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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Comments
Volunteering is a fantastic way to gain new skills; meet new people and give something back to the community but organisations should ensure they are well-prepared before offering to taken on volunteers.
Research in this area suggests negative experiences will prevent people returning to give of their time and effort in the future and, in the particular climate, we need goodwill more than ever.
Volunteer Development Scotland are Scotland's "centre for excellence" in volunteering and volunteer "management" and offer recognised qualifications in "management of volunteers" as well as the Investors in Volunteers award (IiV).
If this is an area of particular interest to the CMI community, I'd be delighted to approach the Chief Executive at VDS to gain greater insight and information which could be shared on this forum.
It's certainly particularly topical with the coalition Government's agenda for a "Big Society".
My own personal view is that you need to understand what motivates the individual "volunteer" in the same way a good manager understands the individual motivations of their staff. If I'm volunteering to gain new skills and am being asked to undertake "menial" tasks which provide no opportunity for personal development, I may not be motivated to return and continue volunteering, similarly if I'm being asked to do something I have no ability to do and am not receiving appropriate training in.
A few months back, I heard the term "professionalising volunteering" - I like that because it recognises that there are "professional" volunteers and that this is an activity that ploughs considerable financial benefits back into the UK economy.
Stands to reason. I dare say there is much we can learn in the for profit sector about managing people where pay and financial motivations aren't available.