Transferable Skills Revisited: What Makes Us Invaluable in the Age of AI?

Where does Volunteer Engagement fit in an automated world? Does it continue to have a place and purpose? These are questions Leaders of Volunteer Engagement may not be asking themselves, but you might want to start, and fast.

In this Points of View, we revisit a past Points of View article by Susan J. Ellis, from January 2008, where she asked the question, “Transferable Skills: What Makes Us Invaluable?” Here, we consider that question in the context of today’s unprecedented reality living amidst Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Almost 20 years ago, Ellis made the argument that a profession can apply its knowledge and skills in different settings. As she said, “A lawyer is a lawyer whether practicing in the District Attorney’s office, a big corporation or a rape crisis centre. While there may be nuances to leading volunteers in a small rural community sports organization compared to a large national health charity, we have more that unites us in our practice than separates us. To this end, a common description of what a Leader of Volunteers does can be summed up with “the Three Rs: Recruit, Recognize, Retain” – regardless of areas of sub-specialization.

Ellis also identifies seven abilities she argues are often unique to Volunteer Management: Task Analysis; Interviewing and Screening; Setting a Welcoming Tone; Forms, Recordkeeping and Scheduling; Networking; Making Do; and Imagining Beyond Money. When thinking about the future as we revisit the past, we must not only imagine the immediate future but also the world farther down the road. For example, while currently it’s practically unheard of to have AI review volunteer applications, it’s not an uncommon practice for paid role applications. How long until this becomes standard for volunteers?

Professions can become obsolete for a number of reasons; here’s a fun list of obsolete occupations if you’re curious. They can change over time, but in a radically changing environment –  like the one we’re currently living in and will continue living amidst in the long-term future – what was once a secure and stable job can quickly become irrelevant and outdated. Just ask lamplighters.

Extinction or Evolution?

For a profession that has centered much of its identity and value on manual, administrative tasks that are becoming routinely automated, what’s left for us in the future? Is this the end of the profession or a new freedom to focus on what’s always mattered most, namely, human interaction? What might a reimagining of the profession require?

We need an understanding of the purpose of what we do and what we are trying to achieve. The critical question becomes what remains in reframing Volunteer Engagement as ethical, human and community-centered. 

We also have to consider how AI and other technology is not only changing what and how we lead volunteer involvement, but also how it’s shifting how people choose to give their time and create community and connection. Do the seven abilities Ellis listed remain what drives our value in a world shaped by AI?

Which of the seven abilities survive?

So let's be honest about which of the seven survive that filter, rather than defend them all equally.

• Forms, Recordkeeping and Scheduling were already halfway automated before AI arrived, thanks in large part to the increased prevalence of volunteer management systems. What's left of it will go next.
• Task Analysis will change shape, too. Breaking a role into pieces is a task a language model can attempt in seconds, even if what it produces still needs a human to check it against the reality of a particular team and a particular volunteer's life. These were skilled abilities, but skilled in the way filing a good tax return is skilled: valuable, learnable, and now squarely in the path of automation.

The other five sit differently.

• Interviewing and Screening depends on reading a person, not just their answers, noticing what someone doesn't say as much as what they do.
• Setting a Welcoming Tone is relational in a way no AI can perform, since a welcome only means something coming from another person who chose to offer it. Networking depends on trust built over years, not a database of contacts.
• Making Do is judgment under constraint, knowing which corner can be cut and which can't, learned from having gotten it wrong before.
• And Imagining Beyond Money, the ability to see potential in an offer of time rather than a line in a budget, may be the most human ability on Ellis's entire list.

So, here’s the honest answer to the question “Do the seven abilities Ellis listed remain what drives our value in a world shaped by AI?”: Partly. Some of what made us invaluable in 2008 will be commoditised by 2028. What remains is not a smaller, apologetic version of the profession. It's the part that was always the actual point, the essence of what we do. Human engagement. Interpersonal skills. The soft stuff that isn’t soft at all, but vital to volunteering, to community and society.

Where Next?

We started this piece with the Three Rs: Recruit, Recognize, Retain. It's worth returning to them now, because AI doesn't remove any of the three, it strips each one down to what was always underneath the admin.

• Recruiting a volunteer was never really about the job advert or the application form, useful as those are. It was about deciding whether this person, with this life and these constraints, is right for this role, considering where else this person may be a fit within your organization (or at another organization you could refer them to) if they’re not right for the role, and potentially being willing to say no with care.
• Recognizing a volunteer was never really about the thank-you email or the certificate. It was about noticing, specifically, what someone actually did and why it mattered, and saying so in a way that lands.
• Retaining a volunteer was never really about a database flag warning that someone's six-month anniversary is coming up. It was about knowing when someone is drifting, long before a system would notice, and caring enough to ask why.

AI will get faster and better at the admin sitting on top of all three Rs. It will draft the advert, generate the recognition message, flag the anniversary. That was never where our value lived, it was just where our time went. What's left, once the admin lifts, is not a diminished profession. It's the profession Susan Ellis was describing all along, with the busywork finally cleared away from it.

That, maybe, is the real answer to the question this Points of View opened with. Volunteer Engagement doesn't need to fight for a place in an automated world. It needs to notice that automation is handing back the time we need to do the part of the job that was always ours and was never really at risk of becoming obsolete.

The future won’t allow us to hide behind the administrative busyness any longer. Are you ready for that?