UK 
United States
In 2024, a rather softly-released study by the Oxford Wellbeing Research Group made a pretty stunning discovery.
After looking into the impact of 90 workplace wellbeing interventions, experienced by more than 46,000 UK employees (ranging from offering coaching sessions, to mindfulness apps, relaxation classes and resilience courses), it concluded that it was literally just one offering – enabling staff to volunteer – that made any difference at all.
In fact, to rub salt into the wounds, it found most of the other (costly) interventions organisations were providing failed to even move the needle slightly in terms of actually giving people more purpose and belonging. It was ‘only’ the free giving of time that made any substantive difference.
The power of volunteering
As validations of the power of volunteering goes, this research doesn’t get much better. Yet according to a recent Censuswide survey of 2,000 UK adults, only 30% of employees are actually offered paid volunteering days at all (each getting an average of two days). And worse still, some 140 million hours that staff ‘could’ devote to volunteering actually went unused – either through lack of promoting the benefit to staff, or employers not engaging with staff well enough to explain the satisfaction that getting involved could bring.
What I see is people who are more energised, and happy, and feeling like they’ve made a difference
At training firm, High Speed Training, however, these are statistics it (fortunately) doesn’t recognise. This is thanks to it increasing the number of hours its staff donate – by a factor of ten over just the last three years. In fact for 2025, the business celebrated a significant milestone – surpassing its ambition of hitting 1,000 hours of volunteering, by staff clocking up 1,060 hours in total.
But none of this has come about by accident. It’s the result of concerted effort by the business to really champion this worthy pursuit; one that not only gives back the local community, but also gives staff a sense of satisfaction and achievement too.
Amy Mortimer
Head of Social Impact, High Speed Training
A dedicated resource:
At the heart of this success story is former Amicus and The Business Alliance Chair, Amy Mortimer, the firm’s recent Head of Social Impact. Mortimer originally joined as its Head of Strategic Partnerships, rising to Head of Social Impact last January.
She says: “Before I joined the company – which has a headcount of around 180 people now – there wasn’t anyone purely focused on social impact. As such, at the end of 2022, we as a business were donating probably only around 100 hours a year. This was through offering staff two days’ volunteering time per year.”
She adds: “As part of becoming a B-Corp business in March 2023 however, we recognised there were a real gains to be made, if we could substantially increase this, and that’s when the decision was made to substantially increase the number of volunteering days we offer to staff from two to five days’ per year.”
