Each month, ELBA speaks to an employee at one of our fantastic partner companies to find out about their role and about why Corporate Responsibility is important to their organisation. This month we were lucky enough to hear from both Patsy Francis and Caroline Addison of UBS.

Patsy Francis and Caroline Addison are the dynamic duo organising volunteering opportunities and partnerships at UBS. Patsy leads the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Community Affairs program and Caroline organises the UK volunteering activities. Their main focus is on education and social entrepreneurship. The longstanding partnership with the Bridge Academy, where this year UBS is celebrating ten years since the opening of the academy, is exciting, but Patsy and Caroline maintain additional partnerships that are crucial to the volunteering opportunities offered to senior management and staff at UBS.

Patsy has been running this program for 20 years and is on the board of Inspire!, an organisation UBS partners with to set up volunteering activities. Although Caroline only recently joined her, she brought experience from her previous roles organising volunteering in the broader London area and across England.

1) Why is CSR important to your organisation?
Of course it’s important for people to volunteer in their communities and at UBS people volunteer because they want to and also because they appreciate the impact that sharing their time, skills and enthusiasm can have. At UBS, there’s a clear benefit for people who volunteer in terms of employee satisfaction and personal development, but also for UBS in terms of higher employee retention, recruiting and the perception of the company. This is why the goal of UBS in the UK is to have 50% of employees volunteering by 2020. It’s a win-win-win, for the company, the volunteer and the community.

2)Which topics, themes or initiatives are your organisation currently focused on?
The focus for UBS is on education and social entrepreneurship, specifically in the area of Hackney. The program Patsy and Caroline run at UBS has grown and adapted with the need of the local community. The focus for the volunteering opportunities they organise is skills based volunteering, where staff use their expertise, work experience and knowledge to create a positive and meaningful difference.

3)What is the best part of your job?
Before the volunteering event, the volunteers might be apprehensive or nervous, not sure what to expect. Afterwards, the positive feedback from the volunteers is overwhelming – last year 97% of UBS employees who volunteered said that their experience had had a positive impact on them. In an environment where everybody is tight on time, such feedback is overwhelming acknowledgement that you’ve created a meaningful experience.

Similarly, when the younger students come through the doors of our office with their wide eyes completely in awe you know you’ve offered them a unique opportunity to learn something new that they can take with them forever.