We play an active role in our communities by supporting our colleagues with a range of volunteering and fundraising opportunities.
We support those communities in which we have a presence through our greatest asset – our people. Our Community programme involved more than 3,600 employees during 2010, around a quarter of our workforce. We supported more than 250 community organisations through E.ON UK and volunteers spent almost 6,850 hours working in local communities.
The volunteering programmes include:
- Community Challenges
- Employee Community Fund – this was new in 2010, enabling employees to apply for funding for community projects
- Our E.ON Energy for Children Centres at three partner schools: Limbrick Wood Primary School (Coventry), Morven Park Primary School (Nottinghamshire), Cantrell Primary School (Nottingham)
- The E.ON Energy Experience/Plugin2engineering: our two flagship education programmes
- Our Charity of the Year, Cancer Research UK – this was also new for 2010, and was chosen by employees. Almost 130 employees were actively engaged in supporting the charity during 2010
We’re always looking for new ways to engage and encourage employees to join in with our Community Programme. In 2010 we raised our visibility across all our UK sites. Our banners, give-aways and information packs (which describe all our community programmes) gave employees an outline of our programme, told them who to contact and guided would-be volunteers to our web pages.
At some of our main sites we have volunteering ‘champions’ and we have ‘Charity Champions’ throughout the UK to support our charity of the year fundraising and support communication of our volunteering programmes.
To support our work in local communities across the UK, the Community team have long-standing partnerships with Business in the Community (BITC), and work closely with its CARES (the volunteering programme of BITC) arm at a local level, for example we continued relationships with East Midlands, West Midlands and Leicestershire CARES, and created new relationships with Bolton and Bedford CARES.
Employee Involvement
In 2010 we developed relationships with local Education Business Partners to support the delivery of our flagship educational programmes, The E.ON Energy Experience and plugin2engineering.
We strengthened relationships with our partner schools, or Energy for Children Centres, during 2010, with over 100 employees being involved in supporting the three schools through weekly reading, maths and IT support, Community Challenges and Energy Days.
Our employees’ views are crucial in developing our Community Programme and engaging even more employees. We send a survey to all employees who have been involved in our volunteering programmes, and use these results to further improve our programmes and the volunteering experience.
“I would certainly recommend the volunteering opportunities to my colleagues. There is a wide choice of options to suit all employees, no matter which part of the business they work in, or experiences they have. It is clear to see the impact we have on the schools through the variety of skills and knowledge we offer.” Claire Whiley, Business Continuity Analyst, E.ON UK
“To realise there are fellow professionals out there willing to give something back to their local communities is heart warming, especially when at the same time they display such great fun and echo loads of enthusiasm.” John Fischer, Area Community Renewal Officer, Dudley