Handbooks
Tackling Employee Loneliness
A report on how loneliness is affecting all ages, with top tips for HR to help their teams
Mind, the mental health charity, describes loneliness as “the feeling we get when our need for rewarding social contact and relationships is not met. You may have lots of social contact, or be in a relationship or part of a family, and still feel lonely – especially if you don't feel understood or cared for by the people around you.”
It’s not just an older or vulnerable adult issue.
45% of adults feel occasionally, sometimes or often lonely in England. This equates to over twenty five million people. (This figure was calculated based on the ONS population for England estimates of 2019.) Loneliness in younger people is definitely an increasing problem.
Volunteering activities can have a major positive impact on happiness levels
Mental ill health is the single most common cause for long-term absence from work. It's also costing businesses £45 billion a year.
To combat this, doing good can (and should) be built into your employee engagement activities as part of a comprehensive wellbeing strategy.
50%
of all customer attitudes to a brand are shaped by how management behaves and the way the company engages with social issues. (Fleishmann Hillard Fishburn's 2019 Authenticity Gap report).
94%
of people who volunteered said it improved their mood and research shows that feel good hormones and brain activity are higher during volunteering activities. (United Health Group)
It’s not just an employee issue
Customers notice a commitment to prioritising staff wellbeing. It’s not just about looking good, it’s about doing good, and it’s more important now to prove to your employees, customers and business partners that you’re putting your money where your mouth is. Aligning with the values of the people you’re providing a service to really does make an impact on the long-term success of your business.
How OnHand defeats your volunteering barriers
Time Constraints
Professionals are busy, and the pandemic has seen most of us deciding what’s really important. If you’re going to spend precious time doing anything, it’s got to be worthwhile. Micro volunteering (volunteering in small, bite-size chunks) has been increasing in popularity for the past 20 years, and it has the potential to drastically increase participation in company volunteer programs.
The Personal Experience
If we really want to make a difference, it can’t be just about the simple act of volunteering anymore. It has to be about everything else that goes with it: super-slick tech that enables the experience. This is another reason why corporate volunteering opportunities are evolving to focus on flexibility and accessibility. They open up a host of community volunteering ideas that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
Trackability
If you’re wanting to invest in efforts to make a huge difference to your community as an organisation, you’re going to need to show people how much of an impact you’re actually making. Show us our own statistics, and we’re going to want to beat them. OnHand’s enhanced reporting system makes social impact measurement simple and accessible, offering a powerful volunteer management platform to track results effectively.