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|---Module:text|Size:Small---| In an interview with Human Resources Portugal, Verónica Nabeiro, DEI lead at Celfocus, shares how the organisation is creating a more structured approach to corporate volunteering, enabling employees to contribute their time, skills and expertise to meaningful social initiatives.
Here’s the full interview transcription:
As organisations strengthen their commitment to more structured social responsibility practices, corporate volunteering has been taking on a growing role in employee experience, organisational culture and community impact strategies. Far from being limited to one-off initiatives or awareness-raising actions, the trend is moving towards more integrated models, with defined goals, monitoring metrics and a direct connection to corporate purpose.
It is in this context that Celfocus’ Volunteering Hub emerges. The platform was created to centralise and facilitate employees’ access to volunteering opportunities and forms part of the organisation’s diversity, equity, inclusion and social responsibility strategy. According to Verónica, the initiative was born from a simple observation: employees already wanted to contribute to causes with impact, but there was a need for a structure that could turn that scattered willingness into more consistent participation.
She explains that the project emerged “from the desire to transform a predisposition that was already very present among our people, to contribute to causes with impact, into a more accessible, structured and continuous experience within the organisation”. There was “a strong alignment with themes of social responsibility, inclusion and community impact”, but there was still a need to create a mechanism that would make it easier to connect intention with concrete opportunity. The objective was precisely that: “to move from intention to action and integrate volunteering more consistently into the employee experience”.
The ambition behind this positioning is not merely conceptual. The company has set an annual target of 650 volunteering hours for 2026, signalling its intention to structure this dimension in a measurable and continuous way.
More than an isolated project, the Volunteering Hub is part of a broader architecture of internal initiatives. The platform is integrated into Acting with a Purpose, the company’s community dedicated to diversity, equity, inclusion and social responsibility. The aim is not to create isolated actions, but to consolidate a deeper and more sustained logic of participation.
In this sense, she states that the organisation’s ambition is to “build a culture of active participation and collective impact”. In the medium and long term, this means strengthening a more engaged internal community, increasing the number of initiatives and partners, and deepening the positive social impact generated by employees. At the same time, this strategy is also presented as a component of the employee experience, seeking to create a more meaningful professional experience connected to purpose.
In practice, the platform works as a central access point for volunteering opportunities developed in partnership with different organisations. Through this space, employees can consult available initiatives, sign up and follow ongoing activities.
The areas of action are diverse. The opportunities identified include support for vulnerable communities, the integration of migrants and refugees, food collection and distribution, as well as initiatives related to education, inclusion, empowerment and knowledge sharing.
However, the company’s proposal is not limited to making predefined opportunities available. One of the aspects highlighted by Verónica is the intention to turn the Hub into a participatory space, where employees’ own interests and motivations can gain scale and be translated into collective initiatives.
Organisation wants the platform to be “a living and participatory space, where people’s interests and motivations can gain scale and become collective initiatives with greater impact”. Some actions already planned have emerged precisely from this internal dynamic, including initiatives to be developed with Banco Alimentar and Associação Plantar uma Árvore.
This participatory logic is also reflected in the way the company seeks to align initiatives with employees’ interests and skills. There has been a deliberate effort to actively listen to teams, in order to understand which causes generate greater identification and which participation formats are best suited to different profiles.
This listening process is accompanied by an effort to create opportunities with different levels of involvement, recognising that employees’ contributions are not limited to the time they make available. The company also seeks to value professional skills, accumulated experience and technical knowledge as instruments of social impact.
One of the examples highlighted relates to investment in education and empowerment initiatives for girls in STEM areas. In this case, participation can take the form of mentoring, knowledge sharing and inspiring new generations, enabling a more direct connection between professional skills and social intervention.
According to the company, the choice of partner organisations follows criteria aligned with its social impact strategy. Inclusion, equal opportunities, education and community development are among the priorities considered. There is also a concern with the credibility and sustainability of the initiatives. The company prioritises organisations with recognised work on the ground and opportunities that provide meaningful involvement for employees.
The role of internal leadership is identified as decisive for the success of this type of initiative. The company believes that employee engagement and the consolidation of an impact-oriented culture also depend on how these topics are embraced at management level. More than institutional support, this is about reinforcing the perception that social responsibility and business activity do not belong to separate spheres. “When leaders support this type of initiative, they reinforce the idea that social responsibility and business are not separate dimensions, but complementary ones,” she says.
This commitment is also framed by other internal structures, such as the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which is responsible for monitoring these matters within the organisation. The company also highlights the external recognition received with the APPDI Diversity Seal in 2025.
In terms of uptake, the assessment is positive. Since the launch, the organisation says it has identified growing interest not only in participating in specific initiatives, but also in finding more active forms of involvement. This movement demonstrates a genuine willingness to be part of a more conscious, participatory and purpose-driven culture.
Measuring impact is another central dimension of the model presented. The company says it monitors quantitative indicators, such as the number of participants, volunteering hours and initiatives carried out. However, it advocates a broader interpretation of impact, incorporating qualitative dimensions.
In this sense, feedback from employees and partners plays an important role in the assessment. As Verónica Nabeiro notes, “true impact is measured not only by numbers, but also by the experiences, relationships and transformation generated in communities and within the teams themselves”.
This perspective suggests a hybrid approach, in which formal measurement coexists with the recognition of effects that are less easily quantifiable, but considered relevant to the internal experience and to the social effectiveness of the initiatives.
Internal impact is, in fact, one of the most emphasised dimensions. The company associates this type of programme with strengthening a sense of belonging, purpose and connection between people, arguing that it creates opportunities for collaboration outside the usual work context.
In the organisation’s view, this helps reinforce values such as empathy, inclusion and collective responsibility, while giving employees the possibility to generate impact beyond their formal roles. The strategy is now evolving towards a more direct integration of these initiatives into the organisation’s internal moments. The company is taking new steps towards incorporating volunteering actions into teams’ annual events.
The intention is to create experiences that simultaneously reinforce internal cohesion and external impact. These initiatives may promote “experiences that simultaneously strengthen team spirit, collective purpose and positive impact in communities”. However, the implementation of the Volunteering Hub also brought operational and strategic challenges. One of the main challenges was finding a model capable of responding to the diversity of profiles within the organisation.
Availability, different interests and different forms of involvement made the need for flexibility clear. Throughout the process, the company identified the importance of simplifying participation mechanisms and ensuring clear communication. Another learning highlighted was the importance of emotional alignment with the causes being promoted. According to the organisation, involvement tends to grow when employees recognise themselves in the purpose of the initiatives and feel that their contribution has real relevance.
This conclusion helped consolidate a more participatory approach. Today, all employees have the possibility to suggest initiatives and contribute to making them happen with the support of Acting with a Purpose, making the process more collaborative. The project was designed with a logic of continuous evolution. Next steps include expanding the network of partners, diversifying opportunities and exploring new types of volunteering. Knowledge sharing, mentoring and empowerment are areas with growth potential, precisely because they allow employees’ professional skills to be used more directly.
In parallel, the company intends to progressively expand these initiatives to the different geographies in which it operates, with the aim of consolidating a more cross-cutting and global culture of impact. At a broader level, Verónica Nabeiro believes that the technology sector now has a particular responsibility in promoting more structured models of social responsibility.
This is due to the innovation capacity, influence and ability to mobilise resources that characterise these organisations. The sector can play an important role not only by developing solutions for concrete social challenges, but also by activating people, knowledge and communities. “More than seeing social responsibility as a dimension that runs in parallel to the business, we believe it should be integrated into the culture and into the way organisations grow, lead and create value.”
This vision involves promoting more equitable opportunities, investing in education and empowerment, fostering inclusive environments and creating spaces where different perspectives can coexist and contribute to innovation.
In a context where the relationship between purpose, employee experience and social impact is becoming increasingly relevant on corporate agendas, models such as this illustrate the attempt to formalise corporate volunteering as an integral part of organisational culture, rather than as a parallel or occasional activity.
