Engaging More Employees in Local Communities from 17th IAVE World Conference

Presentations made at Workshop 1 at the 17th IAVE Conference on "Engaging More Employees in Local Communities" by Annabel Gaywood The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, UK

This workshop has the following objectives:
- to share good practice about the value of employee engagement and corporate  volunteering
- to define employee engagement and how corporate volunteering fits within the wider issues of employee engagement
- to define how employee engagement can contribute to communities in a real way
- to define the respective role businesses and brokers can play.

Representatives from IAVE and ENGAGE will jointly run the workshop and representatives from Asian companies will share examples of how they have become involved in communities and explore the benefits to their companies, employees and communities. This will take the form of an interactive workshop with presentation about the value of employee engagement followed by panel discussion by companies and break-out discussions in participant groups. There will be a
presentation about the value of employee engagement, a panel discussion with case study examples by Asian companies and community organisation and break-out group discussions. The presentation about the value of employee engagement
by ENGAGE and IAVE will promote the importance of employee engagement globally, the need to encourage more employees to get involved in their local communities and the role brokers can play between businesses and communities.
The panel discussions will profile different models of employee engagement by corporations and brokers with examples of good practice by Asian Companies and community organizations working in this field. The break-out group discussions will then follow regarding the following topics:

1. Community need: This session will explore questions such as what participants believe are the greatest community needs in their country, eg. education, disability, HIV Aids, poverty. Other questions will include what role participants
think business can play in responding to this need, how need is determined, what examples they are aware of where companies have become engaged in their local communities and the success if this interaction.

2. The Business Perspective: This session will explore questions such as the challenges businesses face in operating in their countries, how employee engagement might support their business functions and the benefits to business.

3. The role of the broker between businesses and communities: IAVE participants in brokering between businesses and community organizations. The session will be jointly run by representatives from ENGAGE, a programme of The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, (IBLF) and IAVE. Annabel Gaywood is the Project Manager for the ENGAGE, an international campaign to promote employee engagement. The IBLF has twelve years experience in brokering capacity building and partnership building workshops internationally. The ENGAGE campaign draws on the best practice of international companies and different models from around the world and aims to increase company supported employee engagement worldwide, particularly in areas of greatest need.

Annabel Gaywood is Project Manager for the ENGAGE Campaign which aims to promote more company supported engagement in communities worldwide. Annabel previously coordinated the International Hotels Environment Initiative, IHEI, and has worked in government both in the UK and European Union, democratisation projects in Eastern Europe and an education project in the Middle East.