Salary cuts may trigger a new trend in voluntary social work by company executives.
With corporate houses like Infosys and Hewlett Packard actively encouraging employees to take sabbaticals and time off to do voluntary social work for half their salaries, companies in the volunteering sector have started putting together custom-built packages for them.
Rahul Nainwal, founder-director of I Volunteer, has tweaked his regular volunteering package to prepare a special one for companies weighed down by the global meltdown. It has made one such proposal for Infosys. It has also worked out the cost to company if it were to tie up with his organisation to send workers to other NGOs.
“The model we have offered Infosys is based on the western pattern where the worker gets half his salary while the company pays us a fee per employee. We offer them a stipend and take care of their transportation and accommodation,” says Nainwal. So a worker who earns Rs 60,000 would get half his salary from the company and a stipend of around Rs 6,000 a month from the NGO. In return, the company will pay an NGO (like his) about Rs 7,000 per worker.
“The arrangement is viable for all concerned,” he says. Meanwhile, the agency has approached the top IT companies, banks and BPOs with proposals. Volunteering sabbaticals for employees is not new in the West and Nainwal is hoping that the meltdown will be an excuse for companies to set off a trend in India. “Infosys doesn’t want good people to leave and yet it has to cut costs. Allowing people to volunteer is a strategy which will benefit the company in the long term as its employees will come back with more experience, new skills and better understanding”, he says.
Nainwal says his NGO partners would be more than happy to have experienced people working for them in urban or rural areas. They would be glad to employ them for even two years, he says.
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ICICI Bank has already taken the agency’s help to design a programme to encourage workers to do rural assignments. IFMR Trust, which has ICICI on its board, has also hired I Volunteer to design a volunteering programme for its workers. I Volunteer has developed a bouquet of options for volunteering which includes short home stays in rural areas and weekend projects, among others. Astra Zenecca, the pharma company, also wants I Volunteer to create packages in the health sector. The company has done awareness sessions for American Express and Apeejay group as well.
Business and Community Foundation (BCF) which prepares corporate social responsibility packages for companies says that no firm has approached it so far with specific demands for volunteering packages. Amita Joseph of BCF says that one of its clients, Satyam Computers, already has a robust volunteering programme but it has nothing to do with the salary cuts at the organisation. MNCs like Nokia which have a programme abroad do not necessarily replicate it here, she says. “So in spite of the lure of cost cutting, volunteering may or may not become a trend for companies,” she says.
