January’s Volunteer of the Month is James Skeggs, Managing Director, Global Head of Alternative Investments Consulting at Societe Generale, nominated for his work with the Community team.

James has delivered Excel training in the past to a range of ELBA’s community partners, and on 17th January he delivered another excellent training session for ELBA staff. James went out of his way to provide both a morning beginner session and an afternoon intermediate session, developing materials to make the training as interactive as possible. Feedback from staff was exceptional, praising James’s approachable manner, and hats also go off to the Societe Generale staff that supported James to deliver this training. We hope James can provide this training again in the future!

Why did you volunteer?

It’s fun and incredibly rewarding!

Having been involved in a number of charitable organisations outside work for many years, I looked into how Societe Generale supports and encourages employees to have a more positive impact on society and the local community in particular. SG offers a range of different programmes including volunteering opportunities, engagement with our Charity of the Year, and match-funding of charitable giving and volunteering time. So, in addition to my day-to-day responsibilities of running a team which analyses hedge fund performance, I started to become more actively involved with our CSR programme. I have subsequently joined the bank’s UK and Global Markets CSR Committees and work as an Ambassador to raise awareness of CSR and encourage active involvement in both fund raising and volunteering activities.

Working in the City provides people with a wide range of skills, and I have been looking to identify ways that these technical, organisational, and people skills can benefit our local community.  I wanted to set an example and inspire confidence in our teams to look at the skills they possess and see how they could benefit groups like ELBA, and their community partners. Due to the nature of our role, every member of my team is an expert in Excel, and so we approached our in-house CSR team with the idea of doing small, customised teaching sessions where we could educate community partners and employees of ELBA in using the software.

Why do you think volunteering is important?

Volunteering is one of the few opportunities available to people today to connect directly with their local community and give something back to society. The feedback from the Excel sessions made clear the invaluable benefit to the attendees from not only our technical skills & expertise, but also in instilling a sense of self-confidence that people can do something if they put their mind to it.

This feedback alone would make the session worthwhile, but I would argue that the true beneficiaries of these courses are actually our staff – there is little else that can provide the tremendous sense of wellbeing that you get when volunteering. People who work in the City traditionally take part in fundraising as they are generally time poor and cash rich, and it is often easier to throw some money in a bucket (or donate online!) than to carve out hours away from the desk during work hours. Whilst donations are of enormous benefit to the destination charity, it misses the key aspect of the direct engagement with the people being helped that you get with volunteering. Knowing that you have given even one person the ability to better manage their money, or improved the financial planning skills of our community partners, it gives a real sense of personal achievement and can be life-changing for them.

Would you recommend volunteering to a colleague and if so why?

Of course! I am a huge advocate of volunteering, and actively try to encourage others to take part.

At SG we are fortunate that the firm places a huge emphasis on culture, and thus there are ample opportunities to get involved. If there isn’t anything that inspires you, work with your CSR team to identify an opportunity to suit you!!