Account manager Marloes Fellinger is enthusiastic and focuses on the impact. ‘In the coming year, we will all be switching on our out-of-office to do volunteer work for a day. All our colleagues, so around 400 worldwide. With a quick multiplication I arrive at 3,200 hours, and that every year from then on. So we can really make a tangible difference.’
You can suggest a good cause or project yourself. Work planner Stan van Dijck is already thinking about it. ‘We could roll our sleeves up as a team to help the less fortunate, for example at the Foodbank. Or perhaps organize a fun trip out for lonely elderly people. And as an animal lover I would think it would be awesome to help an animal pound.’
‘This initiative just goes to confirm for me that I have landed in a great place’, says project manager Tom Nohlmans, who only recently joined Gielissen. ‘Together with my team, we are going to think of a deserving cause that we can put our backs into. Making a volunteering day like this a team building event too.’
Twan Buelens and his colleagues in the workshop work as volunteers or for the cost of materials on projects more often. ‘For example, we gave the Ronald McDonald House in Veldhoven an awesome upgrade’, he says. ‘It would be terrific if we could put our skills to good use for this volunteer work. Then we would have true added value.’
CEO Andre Hoeben is happy to see everyone’s enthusiasm. He emphasizes that the day can be deployed flexibly. ‘If you work in the weekend, you get a day off in return. And should you just not have a space in your diary, you can donate your hours to a colleague, who can then have double impact.’
