Bankwest on track to reach new 10,000-hour volunteering milestone
10/06/2024
Congratulations to Bankwest, the well-deserving winner of the 2024 Excellence in Corporate Volunteering Award.
Bankwest has been part of the fabric of Western Australia for almost 130 years and is more committed than ever to supporting the communities of its home state.
Its corporate volunteering program is a core element of the financial institution’s community investment strategy, which focuses on supporting those who face vulnerable circumstances, including Family and Domestic Violence and financial abuse.
Bankwest is committed to supporting volunteering within WA, and that begins with colleagues, providing two days of paid volunteering leave a year, and delivering a comprehensive volunteering intranet hub. Volunteering is embedded into the internal communications plan, which regularly celebrates colleagues’ volunteering efforts.
"Volunteering is a really important part of Bankwest’s People Value Proposition for two reasons: firstly, we feel we have a responsibility and are proud to give back to the communities in which we live and work; and, secondly, because we know it’s important to our colleagues.” said Heidi Madden, a representative from Bankwest.
Bankwest’s contribution to the community spans a range of initiatives and areas, with colleagues completing pro bono work with the Jawun Indigenous secondment program, mentoring disadvantaged students with the Australian Business and Community Network, donating blood to Red Cross Lifeblood, helping young people develop coding and digital literacy skills with CoderDojo, and annually giving up their weekends to volunteer at Telethon – an event the WA-based bank has supported since inception.
Bankwest colleagues donated their time, effort, and passion to more than 25 different charities and community organisations in 2023, including through official partners Anglicare WA and its Thread Together program, Foodbank WA, and Volunteering WA.
Bankwest last year wanted to explore opportunities to further extend its community impact, introducing a new initiative it named May By Us, celebrating National Volunteer Week for a whole month, and bolstering its existing efforts in support of the State Government’s 16 Days in WA campaign to end violence against women.
“Bankwest’s May By Us campaign has gone from strength-to-strength, which is so incredible to see, and the most pleasing aspect is the feedback we receive from colleagues, who really get behind it and value the opportunities to support their communities,” said Heidi.
Bankwest first introduced a program titled 16 Days of Volunteering to support the 2022 16 Days in WA campaign, aiming to deliver 16 team volunteering events over the 16 days of the campaign, which begins on 25 November each year.
The 16 Days of Volunteering program has Bankwest colleagues supporting charities that provide services for survivors of Family and Domestic Violence, with the 2023 edition resulting in double the number of colleagues participating from the pilot year, with 274 colleagues taking part in 23 volunteering events over 10 business days.
The May By Us initiative was introduced in alignment with Bankwest’s People Value Proposition to help recover the bank’s volunteering hours to the levels they were at prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted community involvement at a global level.
May By Us is now Bankwest’s flagship volunteering initiative, standing as a mega-month of opportunities for colleagues to give back to the WA community, and supported, endorsed, and – importantly – participated in by the bank’s senior leadership.
More than 40 volunteering events are made available to colleagues, with the 2023 pilot resulting in 600 colleagues participating in 42 events, tallying more than 3,400 hours of giving back to the community – an amount that would normally be accrued over a six-month period.
The two initiatives were critical in Bankwest achieving 9,000 volunteering hours for the year, for the first time since the global pandemic, with 92 per cent of participants indicating they would volunteer again in the next 12 months.
Bankwest’s commitment to supporting the WA community through volunteering is highly commendable, and this win is well-deserved.
With 5,000 hours already spent volunteering in the first half of 2024, we can’t wait to see them smash a new milestone of 10,000 volunteering hours by the end of this year.