Overcoming tough times: Revitalize your workforce through volunteering
With businesses globally implementing wide-ranging cost-cutting measures to brace for the new economic reality, leaders are grappling with rising mental health concerns among “survivors”, rapidly declining employee engagement—down to 32% in 2022, and lowered organizational commitment and productivity. The steep price for not tackling these challenges? Revenue. Let’s dive into the challenges surviving employees face and the role of volunteering in rebuilding team morale and improving organizational outcomes.
The "Survivor's" Challenges
- Survivor’s guilt
Retained employees often experience survivor’s guilt, which triggers anxiety, anger, and fear in the workplace. This can lead to reduced productivity and organizational commitment among employees.
- Increased workload and stress, lowered team morale
Retained employees are often expected to support and lead organizational efforts post-restructuring efforts, which could mean picking up work left behind by ex-colleagues and adjusting to new team dynamics. These changes can disrupt social networks and exacerbate employee burnout.
- Decreased levels of organizational commitment
According to research, employees report a 36% decline in organizational commitment and a 41% decline in job satisfaction post-layoffs. Moreover, employees experience higher levels of distrust in the organization’s commitment to their well-being.
In times of hybrid work, employees who are left behind need to be nurtured as they may be experiencing isolation, higher levels of stress, and disengagement from the organization’s mission. This can, if not managed, manifest as higher turnover rates within the organization and employees “quiet quitting.”
How can workplace volunteerism step in to fill the employee engagement gap?
Reinforcing your organization’s mission, vision, and goals holds the key to helping employees feel like they belong giving them a renewed purpose to overcome workplace challenges.
Employees who are satisfied with an organization’s efforts to create societal and environmental impact are more connected and loyal to their organizations. In this context, corporate volunteering programs can empower and engage employees while building better team culture.
Investing in purposeful employee engagement during these uncertain times can have multiple benefits:
- Foster innovation & creativity 🧠
Restructuring efforts often dim employees’ motivation and innovative energy. Team building activities with societal impact can foster cross-functional collaboration and stimulate innovative problem-solving.
- Improve employee retention 🤝
Layoffs often come coupled with increased turnover. Employees often feel burdened, disconnected, and fearful of being next in line. Engaging employees purposefully can show them the “why” of their work and re-emphasize the shared values with their organizations.
- Rebuild team culture and morale👐🏽
New or re-structured teams need leaders to invest in rebuilding connections and fostering organizational culture. Employee volunteering activities can fulfill the twin purpose of bringing the team together and embedding organizational values.
Reimagining volunteering programs to rebuild team morale and ignite employee purpose
CSR initiatives have been proven to positively affect employee well-being, and CSR and people teams are ideally positioned to improve organizational performance and employee engagement during these challenging times. However, employee engagement programs need to adapt to new employee needs and financial constraints.
Here are a few strategies to help impact teams better address employee engagement challenges while operating on lean budgets:
- Offering volunteering opportunities that align with employee beliefs
Opting for plug-and-play activities in cause areas like gender equity, sustainability, senior care, etc. that employees and teams feel connected to can enhance employee purpose in the workplace.
Goodera, for example, offers on-demand employee volunteering activities across 50+ cause areas to help organizations customize engagement for their diverse and global teams.
- Engaging hybrid workforces wherever they are to rebuild team morale
Restructuring efforts can be especially challenging for remote and hybrid teams. Offering a mix of virtual and in-person opportunities can help employees feel valued and motivated, whether they’re working from home or the office.
Goodera executes hosted, in-person, and virtual volunteering activities across time zones, simultaneously, so global teams can build team culture while advancing organizational purpose.
- Flexible volunteering to support employees
Employees tackling new responsibilities and uncertain work schedules do not have the time to commit to longer, larger projects and need organizations to offer flexible volunteering options that they can fit into their schedules.
At Goodera, we help organizations meet evolving employee needs by executing short 60- and 30-minute, hosted, managed volunteering activities that unlock true impact while ensuring employee flexibility.
- Unlocking hyper-local impact to improve community wellbeing
In our experience executing volunteering programs for 60 of the world’s Fortune 500 companies through the last two quarters, we’ve found volunteers connect more strongly with local opportunities that enable them to contribute to their neighborhoods and help out local nonprofits. Goodera works with a network of over 50,000 nonprofits globally to enable hyper-local impact for teams.
On-demand volunteering activities are a lean approach to traditional employee volunteering programs that focus on helping employees find purpose at their workplaces. It is critical for CSR and people teams to support and motivate retained employees through purposeful employee engagement to propel businesses toward purposeful growth and foster a positive culture.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the connection between employee volunteering and team morale after restructuring?
Employee volunteering rebuilds morale by giving teams a renewed sense of purpose after difficult transitions like layoffs or reorganizations. Shared service experiences reinforce the company mission, foster cross-functional bonds, and offer a positive impact narrative outside daily work. This matters because Gallup reported global employee engagement at just 32% in 2022, and restructuring typically deepens that gap.
2. How does volunteering help rebuild morale following layoffs?
Volunteering counters survivor's guilt and disengagement by channeling anxiety into meaningful action. Team-based service projects reconnect employees with the organization's mission, ease isolation, and rebuild trust among peers. Research shows job satisfaction drops by 41% after layoffs, and structured volunteering provides one of the few workplace levers that consistently improves purpose, belonging, and psychological safety during recovery.
3. Why does team morale decline so sharply after restructuring?
Restructuring triggers survivor's guilt, heavier workloads, and fear about future rounds of cuts. Organizational commitment typically drops by 36% post-layoff, and quiet quitting rises as employees emotionally disengage. Without deliberate intervention, this erosion becomes turnover, lower productivity, and lost institutional knowledge. Leaders who address morale early with tools like volunteering see faster stabilization across surviving teams.
4. What are the benefits of volunteering for employees who survived layoffs?
Volunteering restores a sense of purpose and connection to the company mission, both of which erode sharply after layoffs. Employees report reduced isolation, stronger peer relationships, and renewed pride in their employer. Skills-based projects also let survivors stretch professionally in low-stakes settings, which can rebuild confidence when internal mobility has stalled and workloads feel overwhelming.
5. What types of volunteering activities work best for rebuilding morale?
The most effective formats include team-based hands-on projects like kit-packing, skills-based pro bono engagements, virtual activities that include remote staff, family-friendly weekend events, and executive-visible service where leaders participate alongside employees. Blending formats over a six-month cadence keeps momentum, reaches different personas, and signals that rebuilding culture is a sustained priority rather than a one-off gesture.
6. How soon after a restructuring should companies launch a volunteering program?
Best-in-class programs launch within 60 to 90 days of a restructuring event, once immediate transition support is in place. Waiting longer risks disengagement hardening into turnover. A sustained six-month cadence works better than one large event because morale rebuilds through repeated shared experiences, not a single day of service that fades from memory within weeks.
7. How can organizations measure the impact of volunteering on team morale?
Track engagement survey scores, eNPS, voluntary attrition, and internal mobility before and after program launch. Pair quantitative data with participation rates, repeat-volunteer percentages, and qualitative pulse feedback. Comparing engagement among volunteers versus non-volunteers isolates the program's contribution. Over time, look for correlation between volunteering hours per employee and retention among post-restructuring cohorts.
8. What common mistakes derail post-restructuring volunteering initiatives?
The biggest pitfall is treating volunteering as crisis response rather than an ongoing engagement lever, which reads as performative to employees. Other mistakes include excluding remote staff, skipping executive participation, forcing attendance, and failing to tie activities to the company mission. Programs also stall when there is no clear owner, no budget, or no measurement plan beyond attendance counts.
9. Can virtual volunteering rebuild morale for remote and hybrid teams?
Yes. Virtual formats like online mentoring, skills-based micro-tasks for nonprofits, and remote team challenges reach distributed employees who often feel most isolated after restructuring. Well-designed sessions include facilitated icebreakers, clear impact outcomes, and small breakout groups so participants leave with new peer connections. Hybrid pairings that combine in-person hubs with virtual attendees keep programs inclusive across geographies.
10. How can Goodera help companies rebuild team morale through volunteering?
Goodera designs and runs turnkey volunteering programs across virtual, in-person, and hybrid formats in 90+ countries, backed by a vetted nonprofit network. Programs are built for post-restructuring realities: remote-inclusive, executive-visible, and measurable through engagement dashboards. Teams typically launch within weeks, sustain a six-month cadence, and receive reporting that ties volunteering participation to retention and engagement outcomes.
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