Gaining Perspective: Leveraging Employee Volunteering to Improve Inclusive Behavior

Abstract

Research points to the importance of establishing inclusive workplaces. Yet, the same research also suggests that getting employees to buy in and engage in these sorts of inclusive behaviors can be a challenging endeavor. While the current literature offers some practical suggestions for garnering inclusion among employees, most recommendations center on programs and contexts with direct ties to inclusion (e.g., diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings), which at times have limited success. Our article diverges from this approach by considering the impact of employee volunteering—a practice without explicit inclusion-related objectives—on employees’ inclusive behaviors. Drawing on a set of theories about cognitive processing, we propose that employee volunteering presents an opportunity to foster inclusive behavior by enhancing perspective taking. We further suggest that these benefits are contingent upon an individual’s motivation for volunteering—in particular, that the perspective-taking potential of volunteering is best realized when employees volunteer for prosocial motives and not for self-protective motives. We find support for these predictions in a combination of a laboratory experiment, a quasi-field experiment, and a multisource field study. The results advance our understanding of the types of unconventional activities—such as employee volunteering and volunteer motives—that can be leveraged into more inclusive behavior among employees.