Impact on GSK

PULSE Volunteers return to the business brimming with ideas on new ways of working, better leadership skills, and fresh external approaches to business challenges. The insights and learnings of PULSE Volunteers also align closely with several of GSK’s strategic priorities:

Build Trust externally (with community) and internally (with GSK employees): PULSE gave Volunteers the opportunity to re-energize and connect with GSK’s mission as well as build trust and relationships with the Partners and the communities they served on their Assignments.

Leadership Development and Empowerment: PULSE Volunteers have come back to GSK with renewed confidence about their ability to lead, create, own and deliver for the business. Volunteers say that they have been better at influencing and leading people after they returned from their assignments.

Simplification: When immersed in a completely different, non-profit environment for three to six months, PULSE Volunteers came to appreciate the need for simplification. One volunteer said, “Simple plans with clear goals equaled quick success.”

Inspiration and creativity: PULSE gave Volunteers an opportunity to work ‘outside the box’ and be creative in the face of limited resources – a learning that they are keen to apply to the business challenges they now face in their jobs back at GSK.

Teamwork and Building Relationships: PULSE Volunteers returned as strong advocates of one-to-one conversations as opposed to relying on e-mails and technology to communicate with colleagues. They brought back the spirit of sharing, collaboration and camaraderie that they had witnessed in the NGO world to their GSK Home teams.

PULSE Volunteer Narissa Simon worked with the OGRA Foundation

PULSE Volunteer Narissa Simon worked with the OGRA Foundation in Kenya