What most people get wrong about volunteering through work | Aaron Hurst

A lot of people looking to be more fulfilled in their lives and work look to volunteering, doing service out in the community as a way to do that. And it is a terrific way to do it. I want to share a little advice with you, though, about how to approach that, given the work I've done with tens of thousands of people and with leading companies around the world building corporate volunteer programs because I think most people get volunteering wrong.

And the first thing that we need to understand about volunteering is that it can't truly be a supplement for getting fulfillment at work. A lot of companies, a lot of individuals, say, "Look, I'm not fulfilled at work. I'll volunteer and get that need met outside of work." And this is really the wrong approach because we spend the majority of our time at work. And we've seen our research. If you're not fulfilled in work, you're not going to be fulfilled in your life overall.

So the first step I recommend is before you jump into volunteering, think about what could you be doing today to make your current work more fulfilling? How could you be boosting your fulfillment? And part of that might be thinking about, how could I volunteer internally? How could I help with sustainability? How can I help mentor people who are younger than I am in the organization? How can I help do the work that's meaningful to me inside the organization? Because that's actually going to be much more gratifying for you most of the time than doing volunteer work.

That said, it's still incredibly valuable to do work in a community. But there's so many different ways to volunteer. And a lot of people who are new to volunteering just sort of jump on whatever they hear in a company email, what they see a company doing, instead of really being thoughtful about what is it that matters to them and what's going to be a fulfilling volunteer experience for them.

There's a number of dimensions to volunteering that I just want to go through to help you think through what might be the right fit for you at this time? One of the most important and challenging parts about volunteering is making the time to volunteer. So as you're thinking about volunteering, really think about how much time do you have and what kind of time is that. And this is both a question of what time during the day or during the week can you do it. It's how much time. And is that time that you can do from your desk at work, or is this time where you're actually able to go out and be in the community? This is a really important variable because it really narrows what you can do in terms of volunteering.

The second piece, which really I recommend, you know, thinking about somewhat in contrast to the first piece around how much time do you have is really about what do you want to get out of the volunteering? Because a lot of times when you just think about how much time you have, you're doing that based on the assumption that you're going to get a certain value out of volunteering. But if you actually think about all the different ways volunteering can help you, you may find you have more time than you thought. So what are the things you want to get out of volunteering? What are the relationships that you want to build? And that could be with existing co-workers. It could be people in your field. It could be with people in the community. What are the relationships you want to build? And those might be to help your career. They might be to be more connected to your community.

What is the impact that you actually want to make? What would make you feel at the end of a volunteering assignment that you actually made an impact versus what would really leave you frustrated or feeling like I just skimmed the surface and didn't do something meaningful? And then, finally, you know, really, how do I want to grow? One of the main opportunities in volunteering is growth, taking you outside of your comfort zone, doing something you don't do every day, meeting new people, new settings. How can you grow through that environment? So if you think about all the different ways...