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Managing and retaining volunteers - advise for VCSE organisations

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Recruiting and retaining volunteers is a key issue that many VCSE organisations highlight to us.

Volunteer policy

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;

  • demonstrate your organisation's commitment to its volunteer programme
  • ensure consistency and that all volunteers are treated equally and fairly
  • let them know where they can turn to if they feel that things are going wrong.
  • help paid staff, senior management and trustees fully understand why volunteers are involved, and what their roles are.

Supporting volunteers

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.

Keeping volunteers

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.

Treating volunteers as employees

There can be a risk of inadvertently creating an employment contract with volunteers.

  • Set out the terms of the relationship based on reasonable expectations rather than obligations.  
  • Understand that volunteers are free to come and go as they wish, and that there are no obligations placed upon them.

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.

Reducing risk

  • expenses should be a genuine reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses and not a regular payment
  • training should be directly linked to the role that the person is carrying out,
  • the volunteer relationship should be phrased as expectation rather than obligation
  • avoid employment language  – volunteer agreement rather than contract, role rather than job description.

Safeguarding

Managers and trustees should consider what level of safeguarding is appropriate to the activities their volunteers are involved in, paying particular attention to:

  • recruitment
  • training 
  • supervision
  • DBS checks

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.