Employment, Volunteering and Skills

Employment

Although the VCFSE sector is voluntary led and involves volunteers, it also employs thousands of people across Birmingham City, contributing millions to the local economy across a wide range of sub-sectors.

Employment opportunities in the VCFSE sector are promoted by BVSC through our West Midlands Charity Job site and BVSC are also open to invitations to attend job/ recruitment fairs to promote these opportunities throughout Birmingham City. Please contact our Communications Team if you would like to know more: [email protected]

BVSC have a partnership with Prospectus, a specialist recruitment consultancy and advertising agency working exclusively within the VCFSE sector. Please visit Prospectus website if you would like to know more.

Several VCFSE organisations across the City also support local employment and employability schemes, particularly for disadvantaged groups and NEETs (those Not in Education, Employment or Training) and look to partner with local businesses in this.

BVSC are a Real Living Wage Employer and are promoting a Living Wage City. We believe that organisations across all sectors, VCFSE, business and public organisations, will benefit their organisation, their employees and the City through paying the Real Living Wage.

Volunteering

Volunteering is when someone spends unpaid time doing something to benefit others. Sometimes businesses offer their employees paid time to participate in volunteering activities, usually during work hours. This is called Corporate Volunteering or Employer Supported Volunteering. There are a range of ways in which employees can volunteer including:

Skills-based volunteering: when employees from a company (often a local company) support a VCFSE organisation with their specialist skills or experience. For example, this could be supporting an organisation to develop their website, improve their social media channels and engagement, or develop a new strategy or plan. It could also involve enabling an employee to be a trustee for a VCFSE.
Fundraising: when employees from a company come together to collectively fundraise for a charity or good cause.
Team volunteering days: when a team or group of colleague's volunteer to do an activity together. This could be supporting a local charitable event or doing an activity such as a litter pick.

There are opportunities to businesses, employees and VCFSE organisations for encouraging corporate volunteering.

Corporate volunteering can benefit your business in many ways:

It can bring your team together and help develop stronger and better-connected teams.
Increase employee's morale and pride in their place of work, leading to better retention of staff.
It can provide meaningful learning and development opportunities.
It raises the profile of your company or brand.

It can also benefit your employees by:

Improving their health and wellbeing.
Renewing their sense of purpose and fulfilment through giving them an opportunity to support a good cause.
Increasing their level of engagement in the workplace.
Giving them an opportunity to use their skills and experience in different ways, enhancing their CV.

There’s lots of research into the benefits of corporate volunteering for both companies and employees. Learn more:

There are several organisations in Birmingham and the West Midlands that offer corporate volunteering opportunities. Take a look at those below, or contact Becky – Vision for Volunteering Implementation Manager for further suggestions: [email protected]

Organisations involving corporate volunteers:

Skills

Businesses have key skills which can benefit VCFSE organisations.

As well as sharing these skills with the VCFSE sector through volunteering, businesses could support their local communities by:

Delivering discounted or free formal or informal training to VCFSE sector organisations’ trustees, employees or volunteers
Donating funds to enable VCFSE sector organisations to access training they need for trustees, employees or volunteers
Providing access to training opportunities for VCFSE organisations clients e.g. young people

BVSC run weekly 1hr webinars to support VCFSE organisations on business development needs – if your business is able to offer a brief free presentation to help these groups with developing their organisation, then please contact Tony Carr, 4frontpartners who delivers these webinars on BVSC’s behalf: [email protected]

VCFSE organisations also have key skills which can benefit businesses and several organisations offer training (either free or competitively priced) connected with their particular area of community expertise. So if your business is looking to train staff on engaging with particular communities, whilst also wanting to engage with and give something back to those communities, please contact us.

If you are able to support more indepth VCFSE training and skills opportunities please contact BVSC’s Strategic Partnership Manager Elizabeth Goodchild to discuss this further: [email protected]

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