management in the news

Submitted by Asha Stuttard

Firms which use volunteers to undertake work for them need to ensure they dedicate enough resources specifically to managing them, it has been suggested

"Managing volunteers is a specialist area – it is very different from managing paid staff - and volunteers are often the only reason that some services keep going," said Tina Thompson, director of Third Sector Management Solutions

She added that, due to this, organisations reliant on help from unpaid workers need to "have the resources to be able to provide the right sort of training for people managing volunteers"

This week, a report was released by the charity Skills - Third Sector which identified that almost a third of people in charge of volunteers at their workplace have received no training to help with their work

Ms Thompson said the key issue when working with unpaid staff was knowing how to deal with motivation

"There's something about managing absence and motivation that is specific to volunteers, where you haven't got the sanctions that you've got with paid members of staff and the person's doing it for whatever reasons people do voluntary work"

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on Thu, 02/09/2010 - 15:13