SThree’s purpose is to bring skilled people together to build the future. Bringing people together in person may not be possible during COVID-19 however we know that coming together to help during this pandemic is crucial.
At SThree each colleague has 2 days of paid volunteering leave every year however COVID-19 means our local communities need help now more than ever before. To help during this time we have extended our paid volunteering leave to 5 days, empowering our people to help strengthen their local community.
While the word volunteering has a connotation of people coming together, there’s a variety of “virtual volunteering” activities that you can participate in from the comfort of your own home. Below, we introduce our latest engagement in virtual volunteering, as well as sharing some insights for other virtual volunteering.
CV Workshop - SThree Dusseldorf
Joblinge is an organisation whose purpose is to better prepare disadvantaged young people in Germany for the job market. Our German team has built a strong partnership with Joblinge by providing over 450 hours of CV, interview, and job searching related advice to refugees and young people. The SThree Foundation has also provided funding for informatics and mechanics workshops to help young people and refugees develop their STEM skills.
As a part of our partnership, CV workshops were booked in for March and April. However, we weren’t able to deliver these in person. Our Dusseldorf team took their workshop online to support 12 people to develop their employability skills. We are now kicking off one-to-one virtual mentoring sessions for these individuals.
Mira Bachtenkirch, Principal Contract Management Consultant in Dusseldorf, shares her thoughts on the importance of social responsibility in the current situation as follows:
“Nearly everything is affected by the COVID-19 outbreak – in particular the job market. As specialists in this field, we have the social responsibility to share the knowledge we gain in our daily business with the next generation who are now facing even more difficulties in the job market.”
Hosting workshops to share expertise is a great way to help people, especially as these can be delivered virtually. Mira continues as “During times like these, it is more important than ever to live up to our social responsibilities and I am proud to have volunteered to share my skills at a virtual interview workshop with Joblinge.”
Continuing to support your existing partners during COVID-19 is incredibly important. At SThree we have both local and global partners who we remain committed to. The demand for their services is increasing daily however they are struggling to meet this demand. As a business, we can offer our people, skills, and technology to help our partners scale to meet this need.
Many SThree offices around the globe are planning to host virtual workshops or meet-ups to share our skills and add value to our partners.
What else we do
Thanks to technology, we can offer help to others even whilst socially distancing. Here are several more examples of volunteering SThree colleagues are getting involved in:
- Our colleagues in the UK and other parts of the world are joining government introduced initiatives including Good Sam, Ready Scotland and Reserve Civique. This allows people to come together and have a shared impact specific to the needs of local people.
- Accessing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is another challenge facing many communities across the world. Our colleagues in NYC are helping their local hospital by making PPE at home, following hospital supplied instructions.
- Like so many people across the world, SThree colleagues are missing getting together. Supporting global humanitarian charities, we are organising mapathons. Our people are coming together online to use technology to build maps of vulnerable, remote communities to ensure humanitarian organisations can provide support whenever needed.
- Our colleagues are accessing numerous virtual volunteering platforms from LibriVox and Missing Maps to Nextdoor to help from home as well as volunteering to help local food banks and care homes with delivery driving, tasks they can do at home and telephone befriending.
Staying connected with your local community through volunteering activities is also a very important way to realise you are not alone. Our priority is keeping people safe both physically and mentally throughout this unprecedented situation while continuing to live by our purpose of bringing skilled people together to build the future. If you are interested in SThree’s initiatives, feel free to reach out here.