Volunteering leave: The engagement fix most workplaces leave on the shelf

With only one in five Australian employees engaged at work, the volunteering leave most companies already offer could do far more, once HR removes the friction that stops people from using it, writes Will Mason.

I have spent 21 years running team-building programs, and before that, I worked in adventure tourism, outdoor education and facilitation in several countries. Across thousands of events, one pattern stands out. The programs teams remember longest are the ones where they built something for someone else.

I have watched the effect spread. It starts with the individual, moves through the team, and carries out into the community through the charities that benefit. That is why it frustrates me that so much volunteering leave in Australian workplaces goes unused.

The engagement gap

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report found that only 21 per cent of Australian employees are engaged at work. Half say they felt a lot of stress the previous day, up from 34 per cent in 2010.

When numbers like that land, the instinct is to look for a fix. A new initiative, a new leader, a new strategy, a one-off event. In my experience, none of that work on its own. Culture is not a switch. It is an environment, and environments grow through many things working together over time.

Volunteering is one of those things. It is also one most companies already offer and most staff never use.

The leave nobody takes

Research by Corporate Citizenship and Volunteering Australia found 78 per cent of companies have a volunteering program, but only 15 per cent of employees take part.

The policy is rarely the problem. The gap comes from everything around it. Employees have to find a charity, organise a date, get approval, leave their desk for a full day and catch up on the work they missed. Then they volunteer alone, with strangers, and come back to a full inbox. It is easy to see why most people never get around to it.

Charities feel the gap too. Among volunteer-involving organisations that don’t use corporate volunteers, 53 per cent say they lack suitable opportunities for them. A group of office workers turning up for a day doesn’t always fit what a charity needs.

How to get your people using it

Make it a team activity. Volunteering on your own is a chore. Volunteering with your team is a shared experience, and shared experiences are where trust starts. Book it as a group and you remove the hardest part, which is organising it.

Bring it into the working day. A full day away is a big ask, especially for hybrid and client-facing teams. Benevity’s State of Corporate Volunteering 2026 found 60 per cent of corporate volunteers log fewer than five hours a year, and short-session volunteers have doubled since 2019 to 25 per cent. A one- or two-hour session in the office, at a team meeting or as part of a conference often gets far more people involved than an annual volunteer day.

Ask the charity what it actually needs. Only 28 per cent of companies say their volunteer groups consistently do tasks that match charities’ most pressing needs. Before you plan anything, ask your charity partner what would genuinely help. Teams can tell when their effort matters, and it changes how they talk about the day afterwards.

Make it a rhythm, and have leaders go first. One volunteer day a year won’t shift your culture. A regular rhythm will, whether that is quarterly or tied to your planning days. If managers never use their volunteering leave, staff assume it isn’t really encouraged. Put leaders on the first session, and recognise the team’s effort in front of everyone afterwards.

We see this firsthand. Several companies we work with have their own foundation and annual volunteering targets. Rather than leaving staff to organise volunteering on their own, they book us to run sessions in their head office throughout the year. The activity comes to the team, it fits into the working day, and the impact is reported back. That is when volunteering leave stops sitting on the shelf.

Measure what changed, not just who turned up. Benevity found 67 per cent of companies track participation, but only 24 per cent ask charities about the impact. Record what your team produced and where it went, and pair it with a quick pulse check before and after. That gives you something real to report to your executive team, and a story to share with staff that makes the next session easier to fill.

A benefit you already pay for

Volunteering leave is already in most policies, already budgeted, and already approved. The job for HR is not to create a new program. It is to remove the friction that stops people from using the one you have, and to keep it going long enough to become part of how your team works.

With only one in five Australian employees engaged, that is one of the simpler wins on the table.

Culture is not a switch. Volunteering leave, used well, is one of the easiest ways to keep it growing.

Will Mason is the director of Corporate Volunteering Australia, with more than 20 years of experience designing team-building and corporate volunteering programs.

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