12 Chapter 12: COMMUNITY SERVICES AND OTHER THOUGHTS

Objectives

*Discuss and develop a community service program

*Understand the importance of being a volunteer

*Understand how to cultivate oneself to become a leaders

*Prepare oneself to be a changing force

Introduction

Community service programs allow employees to contribute their time and money to their communities. These programs create a positive image for all of the involved parties including the employees themselves, employees’ company, and the community organizations. Buhler (2003) stated that involvement in community services is a win-win strategy for today’s managers and their companies. The authors will address the benefits of community services from the perspective of the company and employees and introduce the useful ideas for companies to plan and organize community programs.

It is noted that Generation X and Y and Millennial all value on contributing to society highly (Sawyer, 2001). Obviously, the community organizations are benefited by the companies’ charitable causes through raising funds and gaining manpower (with volunteers’ support). The employees who involve in the service programs would feel honored and please in contributing to society. In addition, teamwork is promoted among the employees when they work toward common goals to achieve the community programs. Many managers believe that soft skills can be learned when candidates have engaged in extracurricular activities and volunteering services. These skills and experience are something that managers don’t even learn in business programs (Buhler, 2003). All level of employees can use the opportunity to refine and practice strategic management skills or planning skills while working on community projects.

The company benefits in public relations through its involvement in community services. It may enhance its corporate image and reputation within the community. Those companies actively engage in community services are perceived favorably by young, educated job candidates. People often make a connection that company leaders who support community services are acting like a role model for their employees’ behaviors (Buhler, 2003). When companies’ leaders and top managers involve in community services, they will be seen as responding to the call. They can also gain tremendous networking opportunities to benefit their business further.

Today, we witness more companies require community services from their employees—particularly on the manager’s level. Organizations may also include a community service component on their performance appraisal (i.e., higher education institutions or sport franchises). Some companies and organizations are even more progressive by engaging in community activities to demonstrate their social responsibility and political stance. When employees get the chances to achieve a noble cause and make a difference on other’s life, it boosts their morale and maintain a great sense of work/life balance. Community services is certainly a convenient way to show the company’s goodwill to community organizations and society.

Types of Community Services for Consideration

There are a wide range of community service activities that managers and employees can choose from. Those activities should be smoothing that all involved individuals enjoy to do and can make a real contribution. For most of time, people only need to look into their own “backyards” to find worthy opportunities. Employees who are working in the business sectors can support the local Chamber of Commerce, since their companies may be one of its associated members already. Employees can also select specific professional organizations (i.e., Society of Human Resource Managers, SHRM, or American Compensation Association, ACA) that are closely tied to their professional career and interests, and serve on its board at local or regional chapters. Business and sport professional can even participate in career days at local schools. Student organizations (i.e., Future Business Leader Association) would be eager to have enthusiastic professional serving as speakers and mentors. There is certain no shortage of service opportunities. The key is to take one’s experience and strengths into consideration to create a successful match with the community partners and projects (Buhler, 2000).

Sports have served as a stage to discourse issues about concussions, domestic violence, child abuse, gay rights, and racial sensitivity (Wolff, 2014). To show their care and concerns in action, many professional sports leagues and organizations partner with large scale charitable foundation and non-profit services to carry out their community services. This type of grass-root involvement is a highly effective way to develop local fan base and foster a loyal and trustful relationship between the franchise and community. Information in Figure 1 specifies the different cause-related community projects that professional sport leagues and other organizations have engaged and their financial contribution to the community.

According to the monthly newsletter of LG&E and Kentucky Utility, a top 20 utilities in the United States for economic development in 2022, the company is extremely proud of their employees giving back to communities to where they live in and serve. The company hosted many outside company-sponsored volunteer events and reported more than 20,000 volunteering hours. The company also had an enterprise-wise Day of Caring in September 2023 that their employees serving meals, stocking shelves, and packing boxes and backpacks for local nonprofit organizations such as Feeding America, The Lord’s Kitchen, and the Bluegrass Area Chapter of Red Cross. The Day of Caring isa part of the company’s annual employee-giving campaign called Power of One (cited from Power Source, December 2023 Issue). As for the sport-related volunteer activities, their employees and retirees of Ghent Generating Station and Trimble County Generating Station have run the chains (Chain Gang) fort Carroll County High School home football games every Friday night. One of their employees expressed, “Learning how to balance work, home life and volunteering for the community is hard but very rewarding. We have a great deal of fun on Friday nights.”

Both Table 1 and 2 highlights the types of community service opportunities and partners that employees and their company (or organization) can participate. Our society are full of special people who are desperate in needs and special concerns that need to be addressed and taken care.  For all of the individuals who are interested in helping, there are a lot of fun and meaningful ways to offer the help and make the experience memorable. The key is to properly plan the programs and recruit the “right kind” of volunteers to carry them out.

Figure 1. Sport Properties’ Cause-Related Charitable Giving

Table 1. Examples of Popular Community Services Programs

Table 2. Examples of Community Organizations for Developing Partnership

Organizing a Community Campaign and Finding Volunteers

Before a community service campaign is launched, it is a wise decision to reexamine the company’s goals, find a suitable cause to champion, and identify the legitimate organizations to support. We need to investigate the legitimacy of the partners and ensure the donations are properly handled by the partner organizations and reached the hands of actual needy recipients. Here is a series of steps suggested by scholars to effectively organize a community service campaign (Starner, 2012; Sawyer, 2001).

(1) Reviewing the history and records: Check out who the company have worked with. There is no need to reinvent the wheels, if the past programs were great success.

(2) Planning for these tasks: Meet with the campaign coordinators and representatives of partners; get the boss behind the campaign; recruit volunteers; promote incentives and rewards; conduct training sessions; request agency visit; and finalize campaign themes

(3) During the campaign, keep soliciting volunteers’ support (both monetary fund and time), conduct employee rallies, and report the progress.

(4) After the campaign, show the appreciation and ask for feedback.

Things to Take Care—Getting High Quality Volunteers

One may wonder, who has time to volunteer in today’s hectic schedule anyway?  There are a lot of convincing reasons for all of us to volunteer. First, many volunteer opportunities can have a lasting, positive emotional effect. Helping those who are less fortunate can help us gain a new perspective about the reality and difficulty of life. In many cases, a simple hug and a word of thanks as rewards can mean so much for the volunteers. When employees engage in community services, they are exposed to new environments, new working groups, and new procedures. These experiences can help them build decision-making, communication, and leadership skills. Here is a list of methods that can be used to recruit volunteers (Beagley, 1998; Chen, 2012; May, Chelladurai, & Trail, 2007; UK Eurpoean Commission, 2009; Zackal, 2015):

(1) making the programs or activities fun;

(2) finding out what types of services they are likely respond to;

(3) involving the volunteers’ family;

(4) making the tasks easy, attractive, and meaningful to volunteers;

(5) making volunteers responsible for something relevant and important;

(6) treating volunteers with respect;

(7) performing a simple screening or asking for referrals;

(8) planning social events for the volunteers (i.e., honoring them and showing appreciation);

(9) paying for volunteers’ training;

(10) offering multiple shifts and options, and flexible schedules for volunteers to participate; and

(11) placing volunteers’ photos on bulletin boards, websites, social media platforms, and e-mail messages.

The authors cannot stress enough about the importance of involving oneself in volunteering activities. Many managers are very vocal about their desire to hire college graduates who have participated in internship and volunteer services. Companies are looking for young talents who can properly manage their time to balance their academic performance and extracurricular activities simultaneously.

In many cases, scheduling for community services can be done in the following ways. Volunteers can submit their top-3 choices of time, then the coordinators can make the proper arrangement and confirm final decided time. The volunteers can also contact the central designating coordinator to set up the schedule at the first-come first-serve basis. Sometimes, the programs may allow walk-ins and welcome as many volunteers as possible. Each of the methods has its advantages and shortcoming. The planners and coordinators must carefully examine the nature of the tasks, the need of manpower, and submitted time requests to utilize the ideal amount of volunteers. It is suggested to designate a recruiter for every 50 approached volunteers (Saywer, 2001). It is always encouraging to have refreshment prepared for all volunteers. Be sure to have a variety of food choices (meat and vegetable sandwiches, cookies, doughnuts, pastries and finger snacks) and drink (juice, soda, and coffee) available. Create fun themes for people to do different activities. Be sure to advertise the programs and volunteering opportunities to all levels of employees. Motivators are important driving forces that keep people engaged. The most common reason people cite for not donating blood is that they were never asked (Sawyer, 2001). Don’t let employees use “don’t knowing” as an excuse to dodge the volunteering opportunity.

The authors work at an institution that carries 14 NCAA sponsored athletic sports. Our institution and many others have implemented special half-time activities and events as kinds of community services and effective grass-root marketing strategies. Here are a few examples of these unique community events.

*Special Olympic basketball competitions or wheelchair basketball competitions during the half-time of basketball games

*Recreation festival and fitness challenges for underprivileged children

*Awareness night for leukemia, breast cancer, ALS, and other diseases: Honoring special heroes, and survivors and conducting fundraisers

Gaining the Support of Management

Effectively justifying an employee service system or upgrading an existing one has always been something Human Resources (HR) executives must contend with. The popular use of data analytics and datamining for determining business decisions has become an inevitable trend in today’s business environment. Yet the recent economic hard times combined with new, emerging technology platforms such as cloud computing, mobile computing and software-as-a-service, have made business cases and decisions even more critical and challenging. All leaders may think with logic, but act on emotion. In the old days, HR may sound just like a division showing up with all kinds of needs for money (i.e., salaries, benefits, bonus costs, performance rewards and employee services). Today, HR leaders cannot just go to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and talk about an HR system and financial needs alone. It must be about a business system and metrics, business goals and objectives, and business values and advantages (Starner, 2012). Readers may realize that nearly all of the services and programs mentioned in the chapters all require the support from the top management. The importance of establishing a clear communication channel and message to the CEO and senior managers simply cannot be overlooked. HR executives must constantly seek for innovative ideas to present a compelling case. It is about finding out those leaders’ emotional and business priorities to gain those individuals’ trust and understanding.

Quiz Questions

Q1. Which of the following is a benefit for a company involving in community services?

1. It may enhance its corporate image and reputation within the community.
2. Those companies can be perceived favorably by young, educated job candidates.
3. Employees can refine and practice strategic management skills or planning skills while working on community projects.
4. All of the above

Q2. “Food basket programs” are examples of a program.

1. 1. Community services
   2. Work/life
   3. Employee stores
   4. Culture

Q3. In general, it’s best to designate one volunteer recruiter for every to be approached.

1. 1. 30
   2. 100
   3. 50
   4. 25

Q4. The most common reason people cite for not donating blood is:

1. 1. They don’t know where to go.
   2. They are too skinny to donate
   3. They were never asked to do so.
   4. They are afraid of the needle.

Q5. When HR executives try to request support from the CEO, they must present how those needs are related to business system and metrics, business goals and objectives, and business values and advantages. True/False

Brainstorming Activity

Fathead State University Athletic Department employs 85 full-time employees including administrators, staffs, and coaches of all ages ranging from 24 to 65. The department also cater 14 men’s and women’s varsity sports that serve around 350 student-athletes on campus. As the athletic director of the department, you are aware of the importance of your program engaging in community services. Could you come up with types of programs and partners you would work with to ensure that the student-athletes and your employees have great experience in participating in those services??

Image Citations

[1] Photo courtesy by Steve Chen, Information from Street & Smith Sports Business Journal

[2] Photo Courtesy by Wikimedia Commons, under public domain.

References

Buhler, P. M. (2003). Managing in the new millennium. Community service: a win-win for             today’s managers. Super Vision 64(12), 20-22.

Chen, S. (2012, October). Recruiting and training the heroes: Best practices for utilizing volunteers in recreation or sport events. Paper presented at the 91th Annual Convention of WVAHPERD, Bridgeport, West Virginia.

Filo, K., Funk, D. C., & O’Bren, D. (2011). Examining motivation for charity sport event participation: A comparison of recreation-based and charity-based motives, Journal of Leisure Research 43(4),

May, K., Chelladurai, P., & Trail, G. T. (2007). A model of volunteer retention in youth sport.          Journal of Sport Management, 21(2), 151-171.

Starner, T. (2012). Making the case for HRIS. Austin, Texas: EPICOR.

Sawyer, T. H. (2001). Employee services management: A key component of human resource            management. Champaign, IL: Sagamore.

Schoenfeld, B. (2007). Getting athletes to give back. SportsBusiness Journal, 10(13), 1; 50-53.

Sparvero, E., & Kent, A. (2014). Sport team nonprofit organizations: Are sports doing well at doing good? Journal of Applied Sport Management, 6(4), 98-121.

Staples, A. (2019, April 8). A slam dunk cause, baby! Dickie V’s true calling isn’t hoops, it’s hope. Sports Illustrated, URL

Steinmetz, K. (2016). The view: Why companies are coming out of the political closet? Time,       187(13), 19-20.

Sullivan, K. (2011). How athletes can engage, entertain, serve….with a purpose. Street and Smith SportsBusiness Journal, 14(7), 14.

UK Eurpoean Commission (2009). Study on volunteering in the European Union: Country report United Kingdom.  https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrJ7FvnvmRbzlkA5CdXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTBybGY3bmpvBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg–/RV=2/RE=1533357928/RO=10/RU=http%3a%2f%2fec.europa.eu%2fcitizenship%2fpdf%2fnational_report_uk_en.pdf/RK=2/RS=3I2G0Y.VR2_Z2UupCPTEvXj4a0Q-

Wolff, A. (2014). United we sit. Sports Illustrated, 121(15), 64.

Zackal, J. (2015). 7 super steps to recruit volunteers. https://topnonprofits.com/7-super-steps-to-recruit-volunteers/