Renfrewshire Council

Benefits of Employee Volunteering

Volunteering your time and skills has huge benefits both for you and for the community.

Volunteering can:

• help you learn new skills
• help you meet different people
• help you boost your confidence and explore new situations
• help support the Council's place leadership role
• help boost wellbeing, morale and work-life balance
• and it can also be a lot of fun!

Who can get involved

All employees can apply for two days per calendar year. Managers will check if the volunteering activity meets our agreed criteria and if there are any operational demands that would need to be covered.

How to apply for volunteering leave

Talk to your line manager about the volunteering activity you are interested in.

Approval of time off will be subject to the needs of the Service. Renfrewshire Council will support as many requests as possible however there may be times that this cannot be accommodated for the following reasons:

• It has a negative impact on the business and service needs.
• Work within the service cannot be re-arranged to accommodate the employees varied hours.
• The cost of cover would be too great.

Once you have line manager approval, submit the Employee Volunteering Request Form [83KB] .

Following approval, your line manager will attach your form on Business World and record the time off as Special Leave.

Guidance for managers

We aim to approve all requests for volunteering leave where service needs allow. When a colleague requests time off to volunteer, you should discuss the suitability of the activity with them and how to manage any impact on their workload.

Please refer to the Employee Volunteering Guidance available on the intranet. Pay special attention to the steps and considerations outlined in Sections 7, 8 and 9.

See the Manage planned leave on Business World page for further guidance on managing special leave requests.