The Opportunity
As part of its new CSR strategy, the company wanted to create a skills-based volunteering programme that aligned with its sustainability priorities and engaged senior leaders in meaningful contribution.
Twelve executives from across the business were invited to apply their professional expertise to time-bound, high-impact projects with nonprofit partners. The ambition was twofold: deliver practical value to partners and stretch leaders beyond their day-to-day context.
The Journey
Following consultation with HR, Sustainability and established social impact partners, Emerging World co-created the Skills for Good programme: a hybrid skills-based employee engagement initiative.
Over six months, leaders worked directly with nonprofit representatives through a blend of virtual collaboration and transformative in-person engagement. Each team focused on a defined organizational challenge the nonprofit was facing, using their executive experience to analyse issues, surface options and develop practical deliverables.
The work was hands-on and rigorous. Leaders engaged deeply with partner realities, tested assumptions and translated strategy into action. Each engagement concluded with a final presentation and agreed next steps.
The Transformation
Participants reported significant shifts in how they approached leadership and collaboration.
- 90% of participants would recommend the experience to colleagues.
- 100% reported that the experience influenced positive changes in how they work and that they had made meaningful progress on their partner’s challenge.
Leaders returned with greater confidence using their expertise in unfamiliar environments and a deeper understanding of the pressures nonprofit organizations face. Partners gained valuable insights, practical outputs and a renewed focus on their next steps.
As one nonprofit partner representative noted,
“The team we worked with were absolutely brilliant. The unique perspectives and skill sets that they each brought to the project provided us with a level of strategic thinking and contemplative problem solving that our organization would never have had access to or been able to afford.”
At the end of the programme, leaders left seeing more clearly where their expertise creates the greatest value.
