A new twist on employer volunteering schemes?

In the USA the press are widely reporting a new twist in employer-led volunteering.  Urban Outfitters is ‘offering’ its own salaried staff the opportunity of weekend volunteering in one of their own warehouses!  The memo asking for volunteers is reported on Payscale.com which shows how this was pitched as fun team building activity.  There was much condemnation across the media as to how a successful and large organisation could offer this sort of ‘volunteering’ rather than paying their staff.

Looking at this story from the perspective of volunteering prompts further questions.  It is clear in the memo that this ‘volunteering’ is pitched as entertaining and fun rather than real work.  Yet the focus of the activity was to be (I assume) the usual fulfillment tasks which staff are paid to perform during the week.  Thus volunteering is presented very differently from ‘real’ work even though the work that is done might be the same.  The opportunity was to work ‘side by side’ with the paid staff but there was no recognition that this might be problematic for either party.  Both would potentially have the good reason to be concerned and it doesn’t seem that any attention was given to how they might work together.  Yet the issue of divisions and tensions between paid and volunteer work in the voluntary sector is one that is much discussed.

Perhaps since employer volunteering is seen as a good news story, the firm here thought this example might be seen in a similar positive light.  It does how show that some employer discussion of volunteering might need more scrutiny to see who is really benefiting.  Certainly in this case stories across the internet and via social media ensured that scrutiny was made visible for us to see.