OREANDA-NEWS. Most of the time, a year is made up of 365 days. But (nearly) every four years we get an extra day added to the calendar.

This leap day is a vital extra day to keep our calendars in working order. If every year was kept at a fixed 365 days, the months would gradually shift with the sun until in 750 years’ time, June, in the northern hemisphere, would fall in the middle of winter.

To keep a wintery summer at bay we also skip this rule and drop a leap year every 100 years and then, every 400 years, we skip the skipping rule and have the extra day again. And then, to really make sure that June stays in June, we have leap seconds at the end of June or December, and their occurrence is determined by the deviation of the calendar by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.

In short, a lot of complicated mathematical work means today we have an extra day to do something a bit different, so SSE is encouraging its employees to volunteer with their extra day.

Our employee volunteering programme supports each of our 20,000 employees to Be the difference for a community project of their choice by taking a day away from their usual job and give a helping hand.

As a large utility company our skills base is wide and we are able to offer support from across our business. Through volunteering, our employees, individually or in teams work on projects ranging from DIY, gardening, administrative tasks as well as supporting third sector organisations to deliver school talks or provide IT support.

SSE is proud to support charities, organisations and schools, giving our time and skills to help our local communities. If you are not-for-profit organisation or group and could use SSE volunteers for a specific project that can be completed in a day or so contact us to see how we can Be the difference.