ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 04 October 2018 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01884 Edited by: Nicola Mucci, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy Reviewed by: Vincenzo Cupelli, Retired, Florence, Italy Krystyna Golonka, Jagiellonian University, Poland *Correspondence: Eva Boštjan ˇ ci ˇ c Eva.bostjancic@ff.uni-lj.si Specialty section: This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 30 May 2018 Accepted: 14 September 2018 Published: 04 October 2018 Citation: Boštjan ˇ ci ˇ c E, Antolovi ´ c S and Er ˇ culj V (2018) Corporate Volunteering: Relationship to Job Resources and Work Engagement. Front. Psychol. 9:1884. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01884 Corporate Volunteering: Relationship to Job Resources and Work Engagement Eva Boštjan ˇ ci ˇ c 1 * , Sandra Antolovi ´ c 1 and Vanja Er ˇ culj 2 1 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2 Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia Employers are increasingly including volunteer activities in their social responsibility programs. At companies at which this is done in a planned manner, we can speak of the development of a corporate volunteering, which correlates with numerous positive psychological outcomes at both the individual and the organizational level. The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between the corporate volunteering programs and job characteristics, connected with work engagement. In our study we were interested in identifying the role of the corporate volunteering in the evaluation of job resources and work engagement. The study included 274 employees from 15 Slovenian companies, of whom 62% participate in their organizations’ volunteer activities. They filled out the Job demands and resources questionnaire, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-17) and a scale for measuring the corporate volunteering climate. The results indicate that the carrying out of volunteer activities correlates with the perception of the corporate volunteering climate. Employees whose employers implement volunteering programs are more engaged and report higher levels of both autonomy and support from their co-workers and supervisors. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Keywords: employee volunteering, corporate volunteering climate, job resources, work engagement, social responsibility INTRODUCTION Today, volunteers play an important role in addressing numerous social problems, from poverty and hunger to assisting victims of natural disasters, and political issues, such as migrants in recent times. Approximately 140 million people around the world engage in volunteering and thereby contribute 400 billion US dollars to the global economy annually (Wu, 2011). Volunteering is done in employees’ free time, but recently it has also been introduced at work, with some employers including volunteer activities as part of their social responsibility programs. After the end of the global economic crisis in 2015 (Kohont and Stanojevi´ c, 2017), the labor market has also changed considerably (Mucci et al., 2016) due to different social and economic changes (Giorgi et al., 2015). The economic capacity and consequent power Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 October 2018 | Volume 9 | Article 1884