Volkswagen Refugee Relief May 19th 2016 K-S Employee volunteering - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Volkswagen Refugee Relief

May 19th 2016

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Employee volunteering program at the Volkswagen Group

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Adjusting to the Refugee Crisis in 2015 First Challenges

• Understaffed NGOs
• Unique and unprecedented situation
• Developing a longterm strategy

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Refugee Relief‘s Key Premises

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Using the Volkswagen Group‘s core competencies, i.e. granting access to its vehicle fleet and eductional programs / facilties Local commitment at Volkswagen‘s sites Granting emergency aid to local authorithies and NGOs Supporting and empowering Volkswagen employees to volunteer

First Projects

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First Projects

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First Projects

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Employee Volunteer Program

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Volunteering and Socialising

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Cooperating with NGOs, Companies and local authorities

Goal: create reliable best-practices

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Assessing the Need of the Refugees

• Close relationship with our employees and union (IG Metall) members, who were the

first who promoted volunteering among our emloyees and told us what was necessary

• Paid leave of absence for employees who are engaging in volunteer programs
• Doing vacciniations at Volkswagen‘s own medical unit
• Creating joint-volunteer-programs
• We got in touch with migration experts at the umbrella organisations of AWO, Diakonie,

DRK, Paritätische, Caritas, Malteser, etc. and assessed the situation and needs with

• them. Results:
• We established the Vehicle Fleet Program
• The Volkswagen Group Academy initiated a cooperation with the city of Wolfsburg

to provide language teachers, social workers and financial aid in order to support the integration of young refugees

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Who was and is Involved in your Company

• Our employees
• The IG Metall union members and it‘s own staff foundation (Volkswagen

Belegschaftsstiftung)

• Project Refugee Relief is lead by board member Dr. Karlheinz Blessing (Human

Resources and Organization) and Dr. Thomas Steg (Head of External Relations and Sustainablity). Project manager is Ariane Kilian.

• The affiliated companies and certain departments

Audi Porsche MAN VWN FSAG Group Academy Personalwesen Deutschland Pro Ehrenamt K-GK

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How is the effort funded

• Volkswagen Belegschaftsstiftung, the Group Academy, the affiliated companies have

their own funds / budgets

• i.e. the Group Academy‘s cooperation with the city of Wolfsburg is funded with 2,5

Million euros

• Additionally to the every departments own budget, the Project Refugee Relief has its
• wn funds, which are assessed regurarly and adjusted when necessary

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Which Organisations do you Partner With

• IG Metall
• Local authorities, state and federal agencies
• NGOs, longterm relationship with the DRK (German Red Cross)
• Various initiatives and projects that work collaboratively on developing best-practices to

help refugees integrating into the German society

• Teaming-up with interesting (social) entrepreneurs who have interesting and

sustainable approaches on tackling certain challenges

• Acess to higher education for refugees
• Access to learning materials for our employees who volunteer as language teacher

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What has been the short-term impact of these efforts?

• According to NGOs and government officials volunteers were necessary in order to

maintaining social facilities open and provide much needed help

• However, and that is why we are here: We haven‘t found a reliable and efficient way to

measure the Volkswagen Group‘s impact on employee volunteer programs. We get thousands of clicks on our website that lists volunteer work opening, but can‘t reliable tell whether or not it‘s gaining traction. We have to rely on the NGOs feedback.

• How do you track and measure the impact of your programs? How do you gather data

and what adjustments did you make to improve your effectiveness?

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What innovations did you create?

• We‘re teaming up with start-ups in order to provide our employee volunteers better

ressources (to be announced, still in development)

• (cloudbased) Learning materials
• Online accessible Mentoring programs
• Several educational and assisting apps are created by volunteers
• PRISM: providing PCs to NGOs and volunteers that offer governments

documents translated in Arabic, Urdu, etc. and that can switch between German/ English and Arabic, Urdu etc.

• MOOCs for employee volunteers and refugees
• We introduced crosscultural trainings for volunteering employees

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Lessons Learned & Advice

• Choas can spark creativity and failure will be part of your efforts
• Seemingly inifinite (financial) ressources will not necessarily make your programs

inherently better

• Ask NGOs and experts what they actually need and you as company XY can help

them, stay close to your core competencies

• Your employee volunteers are the closest to the matter, give them opportunities submit

projects proposals, grant funds, award their committment

• Use your employee volunteer program as means to actually integrate the refugees,

that is why we at Volkswagen emphasise social events, like Kitchen Stories, Café International.

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Thank you for your attention!

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