Recruiting and retaining volunteers is a key issue that many VCSE organisations highlight to us.
A written volunteer policy helps define the role of your volunteers, and how they can expect to be treated. It should explain recruitment, equality and diversity, training, supervision, support and health and safety procedures and will;
It’s important to really get to know your volunteers and invite feedback to be able assess their satisfaction with their roles. This can help you revise roles if needed, and provide opportunities to keep volunteers involved and motivated. See the Institute for Volunteering Research’s toolkit by clicking here.
Volunteers Week (1st-12th June 2016) is the UK's annual celebration of the work volunteers do and an opportunity for individual organisations to say thank you, find out more about what other organisations are doing by clicking here. Giving volunteers more responsibility can be very rewarding for all involved.
How do you keep volunteers enthusiastic? How can you make them feel part of your organisation? What are might cause volunteer relationships to go wrong? Investing in Volunteers is the UK quality standard for good practice in volunteer management.
Informally, telling volunteers they are doing a great job, and asking their opinions on internal developments, and feeling part of the organisation is important. Formally, volunteer events, such as awards ceremonies and helping volunteers gain accreditation, contribute towards their well-being.
Where good support and supervision procedures are in place, problems can be solved without prolonging the difficulty. For example, a volunteer may bring a complaint about a member of staff, or vice-versa, or a client may complain about a volunteer. Volunteers need to feel complaints are handled with sensitivity, that they receive a fair hearing and that the complaints/grievance procedure of the organisation will be rigorously followed.
There can be a risk of inadvertently creating an employment contract with volunteers.
Volunteers don’t have the same employment rights as paid staff, but they must be treated fairly and consistently. An organisation can find itself in difficulty if, for example, a volunteer makes a complaint and feels it wasn’t addressed properly. They may try to claim employee status in order to get the complaint resolved. This can be a complex issue and legal advice may be needed.
Managers and trustees should consider what level of safeguarding is appropriate to the activities their volunteers are involved in, paying particular attention to:
Safeguarding should be proportionate to the role and level of risk and never a blanket approach.
So…..to sum up, listen to your volunteers, define their roles, take time to find out about individuals’ skills and strengths to make them feel valued - but also to access untapped skills and experience that can benefit the organisation. Click here for more helpful advice from NCVO.
Click here for the latest volunteering opportunities across the county.