ESG is gaining traction in the corporate world and its relevance to communications is rising. At the same time, sustainability and communications professionals are looking at ways to engage their audiences with a compelling ESG narrative in the face of growing stakeholder expectations.

Our series ‘ESG and the Communications Imperative’ interviews leaders across a range of industries, exploring how ESG strategies are reshaping communications, and what companies can do to maximise the impact. In our first interview, Catherine Dannaoui, Associate Director at HandsOn Hong Kong, discusses the value of collaboration in coordinating community relief efforts and shares her advice on how sustainability and communications professionals can drive employee engagement.

1. Please tell us about HandsOn Hong Kong and your role?

As part of our mission to empower everyone in Hong Kong to volunteer, HandsOn Hong Kong develops service programmes in partnership with 100+ local, under-served non-profit organisations and connects them with the volunteer manpower they need to achieve their missions. Most recently, our programmes have focused entirely on bringing emergency relief and support to Hong Kong's most vulnerable communities.

I’m the Associate Director of HandsOn Hong Kong and also manage all our external communications driving volunteer engagement and recruitment. I oversee the running of our public service calendar, lead the organisation's family volunteering effort and have helped to educate and empower thousands of Hong Kong employees, students and families on the city's social needs and the power of volunteering to address them.

2. How does HandsOn Hong Kong partner with corporates to help them achieve CSR and community engagement activities?

HandsOn Hong Kong helps companies achieve their community engagement objectives by developing meaningful volunteer opportunities for their employees. From customised one-off activities for larger groups to ongoing programmes with longer-term impact, each programme is designed to meet the needs of one of our 100+ charity partners while also aligning with CSR and employee engagement goals. Our team fully conceptualises, plans and executes these programmes.

These teams support the community in various ways. They deliver relief Care Packages to low-income households, accompany children with disabilities on special outings, visit with isolated elderly, comb hiking trails to clear debris and much more. Recently many of these teams have been volunteering virtually—by equipping ethnic minority students with interview skills or telling stories for hospitalised children, among other programmes. You can see examples of our recent corporate volunteer programmes here.

The fees our corporate partners pay doesn’t just cover the costs of the programme but also supports the running of our year-round calendar—which provides up to 200 volunteer activities to the public each month as a free service.

3. What advice would you give to corporate sustainability and communications professionals?

There has been an outpouring of support from companies in response to local relief efforts. There has never been a better time to think about ways to empower teams to help the local community, while also supporting while also supporting the wellbeing of your employees. Volunteering has been shown to significantly benefit employees’ self-esteem and confidence. A study by HandsOn Hong Kong in collaboration with Nielsen showed that 83 percent of respondents who volunteered reported a positive impact on their mental health and well-being as a result of serving in the community—which is vitally important especially in the current situation.

When speaking to CSR and communications professionals about how to drive and promote employee engagement, we see the following three recommendations as being key:

Lead from the top: Ensure senior management are visibly and vocally supportive of volunteer efforts and are participating in programmes themselves. Employees often emulate the behaviour of their managers.
Grassroots empowerment: Give employees the opportunity to have a voice and a say in the types of service programmes the company takes up. Also, ensure a diverse variety of programmes so employees can find an activity that meets their interests and skills.
Communicate, communicate, communicate: With employees receiving such a deluge of information daily, it's easy to miss a notice about a volunteer activity. The companies we've seen have the greatest success developed a mini-campaign to promote their volunteer programs volunteer programmes and created buzz in advance. We are often invited to do 'lunch and learn' talks that provide employees with background information on a particular set of social needs, thus driving awareness and interest in the topic and this results in greater sign up rates and engagement.

4. How has HandsOn Hong Kong been impacted by the pandemic and how can the community support?

The challenges facing Hong Kong over the past year have affected all parts of society, particularly the community's most vulnerable groups and those that serve them. With the unrest of 2019 and now the current health crisis, our fundraising events and corporate programmes have all been cancelled or postponed, leaving our organisation without key funding sources. Yet, like so many other organisations, our work continues.

As a local charity, HandsOn Hong Kong has been doing all we can to support our network of 100+ non-profit partners and their service users. Since February our team has run over 800 COVID-19 relief programmes on our calendar. We have also enabled over 2,000 supportive volunteer phone calls to vulnerable elderly; directed tens of thousands of food and hygiene items to local charities and their service users; empowered volunteers to refurbish 500+ computers for low-income families; and now we are working towards delivering more than 4,000 relief packages to households in need. Thankfully, even in the midst of this crisis, our volunteers are poised to help and be part of the efforts to rebuild.

There are several ways the community can support our crisis relief efforts:

By volunteering from home or in-person at a HandsOn programme on our public service calendar.
By making a donation to support our COVID-19 crisis relief efforts and programmes. Every donation we receive—large or small—will help us build back up to running 200 volunteer programmes each month, which we manage for 100+ under-resourced Hong Kong charities at absolutely no cost to them or our volunteers.
By visiting the emergency needs published on our website which includes an overview of charities’ most urgent needs during these challenging times including food and hygiene items.

ESG and the Communications Imperative: interview with Catherine Dannaoui of HandsOn Hong Kong