to improving the atmosphere within the company and the retaining of talent,” according to the report.

Thus community service increases the sense of pride in belonging to an organization while it improves the development of key qualities for the company such as leadership, teamwork, and customer service. Camila Correa, Junior Product Manager of BBVA Chile confirms the above. The professional services company Deloitte corroborates the fact that community service acts as a sense of pride in belonging generator and declares that 62% of young people between 18 and 26 prefer to work in a company with a community service program.

In a recent survey done in Mexico by the Community Service Coordination Office of the BBVA Bancomer Foundation Social Progress Programs that was answered by 424 executives of the bank participating as volunteers, 82.2% of the respondents believed that this work gives them great personal satisfaction and 45% believed that it allows them to develop their leadership.

In addition, the majority were of the opinion that community service has allowed them to increase their personal contact with people within their communities and that thanks to this work their abilities to work in a team have improved in addition to their self-esteem as well as their sense of belonging to the entity.

However, exceptions aside, community service is only widespread in large organizations. The situation is different in medium and small companies that, in general, have no corporate community service program, with the exception of the USA, where this phenomenon, more widespread, includes some SMEs.

Leslie Scarborough, vice president of Corporate Responsibility, Reputation, and Communication at BBVA Compass, in the US, contributes to the idea that community service helps to strengthen the sense of pride in belonging of employees with respect to their organization and adds that this is an activity that she believes essential for a company committed to the community. “In addition, it helps to build a strong reputation of responsible company and offers our employees the possibility of contributing to improve the communities in which they live and work.”

Scarborough reminds us that community service programs of the entity have received recognition from the Financial Services Roundtable, and organization that promotes and protects economic vitality and represents more than one hundred large financial entities in the United States.

Joaquín Santos Abarca, BBVA Community Service Office director in Spain believes that corporate community service is a “tool that the company makes available to the staff which allows us to transmit values to the rest of society.” However, Santos expresses his disappointment over the fact that companies are lukewarm in communicating, both internally and externally, the existence of their community service programs.

In any case, corporate community service is a reality within the BBVA Group. All its volunteers work under a general program promoted by the bank but have specific plans for each of the countries in which the entity is active.

Education takes center stage

In spite of the fact that each territory has its own peculiarities and community service is performed on the problems detected, education is the common denominator of many of these activities.

In the case of Spain, the Volunteers Office, created in 2007 by a group of retired and pre-retired employees of the entity, puts education in the spot light of many of its community service actions. Among these programs are the fight against school desertion and the improvement of skills for success.

Volunteers also participate very actively in the Bank’s new project, Future Values. This is a mainly educational initiative whose objective it is to teach schoolchildren between 6 and 14, by way of pedagogical techniques and games, a series of values relating to money such as saving, hard work, responsibility, and solidarity.

The community service programs also include a component of computer literacy directed at the various groups excluded from this academic area. “This is one of the programs that gives us most satisfaction, says Joaquín Santos

To go on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail is also particularly popular among BBVA community service volunteers given that the program combines education, going along with people, mentoring, and the environment. It consists in accompanying during seven days to groups of inmates from penitentiary institutions.

Immigration and the environment are included on a regular basis in the community service activities. “In fact, it is in environmental programs that more people usually participate, given that in general the volunteers can spend the day with their families.”

Niños Adelante (Children Forward program)

In Chile, BBVA community service employees center a good part of their efforts on the Niños Adelante (Children forward) program, which started in 2007 and is carried out jointly with Hogar de Cristo (Home of Christ), the main NGO of the country. The intention is to raise the pre-school level of boys and girls from 0 to 4 years old in low-income families.

There are already 15,000 pre-school children who have benefitted from the program which, in addition, involves the parents in the educational process of their children. Among other activities, improvements to the infrastructure of kindergartens are carried out, play centers are created, or various activities are celebrated such as a Christmas party, that of the Day of the Child, and talks on healthy food and living.

Half of the BBVA Chile staff participates on a more or less regular basis to the community service activities “although there is a hard core of 400 people who carry out these activities in a more or less continuous manner,” according to Camila Correa, who enumerates the various community services activities carried out by the staff. For instance, Social Entrepreneurs, an initiative that seeks to train 13 students in technical-professional fields who are from vulnerable situations in the area of the knowledge, techniques, and social skills necessary to create, plan, and execute social projects.

Financial training

Also in BBVA Compass, education, in this case with a financial focus, is an important part of the entity’s community service actions. Programs teaching tasks so basic as savings or credit applications are designed for both adults and children and are carried out in partnership with associations such as the Banker’s Association Education Foundation or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Leslie Scarborough highlights the emphasis put by BBVA Compass on education, especially in the financial area. Volunteers, which Scarborough estimates to be around 1,600, go to primary schools to speak to children about basic finance. But financial education includes people of all ages “children, teenagers, adults, and the elderly receive financial pointers through a series of documents made and approved by the bank.”

There are also other programs such as those of food banks. Employees participate by packing and labeling foods that are later distributed to needy families.

Por los que se quedan (For those left behind)

This is the name of the project that most of the BBVA Bancomer volunteers devote their time to. Some 700 executives of the Bank are charged with supporting the program called Por los que se quedan (For those left behind), which is aimed at the education of secondary school youths living in immigration communities.

This is the most important initiative from the BBVA Bancomer Foundation in terms of resources, scope, and beneficiaries. “This is the program to which our volunteer employees devote the greatest number of community service hours. We have confirmed that our 700 Godfathers and Godmothers in the program devote 16,250 hours of community service work per year” explains Luisa Arredondo, BBVA Bancomer Foundation Social development Programs director.

Since 2006 the program has benefitted 25,600 people receiving grants and today it is present in 18 states and 143 towns in the country. The principal role of the volunteers is to motivate the youths to maintain a good academic standard and complete their schooling.

Obstacles to community service

The study by the Club de Excelencia en Sostenibilidad (Excellence and Sustainability Club) and Adecco concludes that corporate community service activities are a symptom of a healthy corporate culture and recommends that companies, when planning their activities, in addition to including the benefits of the employees, take into account the promotion and support of other skills such as leadership, team work, or creativity as well as certain skills such as project management.

It is only the difficulty of combining personal and work life that acts as the main obstacle, on both sides of the Atlantic, to the development of corporate community service, according to the same study.

 

Issues

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