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Over 34,000 hours of employees’ time in 2006 was donated to help good causes worldwide, which is an increase of 42% over 2005. This time can be used for anything from staff in Lithuania helping coastline clean-up campaigns, to Norwich Union and Morley employees participating in reading and mentoring schemes in the UK.
To show our high-level commitment to volunteering, we have built formal policies into our businesses in Australia, Ireland, Poland and the UK, which allow people to take extra days leave to help out with local volunteer work.
In Ireland the introduction of a “hands-on” volunteering programme to help the marginalised in the community was successfully achieved in 2005. The programme, called “Reaching out to the Community”, embodies the Aviva CSR philosophy that building good community relations is an important part of doing business. The volunteering programme facilitates volunteering during office hours and funds are also provided by the company to support volunteer work.
In Romania, nearly 100 volunteers from all over the Aviva group spent a long, hard week working with Habitat for Humanity, a charity working to eliminate poverty housing worldwide. By pooling their talents in this blitz build, our volunteers helped to construct four houses to shelter underprivileged families.
Employees volunteering in Romania
We also make it easier for our people to show their financial generosity, with some of our businesses having company-matched giving schemes, where we match money raised by them for good causes.
Payroll giving schemes offer another route for employees to donate to charity, directly from their salary. Currently, 50% of our businesses offer such schemes, with employee take up varying from 5% to 50% in the businesses around the group. While in the UK a community award scheme enables employees to apply for funds to support a charity to which they are already giving time or money.
Thanks to the generosity of Aviva employees and a small army of 165 dedicated volunteers, Aviva Canada proudly celebrated another outstanding United Way campaign. United Way aims to improve lives and build community cohesion by engaging individuals and mobilising collective action. Employee donations and funds raised through special events totalled C$438,217, which includes a corporate match of C$100,000. In 2006 over 5,000 volunteer hours were contributed to many of the community initiatives supported by the company.
