Most Employees Would Volunteer At Their Work – Just They Need To Know How
A Survey involving 134 employees from the cargo division of the Austrian Railways asked them to fill in a questionnaire on their preferences and opinions over the possibility of joining a volunteering programmes through their company. The survey showed the problem was never a lack of interest but the absence of a structured programme and offer. The solution to this governance gap may be found inside the company’s own quality management system.
The idea of corporate volunteering is fairly straightforward: the employees contribute by donating time and skills for social or environmental causes, joining existing or tailor-made projects, supported by their employer. In practice most volunteering programmes operate informally driven by individual initiative rather than by an organizational design. The paradox is that companies invest a fortune in management systems aiming to standardize processes, manage risks, steer the wheel of continuous improvement, and yet their social engagement completely runs outside those logics. An important question arises: can a certified ISO 9001 organization use the existing infrastructure to build a corporate volunteering programme that actually works in reflecting outside the company the organization values and vision?
What was the employees’ point of view?
The 134 surveyed employees across various departments and seniority levels, from operative to administrative, commercial and managerial functions in Rail Cargo Group (RCG) Austria, challenge a common assumption. What emerged from the questionnaire is that only 15% of the respondents participated before into an employer-sponsored volunteering activity, while 72% of those who never took part said they would have gladly participated or they were unsure. This is not a workforce that resists to the idea of corporate volunteering but rather the reaction of a workforce that has never been asked in a formal and structured way.
The three most cited barriers were the lack of awareness that such opportunities existed, insufficient time to spare during working hours and unclear processes on how to join the few existing initiatives. When asked what the ideal condition for joining would be, many mentioned the use of paid working hours to allocate to volunteering activities, clear communication about available opportunities such as an easy-to-consult portal with a structured offer, and tangible support from management.
Where does quality management fit straight in?
Organizations certified under the ISO 9001 standard already operate with process documentation, use internal audits, rely on performance indicators, apply the Plan-Do-Check-Act improvement cycle logic. A corporate volunteering programme to be compliant and reliable needs exactly those element to move above and beyond ad hoc activities. Instead of building a parallel governance structure, the programme can inherit steering logic adopted and embedded in the management system.
The framework developed in the author’s thesis does precisely that: it assigns responsibilities through a structured RACI matrix considering the tasks of existing roles, using the same structure and governance, measures programme performances through a KPI dashboard compatible with management review cycles, and maps, identifies and classifies the risks in compliance with ISO 31000. The result is a programme that does not interfere with the organization’s operational priorities but harmonises with them, integrating seamlessly.
Practical takeaways
Corporate volunteering does not fail because of unwilling employees, but because organizations treat it as a separate chapter. ISO-certified companies already have within their infrastructure the know-how to structure a programme; what is missing is a governance decision, not a new system.
The full thesis, comprehensive of the framework, original survey data and implementation roadmap is consultable at the link: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2026051813010
Bibliographic Sources
ISO. (2015). ISO 9001:2015 Quality management systems — Requirements. International Organization for Standardization.
ISO. (2018). ISO 31000:2018 Risk management — Guidelines. International Organization for Standardization.
Rodell, J., Breitsohl, H., Schröder, M. & Keating, D. (2016). Employee volunteering: A review and framework for future research. Journal of Management, 42(1), 55–84.