Energize Book Blog

Here’s an interview with Nick Ockenden, Head of Research at the Institute for Volunteering Research  in the UK, about IVR’s recent report on volunteering and employability.  You can find more information about the research and read the final report at the IVR website.  Many thanks to Nick for taking the time to talk to me about this important and timely project!

(Note: we have retained the spelling differences in British English in Nick’s answers below.)

Energize, Inc. (EI): You’ve just released a report about  ways that organizations can successfully link volunteering to employability. Tell us a little about what this research has found.

Nick Ockenen (NO): The research focused on the role that Volunteer Centres could play in supporting the link between volunteering and employability. We worked with eight Centres around England which we felt were demonstrating good practice and backed this up with a telephone survey of 220 Centres (58 per cent of the total). One of the first findings was simply how much appears to be going on. One-third of Volunteer Centres were currently undertaking work focusing on employability. Most of them were doing this by recruiting and referring volunteers on to other organisations. The support they offered was, however, highly comprehensive, including making visits to their placements, providing training and help with job searches, and undertaking volunteer reviews and supervisions. As with much research before us, we had to conclude that the link between volunteering and employability was far from straightforward. We did, however, identify numerous benefits and evidence to suggest a link did exist. When we spoke to staff and volunteers, the experience of volunteering was often described as ‘life changing’. Perhaps the most notable benefit we identified was how volunteering could increase self-esteem and confidence amongst volunteers. Our research stressed that it is vitally important that such ‘softer’ outcomes are recognised and given equal weighting alongside targets and numbers of people moving into paid positions. Many volunteers who are long-term unemployed might not be able to move straight in to the structured environment of paid employment. Many staff felt that volunteering, because it was often flexible and highly supportive, provided an effective means of getting someone ‘job ready’ and allowing them to make this transition at their own pace. The research also highlighted successes and challenges of working in partnership with employment agencies and other organisations.

EI: The Energize, Inc. online bookstore carries Volunteering by Unemployed People, published by Volunteering England in the ’90s.  In today’s climate of high unemployment and economic uncertainty, what has changed about successfully working with unemployed volunteers?  What remains the same?

NO: While each recession is unique, they all bring high rates of unemployment and large numbers of people looking for work; the number out of work in the UK has just passed 2.2 million. People will be looking for ways to get (back) into the labour market, and for many, volunteering can provide them with such a means. We were encouraged to see that many of the employability benefits to volunteering that we identified in our research, particularly the development of self-esteem and self-confidence, were strongly echoed by findings from studies going back throughout the 1990s and 1980s. It appears that much good practice in the management and support of unemployed volunteers also remains the same. As other studies have found, our research stressed the value in seeing volunteering as a long-term strategic approach to securing employment; it also highlighted the need to record ‘soft’ outcomes; and it emphasised the benefit in providing ongoing and comprehensive support, especially to those people who have more complex support needs. But if the current recession is, as many suggest, deeper than what we experienced in the 1990s, or indeed in the 1980s, then these needs will simply become more important.

EI: There have been reports in the US media that, because of the recession, some organizations are getting more inquiries from unemployed people wanting to volunteer than they know what to do with.  How can organizations turn this challenge into an opportunity?

NO: For some time we’ve been hearing of organisations receiving more inquiries from people wanting to volunteer. Our recent research found that of the 220 Volunteer Centres surveyed, 87 per cent said that they had experienced an increase in the past six months. We’re not yet sure how much of this is to do with the recession but it does raise a concern that there’s a limit to how many volunteers an organisation can effectively involve. Sometimes this can be about developing networks of volunteer-involving organisations so that prospective volunteers can be referred on to different opportunities if the original organisation is unable to involve them. A network of environmental organisations in the North East of England is working to develop just such a referral system with support from the government body Natural England. Volunteer Centres clearly have a key role to play in any such brokerage system. But even referring volunteers on to other organisations takes resources and much of the Volunteer Centre network in England is operating with limited funding. Our research found examples of Volunteer Centres that had sought funding from new sources, tapping into funding streams focusing on getting people back into work (for example the New Deal and funding from the Learning and Skills Council). Others had successfully formed new partnerships with private sector employment agencies and companies to secure funding.

EI: How can organizations effectively utilize the help of the unemployed while concurrently supporting their future employability?  How can they keep the job-seeking volunteer engaged with their cause even after they’ve transitioned into paid employment?

NO: Volunteering by unemployed people is of great benefit to the organisation they give their time to as well as to the volunteer. The Volunteer Centres we spoke with as part of our research experienced higher profile, new and often longer term funding, and the development of new staff skills as a direct result. Our findings suggested that these benefits could be maximised if the organisation ensures that their employability work complements and enhances their original remit, rather than resulting in unplanned ‘mission drift’. Our research also highlighted a real requirement for a personalised approach when working with and supporting unemployed people as volunteers – one that is focused on their individual expectations, motivations and needs. Common sense tells us that someone who remembers their volunteering positively will be more likely to volunteer again than someone who had a bad experience and felt poorly supported. Once a volunteer has moved into paid employment, it may be the end of an organisation’s involvement. We did observe, however, several Volunteer Centres which had successfully maintained contact with their volunteers after they had secured a job. Where this did occur it allowed the Volunteer Centre to monitor whether the volunteers were happy in their job and whether they sustained employment; which was sometimes key in order to fulfill funding targets. Furthermore, any such relationship left the door open for future volunteering.

Download A gateway to work. The role of volunteer centres in supporting the link between volunteering and employability, the report referenced in this article, at www.ivr.org.uk.

Nick Ockenden is Head of Research at the Institute for Volunteering Research, where he has worked for nearly four years. He has worked on numerous research projects for a wide variety of public, private and third sector clients. This includes exploring the link between volunteering and employability, a large scale review of environmental volunteering in the North East of England, the national evaluation of youth volunteering body “v“, and an evaluation of a project supporting volunteering by young offenders. He has also worked on the development of volunteering strategies for the National Offender Management Service and the Department of Social Development in Northern Ireland. Nick leads on IVR’s research into volunteering within volunteer-led and community-based organisations, and maintains a keen interest in environmental volunteering. In the past he has volunteered for a variety of environmental organisations in the UK and the US, and is currently a volunteer with the British Red Cross. Nick can be contacted on nick.ockenden@volunteeringengland.org or +44(0)207 5208 931.

As promised, here is the first in a series of questions submitted by our readers and answered by volunteerism and risk management expert Linda Graff.  Thanks to everyone who submitted a question; come back soon for the next installment of Linda’s good advice.

The Question:
With the anticipated increase in  problems with swine flu expected over the winter, most hospitals in Scotland are considering how they can involve more volunteers to free up medical staff and to allow people to help others in a time of potential crisis.  With the experience of SARS in Canada, what would you advise to help manage the risk for front line and other volunteers?

Linda’s Answer:
This is a really interesting question that probably has wide applicability as so many communities and organizations brace for the potentially disruptive effects of the H1N1 virus world wide.

There are two aspects of this question I’ll pick up on.

The first has to do with the division of labour between paid and unpaid staff.

Normally I think it best not to assign the same work to paid and unpaid staff.  While legislation and legal precedents vary by jurisdiction and, obviously, by country, one risks things like attracting the applicability of labour law and/or labour standards where they otherwise would not apply when volunteers do the same work as paid staff, and open the possibility of suits by volunteers for back wages where they have been doing materially the same work as paid staff.  Additionally, volunteers can feel resentment at not being paid, and staff can feel threatened that volunteers will replace them.

The question becomes more complex when, for legitimate reasons (e.g., dramatic increase in demand for service – emergency, disasters, etc.; loss of funding) the involvement of volunteers is critical to service provision.  In such cases organizations need to think through both the immediate issues of mission attainment as well as the down-the-road fall out, such as dealing with potential resentment from paid staff or other damage to ongoing volunteer/paid staff relations.

While I remain certain that volunteers should never be engaged in a way that displaces paid staff, I am less hard-lined about whether volunteers might be engaged to replace paid staff who are no longer in place – for a variety of reasons (but usually the loss of funding).  As the nature and organization of work changes over time, I can no longer support the notion that volunteers can not be asked to perform work that at some point in the past was done by paid staff.  We have seen many transitions in the organization of work and I do not think that duties that have been at some point in the domain of paid staff can never be reassigned to volunteers – as long as doing so does not jeopardize the livelihood of the paid staff in question.  This is particularly so in nonprofits where the realignment of duties leads to better service or greater mission accomplishment.  This begs the question of managing relationships with organized labour, unions, and paid staff in general, an important matter that goes beyond what I can tackle here.

The second aspect of your question has to do with the ethics of risk, a matter that has troubled me since the very example you cite – the SARS crisis in Canada a few years back.

I know of several hospitals and long-term care facilities in Toronto (and probably elsewhere) which asked volunteers to staff the screening desks during the SARS crisis.  Elective procedures were cancelled, unessential staff were sent home, and most facilities also cancelled all volunteer involvement.  They closed all entrances but one and all persons entering were required to be “screened”.  That is, they were asked if they had a cough, a fever, had been to Asia recently, etc. etc.

In the midst of this most threatening and frightening public health crisis in living memory, facilities asked volunteers to undertake what might, arguably, have been one of the riskiest roles.  Asking volunteers to undertake very risky work is one thing, and of course I anticipate readers saying, but Linda, we do that all the time.  Look at volunteer firefighters, disaster response volunteers, and so on.  And I acknowledge such roles.  The problem I had with the SARS situation was that at least one hospital prepared a special waiver that they asked their screening desk volunteers to sign which absolved the facility of any and all liability connected to illness of or harm to the volunteer arising from their screening desk work.

So not only were those facilities prepared to expose volunteers to extremely high risk (for no pay, in a society which often not only pays for work, but pays more for dangerous or demanding work), but were prepared to abandon those very volunteers at the earliest possible opportunity if they suffered loss or harm from their volunteer roles.  I also note, in this province, we do not provide worker’s compensation for volunteers, nor do most organization offer any kind of health insurance benefits to volunteers for injuries they might suffer on the (unpaid) job.

I think there should be some limits to the degree of risk we will expose volunteers to, even when volunteers themselves might be willing to undertake the work.  And when we do expose volunteers to higher risks, I believe we should be prepared to offer them health care coverage for on-the-job injuries they might sustain.

Finally, in principle, I think there is good basis for planning to engage volunteers in extended roles as part of disaster planning.  We have endless precedents – volunteers sandbagging communities in times of flood, and pandemic plans to, for example,  engage citizen volunteers as grave diggers in anticipation of city employees being unavailable to fulfill such critical roles.

When exceptional plans are prepared, it is important to consider the ethics of risk, the conditions that would need to be in place to trigger implementation, and some thoughtful plans for returning to “normal” when the emergency subsides.  These kinds of considerations should be a part of the overall plan and have the force of policy.