In most cases, the person responsible
for volunteer involvement finds and prepares volunteers, but then day-to-day
supervision and teamwork occur at the front line between volunteers and the
paid staff in each department and unit. So a key role of volunteer management
is serving as an intermediary. Depending on the situation, this role can be
consultant, educator, liaison, advocate, advisor, arbiter, or cheerleader.
Certainly implies a lot of different
skills, doesn't it?
Part of the challenge is balancing the
needs and perspectives of a range of stakeholders.
Volunteers
Volunteers are obviously the
stakeholders who come to mind first - although it doesn't hurt to keep
reminding your colleagues that volunteers are not "yours"; they are everyone's responsibility.
And if anything, you are their
liaison.
The volunteer office is the point of
entry into the organization for all volunteers. We're the people they usually
meet first and they form their opinions and expectations of volunteering from
us. We "enroll" them and - just as a human resources department does
for employees - we interview and orient them, keep their records, track their
progress, and more. If any disagreement occurs between volunteers and the employees
to whom they are assigned, the volunteer office is the most logical third party
to involve in the resolution of the problem.
We have an obligation to any volunteer
to be an advocate, willing to challenge paid staff if that volunteer is not
treated well. We start this advocacy when we advise on creating volunteer
assignments that are truly meaningful. But we also have the obligation to give
a volunteer honest feedback if that person is contributing to a conflict. We
are also the ones who should monitor that all volunteers are growing and
thriving in their roles, when they deserve recognition, and when they might
need or want to move into another type of assignment.
We must also give volunteers the chance
to speak for themselves. Forming a genuine advisory council or steering
committee of representative volunteers shares ownership and creates allies in
talking to all the other stakeholders in the organization.
Paid Staff Who
Work with Volunteers
Clearly, we also have a responsibility
to the employees who have been asked to partner with volunteers. This begins
with recruiting the best and most-qualified volunteers possible and preparing
them to hit the ground running once placed in a unit.
It's vital to be a good listener in our
role of intermediary with paid staff - and not to become defensive when we hear
comments that are based on inaccurate or unknowledgeable assumptions. We have
to empathize with employees who, almost by definition in most organizations,
are overworked (and often underpaid) and to whom volunteers may offer help but
also - let's be honest - more work, too. How can we adapt to the employee's
needs when legitimate, such as paying attention to times during the week that a
volunteer may be more a distraction than assistance? Or is it fair to ask the
same staff person to keep training a parade of new volunteers when we might
create a leadership role for an already-experienced volunteer to welcome
newcomers?
More than anything, when it comes to
employees, we are educators.
So few professions include courses on working with volunteers in
professional/academic education. Staff may not even know what they don't know
about volunteers! The volunteer resources manager has to provide formal
training to new staff and in-service training to all staff but, most
critically, must find opportunities to consult with individual employees to
improve their volunteer management skills as situations arise in daily work.
Middle Management
Holding Frontline Staff Accountable
Middle managers - unit supervisors,
program coordinators, branch directors, etc. - could be considered the
invisible obstacle to successful volunteer/staff relations. Why? Because they
are very important yet usually overlooked at several key stages of volunteer
engagement. The leader of volunteers should ensure that:
- Middle managers participate in
developing and sign off on volunteer position descriptions in their area
of responsibility.
- Middle managers see the time
their reports spend with volunteers not as an interruption or distraction
from their work, but as vital to accomplishing priorities.
- Both overt and implied messages
middle managers give to their paid and volunteer staff members in unit
meetings convey the value of volunteers.
- Middle managers themselves
partner with volunteers in getting their own work done - and are thanked
for this teamwork.
Top Administration
(Including the Volunteer Board)
We understand the importance of the
executive and board of directors as those "above" us -- the ones who
make key decisions, allocate resources, determine priorities, and judge our
effectiveness. But what about our
importance to them?
Depending on the size of your
organization, top executives and the board may be quite removed from seeing the
daily impact of non-board volunteers and completely unaware of the
contributions of the volunteer office to the process. Is the subject of
volunteering on the agenda at any management team or board meeting? Based on
what information? Have you asked to present at such a meeting?
Volunteer resources managers once again
must be advocates to bring attention to volunteers as time donors, highlighting
the importance of donated skills in the spectrum of other community support and
side-by-side with financial gifts. We must speak the language of the
organization's decision makers, not simply as cheerleaders (though enthusiasm
is important) but as representatives of an in-house treasure trove of great
talent.
The Recipients of
Service
Different organizations take varying approaches to
their clientele, but all too often the services offered to those clients are
determined solely by the paid staff or funding source. That does not need to be
the way volunteer services are provided. We can talk with as well as to the
recipients of service to assure volunteers that what they are doing is truly of
help. We can even enlist the clients themselves - or past clients or client
families and friends - as volunteers, when appropriate. And if we have our
finger on the true pulse of client wishes, think how useful our knowledge can
be to every one of the stakeholder groups above!
Thank you to Energize, Inc. at http://www.energizeinc.com/.
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