Every business owner and manager has encountered it at least once in his or her career, probably more like several times a year. An employee requests time off to volunteer in the community. The company may even have a policy allowing, if not encouraging such a practice.

Meanwhile, the project end looms. The reporting deadlines approach. The quarter is ending. The customer gets more impatient. Not a great time to be down heads and hands, is it? If you are like many managers and business owners, wouldn't you rather dump the whole idea, rather than release your people for a "feel-good" day off?

Think again. Studies and the experiences of a number of successful companies are showing that the AWOL employee may actually be adding value to the company in the areas of recruitment and retention, morale, and skill building. Unless you have a community affairs department helping you with this kind of strategic thinking, you may be missing the boat on some hidden benefits of employee volunteering.

New Generations, New Expectations
The fastest way to an employee's heart is no longer through the wallet. That honor is fast coming to belong to, well... the heart.

Studies are showing that a striking number of potential hires are filtering their decision to accept a position through the lens of a company's community involvement reputation. One study by Cone Research pegged that number at 87% -- that is, nearly nine out of every ten applicants will decide whether or not to work for your company based on whether and how you are involved in the community. They'll even leave if they have to.

This is becoming even more the case with younger workers. Starting with Gen X, employees from each successive generation expect volunteering to be more and more a part of organizational life. The reason: in the late seventies and early eighties, the institutions in young people's lives started pushing youth and school-based volunteering.

Today, students have service learning courses, service hour graduation requirements, service clubs, days of service, and a host of other opportunities to give back. Whether it is because students are rewarded with grades, admission to college, a scholarship, or the feeling they got when done with a project, younger workers have made volunteering -- and expect volunteering to be -- a part of their lives.

The lesson for business owners and managers who supervise workers 40 and under is: be prepared for this challenge from them -- "give me service opportunities, or I'll go somewhere where they do".

The Pause that Refreshes
Aside from the pressure to respond to worker expectations, there are even stronger reasons to go with this trend. There are a number of potential benefits of freely providing volunteer service opportunities, starting with morale.

Business owners and managers often view morale as a soft and squishy area, but it is an important factor in the success of organizations. Employees with high morale are more productive, call in sick less often, and are more committed to their companies. Research by the likes of Sears, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the UK's Institute of Employment Studies, and Hewitt Associates demonstrate the tangible benefits, with bottom-line implications, of improving employee morale.

Volunteerism fits into the morale puzzle with what I call the "halo effect". Employees feel good about their company doing good. They take pride in being associated with a good corporate citizen and are more willing to sacrifice for it. No one wants to take one for the team when the company behaves like a scoundrel, but a company that demonstrates that it cares about more than profits builds a tremendous amount of good will capital that can be tapped for productivity gains.

One study commissioned by the Council on Foundations found that employees who perceive their companies as high on the community involvement scale are four-times more likely to remain committed to the organization than those who are low on the scale. If the cost of replacing a worker is roughly equivalent to that person's annual salary, more if that person is a manager, it puts the community investment tally into perspective quickly.

The effect is further enhanced when employees are actively engaged in "doing good" through volunteerism. A sense of pride actually becomes more of a sense of ownership. In the role of ambassadors, they feel like owners, even more so when their values are reflected back to them in the form of policies that support and encourage volunteering. And, an owner mentality is tops when it comes to worker attitudes.

The lesson for managers is that employees who leave to volunteer return refreshed, re-energized, and recommitted to the company and its work. That is fruit better picked than left to fall and rot on the ground.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water
In study after study, one of the most cited reasons why companies value employee volunteering is the perceived benefit it has to developing employee skills. The thinking goes like this: because volunteering requires you to use certain skills, it must be good to practice them outside of work on a volunteer project.

Yeah, maybe... kind of... In my experience, it is sheer luck if anything of real value happens, and it is one area that could benefit from some additional thought and process for making a real linkage.

Team building is a classic example. Volunteer projects require teamwork. If, the thinking goes, we send a team on a volunteer project and they work together to get it done they will possess better team skills. If they come back with higher energy, they will have developed team spirit. Volunteering is good for team building.

That's a little like the proverbial horse being led to water. In the absence of someone either setting a standard for better teamwork or helping the team identify and problem solve around what worked and what didn't during their time together, the benefit of the experience will have the nutritional value and staying power of white bread.

In order for learning that really matters to result from volunteering, you have to make a direct and intentional link between skill development and the experience of volunteering. That requires having clear learning objectives, conveying new knowledge and skills through some form of training or facilitated reflection and dialogue, and utilizing the service experience relentlessly toward the end of refining employee performance abilities. That won't happen by chance. It takes some planning, structure, and leadership.

Here's how I've seen it work. I had a client who was forming a new project team. It was critical to start it off on the right foot, and she wanted to have a volunteer project to cement the bonds among the team members -- but they didn't think they had the time. We helped them do both simultaneously and for better results.

We started by teaching the team about behavioral styles and how they impact individual and team relationships. We then used the volunteer experience as a learning laboratory to observe behavioral styles in action and discuss the opportunities and pitfalls confronting the team in light of its mix of styles. We then tapped into the feelings inspired by spending an afternoon serving adults with Alzheimer's to spark a deep discussion about values and purpose -- a launching pad for bringing the team together around a shared mission and vision.

In this instance, the volunteering became so much more than a fun afternoon (it was that, too). With the right formula, it provided the added bonus of helping a new team quickly move through the early stages of development into performance mode on a shortened timetable and with an added zeal that came from the service aspect of the experience.

The lesson for business owners and managers: be proactive to tap into the learning that is potentially in every volunteer experience. Make it pay for your company; otherwise, it is just a missed opportunity.

Embrace the Change
Rather than view volunteering as an intrusion on other, more productive activities, view it as a strategic resource -- something you can leverage to address your people-related challenges. If you are looking to create a great place to work for existing and potential employees, make volunteering a part of your culture. If you have workers who are grinding down, reinvigorate them with a service outing. If you have a team in trouble, jump-start them through a service project.

With a little effort of forethought and some structure, you can get even greater mileage out of something that already has intrinsic value. The payoffs will leave you wondering why you hadn