FOS makes strides with volunteering
We are really excited to be working with business partner Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) as they launch their new, company-wide volunteering policy. We visited the offices of FOS to join them for the launch event, and to speak with eager volunteers about opportunities in east London that they could get involved in! Thank you to Faith Johnson, Diversity and Inclusion Adviser, for writing this piece for us:
We, at the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), take our responsibility to the wider world seriously. Doing the right thing is one of our core values and feeds directly into the reasons why we felt it was important to make our volunteering offering simpler and for it to reach more of our employees – building upon our long history of volunteering within the London area.
The difficulties we faced in creating the new volunteering policy were that we did not have a procedure or framework in place, and our volunteering was run through mailing lists and word of mouth of a few dedicated individuals. Not everyone had the opportunity to get involved and newer colleagues did not always know it existed. Every employee can now use up to two days to volunteer through our partners, including ELBA, and all the information about how to get involved is easy to find on the intranet pages.
Having the connection with ELBA in place made things easier to manage because we could make a direct connection between the new policy and the monthly ELBA Hot Opps circulated to our staff. Now employees can find a volunteering opportunity, confirm the date with ELBA and use our HR system to book their volunteering leave. Using a familiar system and having a volunteering partner on board has helped us create a foundation to allow anyone to get involved and give back to the local community.
Active FOS volunteer, Jennifer Henriques, said:
‘‘I’ve been volunteering now for almost four years. I’ve had immense pleasure and success in organising events which have benefited the younger and older generation alike – both within and outside our organisation. As a service, we pride ourselves in being involved in the wider community, but this is only achieved through the hundreds of willing volunteers that join the different networks we have.”
David Cresswell, Director of Strategy at FOS, said:
‘‘volunteering isn’t just about providing colleagues with the opportunity to give something back on top of their day job. Even more importantly, it’s a way of meeting different people, making new relationships and getting fresh perspectives – so that we can do our day job even better. That’s what making a difference really means – and that’s at the very heart of what we do at the Ombudsman Service.”
ELBA exhibited at FOS’s recent volunteering fair, helping raise awareness of the new volunteering policy.
