This post is written by Jonathan Mok, Eco-System Builder (Research and Insights) at Dream Impact, the community of socially-minded entrepreneurs in Hong Kong.

  • The problem: There is a lack of civil servant involvement in volunteering.

  • Why it matters: That can slow down civil servants’ professional development, eventually affecting the quality of public services delivered.

  • The solution: Government can encourage civil servants to volunteer through leaders setting examples, provide clear guidelines for civil servants to avoid conflicts of interest and give public recognition for civil servants with outstanding volunteer contributions.

Volunteering is not new in our society. Lawyers provide pro-bono services to non-governmental organisations; corporates offer staff members time off for volunteer work and even the government encourages current and former staff members to commit to volunteering. For example, in the middle of the first Covid-19 wave (March 2020), the Hong Kong police force formed a 200-member volunteer team to assist in the border and quarantine camp management.

Volunteering offers our society benefits - professional expertise sharing and manpower force to manage severe social and public health crises such as Covid-19. Volunteering benefits civil servants. When I worked for the Education Bureau of Hong Kong (EDB), I volunteered for Fair Trade Hong Kong (FTHK) Foundation as its Education Committee Advisor. I strengthened my strategic thinking and mentoring capabilities through educational material review and working with full-time staff members. Being the advisor helped me to gain a broad understanding of the then education curriculum, especially its lack of opportunities for students and educators to explore sustainability careers.

While I wish more could be done to introduce the students and educators to sustainability careers before I departed from the EDB, I was grateful for the opportunity to develop strategic thinking and mentoring capabilities. Both of these prove to be useful for my current roles as a board director and treasurer of the Foundation.

The case for volunteering

I am not the only former civil servant finding personal and professional benefits through volunteering. Jon Franklin, a former civil servant of the United Kingdom Government’s Government Economic Service, found volunteering rewarding because of opportunities to work with organisations to address some of the challenging social issues. However, according to the U.K.’s Law Family Commission on Civil Society, around half of the civil servants have active engagements with charities. There can be lots of factors behind a low level of civil servant involvement in volunteering. In my case, work colleagues advised me to resign from the FTHK. The colleagues thought that FTHK would take too much time and energy away from work. In reality, the major voluntary involvement with the FTHK Education Committee was a three-hour-long quarterly meeting. Even now, the FTHK board meeting is held once every two months.

The government can take action to encourage civil servants to volunteer. First, senior leaders set examples for their staff members and the community they serve. For example, if the senior leaders wish our young people to aim high and set clear plans, the senior leaders can set aside time to hold workshops for the young people. These workshops offer young people opportunities to explore the skills and knowledge needed for different government positions. These workshops help the senior leaders to explore young people’s attitudes towards civil servants, thus developing better engagement plans for the young people to be interested in joining the government.

Why workshops work

Such workshops can be extraordinarily impactful for young people from ethnic minorities, low socioeconomic, and disability backgrounds, especially when mentors come from similar backgrounds. In fact, with 18% of senior civil servants coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, their involvement in supporting young people is more needed than ever - showing that talents and commitment to public services, rather than one’s upbringing, should matter more in civil services.

Second, policy matters. While governments incentivise civil servants to volunteer with annual volunteering leave, different work arrangements can play a role in facilitating the civil servants to volunteer. For instance, the United States Office of Personnel Management publishes guidelines on volunteering for civilian civil servants. These guidelines can provide government departments with directions on how to encourage their staff members to volunteer through flexible work timetables and public recognition.

Critics may doubt if the government should encourage civil servants to volunteer, especially when civil servant volunteering can cause a conflict of interest and share confidential information. These people think that civil servants should not volunteer in any way. However, if the civil servants’ main responsibility is to deliver excellent services to the general public, the government should encourage the civil servants to volunteer their time and knowledge for the community. Volunteering can help civil servants to understand the challenges facing different sectors.

A case study

For example, government’s information technology (IT) professionals volunteer time over the weekend to teach coding classes to students from low-income neighbourhoods. The students can learn the coding basics and even skills and attributes needed for becoming competent IT professionals. The government’s IT professionals can learn about the struggles facing students in developing coding skills and obtaining career and life planning advice for making informed further study decisions, thus exploring how to support the students comprehensively. The experience of working with the students can help the government’s IT professionals to strengthen mentoring capacities with future interns. In other words, civil servants can volunteer in areas outside their domain expertise and still benefit from widening their horizons and soft skill developments.

With clear guidelines and recognition for civil servants with an outstanding voluntary contribution, the government can help civil servants to reap volunteering benefits - a comprehensive understanding of the government policies on different sectors and improvements in leadership, communication, decision-making, and change delivery capacities. These benefits will facilitate the civil servants’ personal and professional growth, supporting the government to provide high-quality services to the general public.

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