Most of the UK workforce want to volunteer their professional skills to charities – and their employers could benefit significantly from making it easier to do so.

Research published today by business skills charity Pilotlight shows many UK workers (21 per cent) are already putting their work skills into use on a voluntary basis and that a further 50 per cent would like to volunteer using their professional skills.

Among the half of workers saying they would like to share their work skills with good causes, many (38 per cent) said they needed guidance on how to do this. Pilotlight is mounting a campaign, backed by ex-CBI President Paul Dreschler, to ask businesses to create more opportunities for staff to volunteer their skills to good causes, with two thirds of people in work (64%) believe that employers have a moral duty to help their communities and wider society through support for volunteering.

CEO of Pilotlight, Ed Mayo, notes: “A few hours a month can do wonders for employee morale and for the charities they support. It does need some care to do it well but the good news is that, for personal and professional development, it is better by far than sending your staff on another training course.”

Pilotlight already partners with a range of the UK’s companies including Barclays, BlackRock, Ipsos MORI, Morgan Stanley and Virgin Media as well as hundreds of smaller businesses to match their employees with charities for facilitated coaching programmes. The latest Small Charity Leaders Insight Report conducted by Pilotlight and Garfield Weston Foundation showed that 69 per cent of small charities were on the look-out for pro bono professional skills giving from their community.

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