How Skills-Based Volunteer Programs Can Boost Employee Satisfaction

At Comcast, Lisa Harmon, an enterprise account manager, is used to growing revenue and managing client needs. But through the company’s Team Up program, she’s expanding her skills in a new way — by giving back and growing beyond her day job.

Through the company’s skills-based volunteer and employee engagement program, Harmon volunteered with Lifting Up Camden’s Youth, an after-school program in Camden, NJ.

“This was something completely out of the box for me, finding grant money, reaching out to organizations, and learning how to help philanthropic organizations to drive engagement,” she said. Harmon added that the experience helped her develop public speaking and networking skills.

The opportunity to learn new skills through volunteering deepened Harmon’s commitment to Comcast. “I’m having experiences that I would have never had before if it were not for a skills-based volunteer program,” she said.

Corporations are increasingly eager to connect their employees with skills-based volunteering. In this model, employees donate professional skills to a local nonprofit, allowing them to build leadership and problem-solving skills while helping others.

“It seems counterintuitive, but if you leave your desk to go volunteer, you have a higher level of commitment and engagement to the firm,” said Lee Fabiaschi, vice president and director of learning communities for the Ares Charitable Foundation, a part of Ares Management Corporation, an investment management company.

Volunteering can help employees build new skills at work

Rachel Hutchisson, the CEO of Common Impact, an organization that works with companies to create skills-based volunteer initiatives, said volunteering outside a workplace can help employees grow as leaders and develop confidence. “You’re helping someone else, you’re developing skills, you’re building connection, you’re being connected to the outside world,” she said. “Sometimes, you’re just validating the skills you already have that you don’t realize are so valuable to someone else.”

For instance, Hutchisson said if an employee is in an early-career finance role and wants to be a CFO, they could grow their skillset by helping a nonprofit prepare for an audit.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts works with Common Impact, a nonprofit organization, to design skills-based volunteer programs. Lucy Darragh, the director of strategy and social impact at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, told Business Insider that Common Impact provides guidance on how to design a program that strategically meets the needs for development and engagement while also benefiting the nonprofit.

This partnership led BCBS to offer two distinct opportunities: a short-term consulting engagement and an advisory partnership that lasts several months.

For the limited-time volunteer opportunity, a team of four or five associates will work with a nonprofit on a specific project for three weeks, providing a final deliverable at the end of the program. “We help scope a project that we think can be achieved in three weeks, then we recruit a team of people, typically folks who don’t work together,” Darragh said.

The long-term advisory engagement is similar, but the timeline for the work is more spread out. In some cases, the advisory engagement will build on the short-term consulting project.

Darragh said skills-based volunteering provides a meaningful way for employees to showcase the skills they use in an office and to see how those talents could translate into a different environment.

“It also provides this special layer of networking, teamwork, and connections that we need to intentionally cultivate in our hybrid work environment with folks across our organization,” she said.

At Ares, many young professionals have participated in the company’s skills-based volunteer program. Fabiaschi said she’s noticed that junior colleagues return to work with increased confidence after volunteering. She added that the experience has also created a sense of camaraderie among employees who work on the same projects.

Ares recently launched its 2025 Summer of Service with 60 global volunteer events. The firm said it’s expected to engage up to 1,100 volunteers.

How to build volunteer opportunities at work

For companies looking to start a skills-based volunteer program, Fabiaschi suggests starting small and giving employees “choice and voice.” She said companies should first establish an employee-led committee to find out which type of volunteering garners the most interest. Then, she added, the group should organize a set day or week of service. For example, a company could schedule one day a week at a soup kitchen or a firm-wide park cleanup.

This year, Ares added a new volunteer opportunity around Financial Literacy Month. “We have a whole bench of talent with financial literacy expertise,” she said. “I think people love being able to tie their day job into giving back.”

Darragh said companies don’t need to develop volunteer programs on their own; they can team up with organizations to create customized initiatives that align with their goals.

“It can be a strategic offering that not only builds engagement, but also helps to develop talent,” Darragh said.