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SIBUR's volunteering experience was presented at the 11th Corporate Volunteers’ Forum in Moscow

14 november 2022

On November 9, Moscow hosted the 11th Moscow International Corporate Volunteering: Business and Society Forum, organized by the Association of Managers and the National Council for Corporate Volunteering with the support from the Moscow Government’s Committee for Public Relations and Youth Policy. The forum brought together representatives of some of the largest companies, government agencies, and major charity foundations.

 

The forum’s themes included transformation and prospects of volunteering in the new reality. The forum’s speakers discussed eco-volunteering, the relationship between volunteering and regional agendas, employees’ social fulfilment, and the career path of talents in the social sphere.

 

At the forum, SIBUR presented its experience with developing a corporate volunteering system. At an open session titled "Corporate volunteering today and pressing issues of the regional agenda", Elena Snezhko, head of SIBUR's Formula for Good Deeds social investment program, discussed the results of the first year of operations of the Amur Office of the National Council for Corporate Volunteering that had been established with the company's support: "Our office was set up in 2021 to accumulate and replicate the best volunteering practices of companies and nonprofit organizations in the region. The key focus of our activities, which was determined on the basis of large-scale surveys, included helping children, families and elderly people going through a difficult period in their lives. In just one year, we have managed to do a lot together, and we can see that it is mostly cooperation and joint work that allow us to achieve such impressive results. We invite other organizations operating in Amur Oblast to join our ranks, too".

 

At the session dedicated to "Corporate volunteering in achieving companies’ business goals" experts discussed the relationship between volunteering and employee engagement. The experience of the session’s participants has shown that employees who are active in corporate volunteering programs tend to stay longer with their employer and move up the career ladder quicker. Job seekers are more likely to choose those employers who implement social and volunteering projects.

 

Varvara Melekestseva, supervisor of SIBUR’s corporate volunteering program "People Changing the World", stressed the importance of the company's support for employees' initiatives: "Our program was created in response to numerous requests from our employees. Today SIBUR offers various options for volunteering activities that make it possible for everyone to get involved. We try to provide comprehensive support to our colleagues by offering training, assistance with coordinating their initiatives, setting up peer-to-peer lines of communication between volunteers from different cities. This approach has shown its efficiency: the ranks of those who take part in our program have been growing year upon year, the number of applications for our contests grows, too, and many of our volunteers become real change leaders in their cities".

 

At the "Sustainable Land Development: Evaluating the Impact of Corporate Volunteering" session, Elena Snezhko presented the company's approach to evaluating volunteering projects as a social investment tool.

 

To wit, the company has been assessing the feasibility and achievability of volunteering projects’ goals, as well as their alignment with the priorities of SIBUR's Sustainable Development Strategy. Material criteria include project’s sustainability, outreach to participating volunteers, feedback from target audiences, and active coverage of such activities in social media.

 

"Corporate volunteering is an important component of our social investment program. It is aimed at achieving the overarching objective of improving living standards in the cities where the company has a presence. We strive to integrate volunteering initiatives into all other types of our social projects so that they reinforce and complement each other. This is how we’ve been able to cover the areas that do not fall within the scope of the Formula for Good Deeds program, all thanks to the volunteers' efforts," Elena Snezhko emphasized.