What does it mean to be A York Cares Ambassador?
I’m Lucy Pagliaro and I’m the Engagement and Wellbeing Co-ordinator for Benenden Health, and as part of my role at Benenden Health I look after all the volunteering opportunities across the organisation, working exclusively with York Cares to deliver these opportunities.
Naturally because of this, I have taken on the role of Ambassador, working closely with York Cares to not only promote and deliver volunteering opportunities, but also to be able to contribute ideas, feedback and support to the team to make sure we are working collaboratively to deliver volunteering across York.
Being able to work as an Ambassador for York Cares also benefits me from a personal development point of view, working with external stakeholders outside of my own organisation and contributing to the wider volunteering picture in our local community. It gives me another string to my bow, and the opportunity to engage and work with different community groups.
The role of an Ambassador is critical to the success of working with York Cares and engaging volunteers, as without having an Ambassador within your organisation you would never truly be able to maximise on volunteering and get the most out of it.
In terms of how I engage our Benenden Health colleagues in volunteering, there are a couple of channels I use to make sure that I am reaching out to as many colleagues as possible. So here are my top tips!
We have our internal intranet, where I promote opportunities through writing a specific article to outline the opportunity, the benefits and how you can sign up. Colleagues will also write their own volunteering stories, which is great for engagement and always seems to get others commenting, ‘liking’ and asking questions.
I also use our intranet for colleagues to sign up to opportunities, so I am able to have full visibility of how many people are engaging and colleagues can see who else has signed up as well – which may encourage others to join in!
To further encourage engagement, I will make an appearance on our Business Update which is a business wide Teams meeting led by one of our senior leaders, similar to a ‘townhall’ meeting by a more familiar term. I find by attending this update I capture a wider audience and bring volunteering to life; I also ask previous Benenden Health volunteers to join me to talk about their volunteering experiences. I find our colleagues engage well when hearing good news stories from fellow colleagues and it’s not always me speaking about how great volunteering is.
I make sure I engage with the necessary stakeholders within the business, reaching out to some of our volunteer champion groups such as our wellbeing champions, so they are able to promote opportunities within their own teams and encourage colleagues to sign up.
One of the most important tips of all, which I’m sure many of you will agree with, is engaging senior leaders in volunteering opportunities. As leading from the top with senior leaders setting an example demonstrates to others the importance of being involved in volunteering.
An example of this which has worked well is when I reached out to our senior leaders about the Big Community Challenge. I outlined the importance of getting involved to help our local community, but also how this could be used as an opportunity to spend quality time with their teams out of work and act as a team building opportunity for any new colleagues that may have joined the organisation. At Benenden Health we promote volunteering as a social engagement activity as well as an opportunity to give back to the community. I heard back almost immediately from four of our senior leaders who wanted to book slots for their departments.
I find depending on the opportunity, a more bespoke and direct approach can be necessary to engage the numbers you want and make sure there is representation from across different departments.
So those are my top tips, if anyone wants to chat to me, please just let York Cares know and they can put you in touch with me.
