Bank employees are paid for volunteer work for Ukraine

Chief Consultant Ervin Szerdocz from Danske Bank previously took a trip to his birthplace in Romania close to the Ukrainian border to help refugees. He has been able to do so with the support of his workplace, because the bank has expanded an already existing opportunity to perform relief work with pay.

Ervin Szerdocz deeply thanks his workplace for the opportunity on social media. He says that on the trip, he got in touch with a local aid organisation, filled a car and drove food and water to two reception centres for refugees.

And he is not the only one who is happy about the opportunity to help during working hours, says Ea Wederwang, Head of Corporate Volunteering at Danske Bank:

“What I’m hearing the most right now is ‘Thank you very much!’” The employees in Lithuania in particular, who are close to the war, are very grateful for the opportunity to do paid volunteer work for three days”.

Major interest

She is very busy these days. The war in Ukraine has prompted the bank’s management to respond to the demand from the employees and expand the existing opportunity to perform paid volunteer work - from one day a year to three days.

This has led many employees to sign up who want to use the days for various activities in support of the Ukrainians.

“The opportunity is particularly appreciated by employees in Lithuania and Poland. They have the opportunity to quickly get out physically and help, including by packing and distributing clothes and food”, says Ea Wederwang, who is constantly getting new requests to approve volunteer work in support of Ukraine.

“There is a strong desire from the employees to help, and the management has responded to it very quickly.”

Supportive colleagues

Danish employees are also showing major interest in helping, but right now, the aid organisations are asking volunteers to sign up and wait for further instructions. Therefore, a lot of people are still waiting to use the volunteer days. Others have found ways to use them, for example, one employee has used the days to prepare their summer house for refugees, while other employees have spent the time contributing to a website for Ukrainian refugees while they are in the country.

Since 2019, Danske Bank has offered employees the opportunity to do paid volunteer work one day a year with the initiative Time2Give. For the time being, the expansion to three days applies for the rest of the year.

Ervin Szerdocz also raised DKK 9,000 in donations for relief work when he wrote about his visit to the border on LinkedIn – to his delight, almost DKK 5,000 came from his colleagues at Danske Bank.