Staff/Volunteer Relations

What can an organization learn by examining why some people choose not to volunteer? In this issue’s Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews an article by researchers from Australia and the Netherlands that focuses our attention on these non-volunteers.

While we know a lot about volunteers, their motivations, and issues related to volunteer management, we know far less about non-volunteers. Using the concept of ‘volunteerability’ – defined as an "individual’s ability to overcome related obstacles and volunteer, based on their willingness, capability, and availability" (Haski-Leventhal et al., 2017, 2) – the authors in this study reviewed literature, held focus groups, and conducted a survey to understand the barriers that non-volunteers face in their willingness, capability, and availability to volunteer.

Although the article is positioned in terms of informing social policy, the findings are also useful at the organization level. Understanding the non-volunteer perspective can be helpful in attracting and retaining new volunteers to your organization. 

Why do volunteers break the rules? This Research to Practice reviews an ethnographic study of an animal shelter where disruptive behavior by volunteers was a regular occurrence. This disruptive behavior was defined as “any behavior that either explicitly violated a rule or was identified by more than one staff member as disruptive” (Jacobs, 2017, 31). Researcher Molly Jacobs volunteered four days a week for a year at the shelter, keeping extensive notes of her observations and interactions. She also interviewed paid and unpaid workers. In her analysis, Jacobs was able to identify different ‘rule breaking’ categories and analyze why this occurred.

This Research to Practice review of this study provides an opportunity to think about these types of disruptions in your own volunteer context, and perhaps determine different ways to handle them.

Some years ago, Debbie Mason Talbot, a hospital-based manager of volunteer resources, and Ann M. Heesters, director of bioethics at the same institution, came together to discuss a series of cases that generated moral distress for their volunteers and for those who supported them. Though these cases arose in a hospital setting, it quickly became evident that Talbot and Heesters had uncovered themes that would be familiar whenever volunteers interacted with clients, patients, staff, or managers. Talbot and Heesters realized that what they soon called “boundary dilemmas” were not new or local issues, but perennial problems that could be addressed more easily once a common vocabulary was established to discuss the cases and the factors that made them ethically troubling.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, Talbot and Heesters use case studies to explore boundary-crossing situations and organizational responses to them, case studies that can be applied to volunteer situations in a myriad of settings. They also review a tool called FaCE-IT to help analyze boundary dilemmas in organizations and methods to deal with them. As the authors write, “Volunteers who are made aware of the language of boundaries are better equipped to identify potential dangers and to make informed decisions about ethically troubling dilemmas. They will be better prepared to distinguish helpful behaviors from those that have the potential to cause harm.”

Much has been written about the differences between paid staff and volunteers and the need to develop a management style for volunteers that takes into account their unique characteristics. But to date much volunteer practice has lagged behind the research, with many organisations continuing to adopt a traditional ‘workplace’ model for involving volunteers drawn from standard HR practice that treats volunteers as unpaid members of staff.

In this issue of Research to Practice, internationally known British researcher Justin Davis Smith looks at a new study from Switzerland that examines probable elements in a distinctive volunteer management approach. The focus is specifically on the need to treat volunteers as a unique group within an organization, and to manage their relationship with other key stakeholders such as paid staff, senior leadership, and members. The study has important practical implications for the way we think about involving and managing volunteers in our organisations.

Voluntas is a pilot project underway in New South Wales, Australia, that aims to test whether early intervention when conflict begins among volunteers can lessen the burden of destructive conflict. The pilot uses the services of volunteer facilitators trained in mediation to assist and intervene when there are difficult conversations to be had with and between volunteers.

The Voluntas committee is made up of mediators, HR professionals, and volunteer management experts to address an important unmet need in the volunteer sector: affordable conflict management services.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, authors Steve Lancken and Zeynep Selcuk explain the pilot and some of the questions it raises, such as: 

• What services are available to manage conflict and disputes?
• Can early intervention avoid expensive processes or loss later in the conflict cycle?
• Are volunteers more likely relate to volunteer facilitators and mediators?
• How does conflict impact volunteer engagement?

Voluntas’ experience will provide insights into some of the challenges in relationships that occur when volunteering.

Volunteer recognition is one of the few aspects of volunteer involvement about which we actually have quite a bit of reliable information. Mostly this is because volunteer recognition is simple to evaluate since recognition is, after all, in the eye of the receiver: “Does the volunteer feel appropriately recognized or not?” You can therefore evaluate recognition techniques through straightforward opinion studies, unlike other aspects of volunteer management that have seen far too many opinion-based surveys that reveal not much more than the ignorance of those responding to the questionnaire.

There are a number of interesting and useful studies about the most effective ways to recognize volunteers. In this issue of Research to Practice, Publishing Editor Emeritus Steve McCurley discusses one such study from Volunteer Canada. 

Today’s workplaces may have as many as five generations of workers, each raised in different times with different influences affecting their work styles. The same is true of volunteer programs. Organizations are now experiencing many different generations of volunteers working together, making for a very interesting and complex environment for volunteer management.

In this quarter’s Research to Practice, reviewer Laurie Mook looks at a study by Walden University’s Dr. Tonya Renee’ Howard, who interviewed five generations of volunteers (including Generation Z) and asked about their volunteer experiences with recruitment, recognition, and retention. Based on these in-depth interviews, Dr. Howard proposes generation-based volunteer management practices that all leaders of volunteers will find useful.

Those who manage, lead, or work alongside volunteers often give advice to their teams, and may be surprised and perhaps frustrated when it's not acted upon. This can happen both in situations where volunteers have a lot of independence and authority to act on their own, but also when we try to encourage less experienced volunteers to make their own decisions.

In turn, volunteers may offer us helpful advice. Do we always receive it well? In this feature article, author Kirsty McDowell explores why understanding the ‘psychology of giving and receiving advice’ can help volunteer managers improve volunteer leadership practices and encourage people to act on their advice. 

There are many research studies on volunteerism from the perspective of volunteers. Among other things, researchers have asked volunteers why they do or do not volunteer, and why they remain in their roles or leave. However, research from the perspective of paid workers is sparse. In this Research to Practice, reviewer Laurie Mook looks at one study that contributes to filling this gap by comparing social workers who worked with volunteers to those who didn’t. The sample consisted of 287 social workers from 26 randomly selected municipal social service departments in Israel. The research identifies factors that fostered or impeded social workers’ engagement with volunteers, and provides suggestions for volunteer management practices that could lead to improved relationships between employees and volunteers.