We’ve got the power

Long-term readers will know I am a fan of Seth Godin, writer, marketer and inspirational thought leader. In the past, I have riffed off Seth’s writing for this blog (see “Belief And Knowledge” and “What Is Excellence?” for example) and I’m doing that again here, thanks to an article published on his blog back in January 2024, simply titled, “Unaware”. Here it is:

”If you don’t realize that you have power, you might not be able to exercise it. The power to speak up, to participate, to invent, to lead, to encourage, to vote, to connect, to organize, to march, to write, to say ‘no’ or to say ‘yes’. It’s tempting to imagine we have less power than we do. It lets us off the hook. For now.”

Very often that’s us, isn’t it?

We Volunteer Engagement Professionals either don’t realise we have power — or don’t believe we do — and so we don’t exercise it. We may not speak up, invest, lead etc. We buy into the belief that because we don’t have a seat at the table, we have little or no power, little or no agency.

If that’s part of our self-belief and self-talk, then we have two responses.

Response one

Listen to it and believe it. We’re in an isolating profession. We’re the only one who does what we do at our organisation. We can’t affect change. Nobody would understand.

We maybe take comfort in our powerless narrative so we don’t have to face up to the bigger challenges of our role — sitting back in our comfort zone rather than trying to change the status quo. We just need to keep our heads down and do the best we can for our volunteers.

At its worst, we adopt a victim mentality — that all the issues we face, problems we encounter, and challenges that obstruct us, are someone else’s fault, and we are powerless to address and overcome them.

Response two

We hear the voice telling us we have no power, no influence, and we choose to ignore that voice and do something about it.

We look for ‘teachable moments’ to educate others about the power and potential of volunteering.

We challenge stereotypes and prejudice that cast volunteers in a negative light.

We tell stories and share meaningful data that demonstrates the multiple impacts of volunteers.

We keep going because we know that volunteering has the potential to change the world.

I know I have been firmly in the first response category, especially early on in my career. I’ve played the victim card. I’ve kept my head down. I’ve even left jobs because of that mindset, hoping that the grass is indeed greener in different pastures. Honestly, it’s sometimes the easier option.

Now I’m more often in the second response category. That doesn’t mean I’m never frustrated, or annoyed, or demotivated by events. But it does mean I choose my reactions to those events, and focus on the power, the influence, and the agency I do have, to try to make change happen.

So today, no long lectures or philosophical navel-gazing about our profession. I’m keeping this simple.

Ask yourself, which response category do you sit in today? Number One or number two.

If it’s response category one, then what can you do to realise and seize the power you have, to become aware of it and take action? What support might you need in making a change? Who can you reach out to for that support? If you’re stuck, please let me know.

If you’re in response category two, then I have three simple asks of you.

Find another Volunteer Manager in response category one and offer to mentor them.
Write about your journey from response category one to response category two. Share how you’ve seized and exercised the power you realised you have, and what change you’ve enabled as a result.
Publish what you write. Share it on LinkedIn. Send it to me as a guest post for this blog. Write it up for Engage. Those of us who are aware of our power and use it to try to make change happen, have a responsibility to help those who don’t to act.

So, come on. Don’t delay. Before today is over, decide which category you are in and set yourself a goal to act accordingly.

Let’s work together to acknowledge our power, and exercise it effectively to realise our vision for volunteering.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

The top productivity tech I use in my work

Happy new year.

I know, it’s the 19th January, but it’s my first article of 2024, so I think I can get away with a HNY almost three weeks into the year.

Have you made new year resolutions? Have you stuck to them so far?

Often people use this time of year to resolve to be better in the next twelve months, and in a work context that can often focus in on their productivity. You know the kind of thing:

This year I’ll manage my diary better.
This year I’ll get more done.
This year I’ll balance work and home more effectively.

In my work, I have to be organised and effective whilst balancing multiple competing demands on my time from various clients. Like many of us now, I also have to watch those home / work boundaries, as my office is in the house where I live.

I use various tech tools to help with keep me productive and to support my learning and development, so I thought I’d share some of them with you in case they help you in any striving towards more workplace effectiveness this year.

Here goes…

reMarkable

Taking notes is vital in my work and for that task I use a reMarkable. It’s a device about the same size as a standard iPad, but with an e-ink display similar to that on a Kindle that can be written on. And it’s a natural writing experience, unlike using a stylus on a slippery glass screen of an iPad or other tablet.

The device has plenty of capacity to store thousands of pages—and so replaces the need for paper—which can be formatted according to a range of pre-set templates (lined, blank, dotted, organiser layouts etc.), filed into folders, synced with my other devices (via an app) and emailed to others. It also has the neat trick of converting handwritten text into typed text, a pretty handy feature that can save time when taking notes at a meeting for distribution later on.

Dropbox

Dropbox keeps all my files synchronised between my devices. If I require a file whilst I’m walking the dog or on the train, then I can access it on my phone just as easily as I can on my computer in the office.

Yes, the same is true of Google Drive, and I do use that as well, but in a much more limited way. I’m nervous about storing client documents with Google as maintaining confidentially and privacy is important to me, so Dropbox (whilst not perfect) wins out.

Dropbox also gives me the peace of mind that if any of my devices get lost, damaged or stolen, the files are all still there and can be accessed as soon as I get a replacement, or login via another machine. This has happened, and Dropbox was a godsend!

Fantastical

As an Apple user, the native calendar app is pretty good, but Fantastical is a step above. It’s highly customisable, so I can make it work with my personal set up, and is vital to me in managing my time and workload.

Fantastical has a feature called ‘Openings’ that enables people to view my availability and request time in my diary. I can set this up to meet my needs whilst also using it to save time, avoiding the endless bouncing of emails between people to find a slot that works.

Things

Things is the app I use to keep track of all my projects, actions, and to-do lists. It is always in sync on every device and keeps me on top of everything I need to do. Adding new actions is effortless and can even be done simply and accurately using Siri.

I’d be lost without Things.

Evernote

Evernote is my digital second brain. Whether it’s a webpage, a typed note, handwritten meeting notes exported from my reMarkable, a photo, a quotation, notes from Readwise (see below) or an audio file, it all goes into Evernote.

Like Dropbox, I can access all of this on any device at any time as the material is stored and synced in the cloud.

Everything in Evernote is tag-able and searchable, even handwritten text. The addition of AI features recently makes finding and summarising things easier than ever.

Like Things, without Evernote I’d be lost.

Readwise

My discovery of 2023. The productivity expert Tiago Forte made me aware of Readwise about a year ago as part of his Building A Second Brain work, and it’s caused a revolution in my reading and learning.

Readwise has two elements to it.

The first is the Readwise reader app. Anything I want to read gets saved here, by email, from RSS feeds I subscribe to, or by clipping articles from the web. When I read this content (which syncs between my devices) I can highlight the most important or interesting bits, and then only those highlights get sent to Evernote (automatically). I can still access the full article or email if I’d like to, but primarily I’m only going to engage with the key information I need in my second brain, not wade through long articles, or PDF documents and reports, from the past to get to the essential content within.

The second element is that Readwise surfaces some of these essential snippets from my library to me daily, via email and an app. I can then review the things I’ve saved in a way that helps me retain the key information in my memory. A bit like digital flashcards, but so much more because this process is highly customisable.

Add in the ability to add content to the Readwise app from automatic synchronisation with Kindle book highlights, or even manually scanning text from a physical document with my phone, and I have a growing library of insights I can revisit, learn from, share and apply in my work.

Snpid

My second discovery of 2023, Snipd, is a podcast player with some neat tricks up its sleeve.

First, Snpid can produce handy AI summaries of podcast episodes. So if I really don’t have time to get through a ninety-minute listen, I can ask Snipd to summarise it, and then I can listen to the key points in under five minutes. If I want to go deeper I can, either listening to the full episode, or relevant sections (which Snipd’s AI identified), or reading a transcript.

Second, as I’m listening to a podcast episode, if I hear something interesting or insightful, I can click a button, and it’ll save that as Snip, in both audio and text formats. I can even Snip by a double press on my AirPods stems if I’m listening on the go. These snips can then be edited to get to the essential content I want to keep, and are automatically exported to Evernote (via a connection to Readwise) for me to review and access later.

Genius!

Otter.Ai

I attend plenty of meetings and can spend a considerable amount of time interviewing people in the consultancy work I do. Otter.AI is my essential assistant in this work. It sits in the background of in-person and online meetings, recording the conversation and creating a transcript of the discussion. This can be tagged to identify the speakers, searched, summarised via AI tools, and exported into various formats. If I wanted to, I can even send Otter.Ai to meetings I can’t attend so it can take notes for me!

Ulysses

Every single blog post and two-hundred-word-Tuesday article starts in Ulysses, my writing app of choice. It’s all stored, synchronised and accessible for me to revisit if I need to. I can export to various formats and, crucially, publish direct from Ulysses to my blog at a click of a couple of buttons. For distraction free, focused writing, Ulysses is essential to my work.

Well, that’s my top productivity tech.

What about yours?

What tech tools could you not live without?

Leave a comment below and let’s learn from each other.

For those of you waiting on the answer too the question I posed in my 8 December article, “Which of the articles published on this blog during 2023 were written by ChatGPT (with some editing from me)?”, here it is.

The two articles were:

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Revolutionise Your Organisation with These Three Volunteer Management Tactics!

Volunteers are essential to many (if not all) nonprofit organisations, driving community engagement and amplifying impact. But what if there were some things you could do that could take your volunteer management efforts to the next level?

In this article, I outline three tactics that have the power to transform how you engage, empower, and integrate volunteers within your organisation, leading to unprecedented success.

If you’ve applied these tactics in your work, then please leave a comment to share your experience and insights. If there are new to you, however, then I hope this article is of value to you — please let me know via the comments how you get on implementing them!

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Tactic One — Strategic Volunteer Integration

Clear Vision and Role Definition

To truly harness the potential of volunteers, you must align their roles and responsibilities with the goals of your organisation. By integrating what volunteers do into the fabric of your mission, you not only make their contributions more meaningful, but also elevate their sense of purpose.

Make sure you regularly reinforce and clearly communicate how volunteers directly contribute to the fulfilment of your organisation’s cause to establish a strong and powerful connection. It may be cliché, but people want to make a difference, not just a contribution.

Streamlined Onboarding

Once you’ve recruited a volunteer, their journey with you begins with onboarding. Be sure to develop a clear, structured process that not only introduces volunteers to your organisation’s history, its values and people, but also clearly outlines their responsibilities.

Make sure volunteers know how and where they fit into the bigger picture. By setting the context and expectations upfront, you pave the way for smooth collaboration, enabling volunteers to hit the ground running.

Tactic Two — Tech-Driven Engagement Enhancement

Volunteer Management Systems

Embrace technology to optimise volunteer engagement. Specialised volunteer management software can revolutionise communication, scheduling, and data analysis. Volunteers can access self-scheduling options, allowing them to contribute when and how they’re available, which is key when people increasingly want the flexibility to control when and how they volunteer.

A good system also lets you leverage data insights to refine your approach and ensure volunteers get a great experience and contribute impact fully to your organisation’s mission.

Virtual Engagement Expansion

Geographical boundaries no longer limit your volunteer reach. Your geographically local community is just one pool of potential volunteers, as Karen Knight explains in her excellent article, “How We Define Community Affects Volunteering”.

Offer virtual opportunities that cater to a global audience. Conduct training sessions and webinars online, fostering skill development and collaboration in a digital space. Consider the role of social media platforms as hubs for networking, amplifying engagement beyond physical borders.

Tactic Three — Empowerment and Community Building

Personalised Recognition

Acknowledgment goes a long way in cultivating a sense of belonging, so it’s vital to implement a recognition program that spotlights volunteers, showing them their efforts are valued and integral.

Don’t just focus on length of service but concentrate your recognition efforts around the difference volunteers make to your work. Someone can have a considerable impact in just a few hours and miss out because existing systems only generate a thank you when volunteers have completed a year of service.

Sharing success stories of volunteers making a difference reinforces the impact they collectively create.

Leadership Cultivation

Empower volunteers to become leaders. Offer skill enhancement opportunities that enable them to diversify their capabilities. Establish clear pathways for volunteers to ascend into leadership roles — if they want to! — giving them ownership over projects and teams.

This not only enhances their personal growth but also strengthens your organisation’s foundation.

Incorporating these three volunteer management tactics can help generate a revolutionary shift within your organisation.

Strategic integration, tech-driven engagement, and empowerment not only enhance your volunteer engagement efforts, but also create a stronger, more connected community.

By implementing these tactics, you set the stage for success, unlocking the full potential of your volunteers and propelling your organisation’s impact to new heights.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Volunteer Management Nightmares: Avoid These Five Mistakes at All Costs!

In my experience, Volunteer Engagement Professionals tend to be passionate individuals dedicated to making a positive impact through volunteering. We understand the challenges that come with managing a diverse group of volunteers. It’s a fulfilling role, but it can also be daunting, with potential pitfalls.

In this article, we’ll delve into five mistakes that can turn your volunteer management journey into a nightmare. By avoiding these mistakes, you can create an environment that fosters productivity, satisfaction, and long-term success for both your volunteers and your organisation.

Poor Communication

Effective communication is the lifeblood of any successful team. Failing to establish and maintain clear lines of communication with volunteers is a fast track to confusion and missed opportunities. Work doesn’t get completed, volunteers feel disengaged, and the overall impact of everyone’s efforts suffers.

To avoid this, prioritise open and consistent communication. Make sure communication is accessible in a variety of formats: newsletters, emails, online meetings, in-person gatherings, social media, online discussion forums etc..

Regularly share information, set expectations clearly, and encourage two-way dialogue to keep everyone aligned and motivated.

Lack of Volunteer Training

Volunteers bring their passion, but without proper training, they may struggle to reach their full potential.

It can be easy to underestimate the importance of comprehensive training for a group of enthusiastic volunteers, especially if training is the last thing they say they want or need. Yet without the right guidance, knowledge and skills, volunteers can quickly experience frustration and uncertainty while attempting to contribute effectively.

Investing time and resources into learning and development for volunteers pays dividends. Equip your volunteers with the knowledge and skills they need to excel in their roles. Offer a range of ways for volunteers to learn including orientation sessions, online learning, hands-on training, buddying and mentoring options, and ongoing educational resources to empower them for success.

Failing to Match Volunteers with Suitable Roles

Matching volunteers with suitable roles is like finding the perfect puzzle piece. Not getting this right can lead to many a volunteer management nightmare.

For example, in one organisation I worked with, a highly qualified journalist volunteered with the Communications team, but all this person was asked to do was cut out newspaper clippings. The outcome was a disheartened volunteer who quickly left the organisation, probably never returned, and was a poor advert for the organisation to their family and friends.

It can’t be stated often enough how important it is to take the time to understand your volunteers’ strengths, interests, and goals. Thoughtfully assign tasks that allow them to shine, fostering a sense of purpose and fulfilment.

Ignoring Volunteer Feedback and Recognition

Volunteers are driven by their desire to make a difference, and their insights are invaluable. Despite what some people might think, it isn’t just paid staff who can have great ideas – volunteers can come up with suggestions nobody else has ever thought about before because they bring a different perspective to the work than employees.

When we fail to actively seek feedback and recognise the exceptional efforts of our volunteers, we see a decline in morale and engagement.

So, create a culture that values volunteer feedback. Regularly solicit their opinions, ideas, and suggestions to continually improve your volunteer program. Find ways to acknowledge and appreciate the ideas, insights and impact of your volunteers in your recognition plan. A little gratitude can go a long way!

Inadequate Volunteer Supervision

Volunteers thrive when they receive proper support and guidance. That’s why it is vital to establish effective volunteer supervision practices.

Schedule regular check-ins, offer mentorship opportunities, and provide a supportive environment where volunteers feel comfortable seeking guidance. By doing so, you empower your volunteers to perform at their best and achieve remarkable outcomes.

As Volunteer Engagement Professionals, we have the power to shape extraordinary experiences for our volunteers and our organisations.

I can’t promise a completely smooth volunteer management journey, but by avoiding the five mistakes we’ve explored, we can create an environment where effective communication, proper training, suitable volunteer assignments, feedback-driven improvement, and supportive supervision thrive.

And that’s got to be a good thing.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Knowing the Journey

We have a guest author on the blog this week, Ann Hall, who is Head of Volunteering at Humankind. Ann and I connected on social media earlier this year in a brief discussion about putting people before processes in volunteer engagement. I immediately asked Ann to write for the blog and, thankfully, she said yes, so read on to learn from her approach.

We’ve always sent our volunteers an exit questionnaire when they leave, we all do it. We then learn from this when reviewing our volunteering offer for others. That’s great for new volunteers who join after the leaver has left, but it doesn’t help the ones that have already walked out of the door.

At Humankind, we decided we wanted to do something about that. So, we created a New Starter Questionnaire for volunteers to complete when they join us. The form is sent to volunteers during their first week with us, along with a ‘Welcome to Humankind’ card. It is designed to help us find out how people found out about us (so we know which of our marketing techniques are working), why they came to us specifically and what they want to get out of volunteering (we then compare this with the leaver data to establish if people’s end goal was met).

We ask:

How did you find out about us?
What attracted you to us?
What do you hope to gain by volunteering with us?

“Don’t you ask that at interviews?” I hear you say.

Yes, we do. But the interviewer doesn’t necessarily share that information with any-one else, why would they? The interviewer is generally going to be that volunteer’s supervisor if they join us, so they don’t share responses to interview questions any further.

Most volunteers say they come to us because they, or someone they know, has had previous contact with our organisation. That means we must have a good reputation, so we are off to a great start.

We’ve found out through the questionnaire that volunteers choose us, over other organisations because they like what we are about. They can connect with what we are trying to achieve, and they want to be a part of that and help others. One volunteer said they were attracted to our, “Actions towards social inclusion and helping individuals and families see better opportunities for themselves”.

We also get a straight to the point answer to what they ultimately would like to gain. The majority say employment, but also to “just help”, to “do something worthwhile” and to “feel valued”.

Here we have a theme, a trend, people see volunteering as a route to employment. So, we nurture that, and we build foundations to support volunteers to achieve that goal, and our efforts are working.

Since April 1st 2022, 43% of volunteers that have left, have done so due to gaining employment, and 76% of those people gained employment with Humankind.

Knowing people’s end goal at the beginning, and not waiting until they’ve left to find out their end goal wasn’t met, works well for us and our volunteers.

We can then work together and have open and honest conversations from day one.

You can find out more about HumanKind on their website, where you will also find details of how you can work for them.

Ann Hall is the Head of Volunteering at Humankind. Ann went to Leeds Metropolitan University aged 18 to study Law. During her first year, she started temping as an Administrator in a Needle Exchange. This job changed Ann’s career path, and she now has twenty years’ experience of working in the Charity Sector in both front line and management roles. In 2009, Ann joined Humankind and has been working on their Volunteer Programme for the past ten years. The Volunteer Programme has held Investing in Volunteers since 2015 along with five Volunteer Quality Marks.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Volunteers, cuts, and strikes: free resources for you

Everyone knows 2023 will be tough financially. This means a growing possibility that volunteers will be called on as a way to save money, or help deliver services during strikes. Thankfully, I have some free resources to help you, fellow Volunteer Engagement Professionals, to navigate these difficult waters.

I’ve been writing on the subject of job displacement and job replacement (often simply, but unhelpfully, called job substitution) for well over a decade.

In 2011 Lynn Blackadder and I wrote an article for The Guardian entitled, “Dispelling the myths around job substitution by volunteers”, where we talk about why job substation is an unhelpful term and dispel some myths about the issues involved.

A year later I wrote an article, “Why we need to think differently about job substitution” which critiqued the then new Volunteering England ‘Guide to avoiding job substitution”. In it, I noted that:

“This whole issue is a thorny, complex and emotive one. It is an issue that mainly affects voluntary and public sector organisations, and it isn’t a new one. Sadly, it is also an issue that many in the sector, including volunteer managers, shy away from. Because of its emotive, complex and challenging nature, job substitution is often a topic that, if given any time at conferences and the like, provokes such strong views that few want to face the conflict it raises.”

Sadly, I think we, more often than not, still shy away from these issues. That puts others in the driving seat when decisions are made. So, it’s important, in the challenging times we now face, that we get on the front foot and proactively engage in relevant debates.

If we want that mythical seat at the table, we need to take it, not wait for it to be offered.

What, then, are some more contemporary resources around these issues?

When Covid-19 arrived and the world shifted, there was anxiety from many that fundraising would cease, budgets would shrink, Volunteer Managers would be let go, and volunteers asked to do more. In that context, I wrote some articles (and published one classic resource) that, I think, are still instructive for Volunteer Engagement Professionals in 2023. They are:

Three reasons why organisations will need volunteer engagement professionals after lockdown

When the Axe Falls: Budget Cutting and Volunteers (this is the classic resource)

How Covid-19 may change our views on job substitution forever

Four mistakes Unions sometimes make about volunteering

These were then collated into a free PDF eBook called “Cuts and Change” which is still available from the homepage of my website or via direct download here.

None of these resources will give you easy answers or quick fixes. But they will help you critically assess the issues as they affect your organisation and your work with volunteers.

I especially commend to you the “When The Axe Falls” article which was written in 2009 by the late, great Susan J Ellis. It gives solid, practical advice on how organisations that are laying off staff can ethically engage volunteers to ensure services don’t suffer. You may not agree with everything in it, but it will get you thinking.

Finally, and with thanks to my former boss at Volunteering England, Justin Davis Smith, I have unearthed a copy of the Drain Guidelines.

These were reissued in 1990 following their original publication in 1975. They are guidelines for relations between paid staff and volunteers in health and social care settings but, crucially, set out key principles for volunteers during strike action. To my knowledge, these principles haven’t been updated in over thirty years and still stand as the best advice we have on the role of volunteers in organisations where paid staff are taking strike action. To that end, I hope they are of help.

(NB. Obviously, labour laws vary from country to country, so non-UK readers are urged to check your own context, regulations and legislation as well.)

I hope all of these free resources are useful to you, whether you are seeing them for the first time or have read them before.

If you have other resources in a similar vein that you think readers would benefit from seeing, please share them in the comments below.

And if you want to discuss the circumstances you are facing, please do get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Developing your career beyond volunteering

I am pleased to welcome Morven MacLean as guest writer of our latest blog post.

I have know Morven for many years and am very grateful for her taking the time to share her recent experience of moving into a senior role in the People / Organisational Development arena, along with some advice and tips if this is a career path you would interested in following.

So thank you Morven, over to you…

Are you pondering your next career move and considering taking on a senior leadership position? Maybe you’re thinking about a role in the People / Organisational Development arena? Perhaps you’re lacking confidence and feel your skills won’t be recognised next to candidates with an HR background? I’m here to challenge that thinking and encourage you to go for it!

That’s exactly what I did when I returned to work from maternity leave in January 2022. A year of away had given me the space to reflect on my career. I loved my job as Head of Volunteering at Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS) but I was craving the stretch of a broader portfolio and the opportunity to influence more widely in the organisation.

When my maternity leave ended, I was delighted to see the role of Director of People and Strategy advertised. Excited by the scope of this role and the opportunities it presented, I applied, went through a rigorous selection process and I am happy to say, was offered the job, which I started in April 2022.

I was so pleased to see in the recruitment pack for the Director of People and Strategy role that CHAS was open to applications from candidates from a range of professional backgrounds. In my experience, most People Director roles stipulate an HR background. Another plus point was that it specifically mentioned volunteering development as an area of interest to the panel. CHAS is an organisation that values volunteering and understands the unique skills and contribution of staff in the volunteering function, so I was unsurprised to see this open-minded approach in the recruitment of the People and Strategy Director role.

How did I get here?

Having been a Head of Volunteering for seven years in a fantastic Scottish charity the options for my next move if I were to stay in volunteering were limited. Another Head of Volunteering role elsewhere – few and far between in Scotland – or moving to London, an option that was not on the cards for me! I loved my role but for some time had been considering taking on a new challenge that would broaden my experience and allow me to use the skills I had honed in relationship management, motivation, people engagement and strategy development.

During the pandemic, before I went on maternity leave, I seized the opportunity to take on some new challenges, leading pieces of work that I might not otherwise have had the opportunity to do, such as the establishment of the UK’s first virtual children’s hospice service. This allowed me to test my skills beyond volunteering and develop my confidence leading programmes of work in areas that were new to me.

My advice to you

If you’re thinking of moving beyond volunteering to a wider People role, I’d really encourage you to look for internal opportunities to develop your experience. Change doesn’t have to be a big step. You can start to broaden your experience incrementally through initiating and leading new and different projects across your organisation. Volunteering to take on a project outside of your usual area of focus will help you to broaden your knowledge and experience, as will joining a Board of Trustees outside of work. The experience of being a trustee at two charities over the years enabled me to develop my experience of governance which has really helped me in my transition to a senior leadership role.

The move from functional leadership to systems leadership is without doubt a big one. However, the advantage of coming from a volunteering background, is that I was used to operating across the system, bringing together volunteers and staff to deliver results. There are so many skills that volunteering professionals can bring to the wider People agenda. Moreover, there is critical experience that can be obtained from working in volunteering that can’t be gained readily elsewhere. This is directly transferable to People/ Organisational Development Director roles.

As a volunteering professional you:

Need to have amazing relationship management skills to work with volunteers and manage emotional labour
Understand that volunteers are an integral delivery partner and you are experienced at influencing others to understand that
Are used to developing flexible opportunities that fit around peoples’ lives and still deliver results for the organisation. Most organisations work in a more agile way with volunteers than paid staff.
Are used to juggling a large workload and overseeing risk, health and safety, strategy development, L&D, the volunteer life cycle from planning and recruitment through to exit. This is something that is often shared by multiple teams when it comes to paid staff.
Are adept at influencing across, up and down the organisation.
Are innovative and creative, working efficiently (most volunteering teams don’t have vast budgets) to deliver results.

We know that talented people don’t work in our sector for the money. Connecting people with impact and building connection with the cause is what volunteering professionals do daily. This is as important for paid staff as it is for volunteers, especially in the charity sector where money is not generally the primary motivation.

At CHAS, we know from our last three engagement surveys that staff are hugely motivated by our mission – ensuring that no family in Scotland faces the death of their child alone. I’m keen to apply some volunteer engagement approaches to the employee experience in CHAS. Given that our staff are so motivated by our cause, it’s a no-brainer to ensure that a connection with the mission is explicit and embedded in all stages of the employee life cycle.

I would love to see more organisations being open-minded about the skills and backgrounds required for a People Director role. The volunteering development sector is full of innovative, inspiring, and creative people who could have a transformational impact on the people experience in so many organisations.

My top tips

In conclusion, having made the change of role recently, my top tips for anyone considering a step up from Head of Volunteering to People Director are:

You don’t need technical HR knowledge – you need to know how to lead and draw that out in others. The Head of HR has that technical expertise and a strong relationship between you and that person is key.
Grow your network – attend conferences, tap in to CIPD courses, events, and networking groups.
Find a mentor who has taken a similar path. I’m fortunate to have three people in my network who have moved from volunteering into broader People/Organisational Development roles and their experience and insight has been invaluable to me.
Surround yourself in specialist volunteers (the bread and butter of a volunteering professional!) to help develop your knowledge and skills in areas where you have less experience.
Seek opportunities in your organisation to lead projects outside of your team. Identify opportunities for secondments and demonstrate your skills beyond volunteering.
Join a Board and use your experience as a trustee to fill knowledge gaps and develop experience in areas you haven’t yet been exposed to.

If anyone is considering moving beyond volunteering to a broader role in People, Strategy and Organisational Development and would like some advice, I’d be happy to chat further. You can connect with me on Twitter — @MorvenMacLean — or LinkedIn.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Why it’s important to take a break (and four tips for doing so regularly)

I don’t know about you, but the last couple of years have simultaneously felt like the longest years of my life, and the fastest to flypast. So, now, more than ever, it is important to take a break now and again, to switch focus away from work, from the volunteers we support and the cane we strive to make, and look after ourselves for a short while.

Since Covid-19 came along, we’ve lived through lockdowns that seemed to drag on forever as we put so much of what we took for granted on hold. Then, in our vaccinated and lockdown free society, life resumed at a frenetic pace as we all started to find our feet again, resuming a new-normal life.

But life is never normal, new or otherwise. We may not be masked-up and socially distancing like we did last year, but things have changed. They always do. Even without Covid-19, 2022 would have been different from 2020. And 2024 will be different from today.

We may still be working from home, but just when we think we’ve adapted to a new way of working, something else comes along to throw in another change. Perhaps now we are juggling time during the week, working at home whilst also resuming some travel as we start to visit offices and events again.

For some, the end of lockdowns has meant dealing with an influx of returning volunteers, champing at the bit to get going again. For others, it has meant stress and worry as the volunteers of the before-times stay away. We are then faced with the mammoth task of replacing them, recruiting from a public who are perhaps not as keen or committed as those ‘traditional’ pre-Covid volunteers.

In my own work as a consultant, I think I’m someone who thrives on change. In general, I like it and welcome it. I mean, I spend my professional life helping people to make it! But I acknowledge that change can be exhausting. Despite switching to a four-day week and ensuring I book some longer stretches of time off throughout the year, I still feel drained after a few months of hard work. I’m sure you do too.

That’s why it was nice last week to get away. Properly away. Out of the country away. Beside a pool in hot weather with no work or domestic chores to do away. It was the first break I’ve had like that in four years, and boy did I need it.

I know I’m very lucky and privileged to be able to take such a break, especially in the challenging financial climate we all live in right now. Not everyone can afford the time or cost of a week overseas, especially when the cost of just surviving day-to-day grows and grows.

The good news is we don’t always need a big recharge holiday away, in fact, it’s just as important to make sure we get a break on a regular basis, week to week, rather than saving all our rest up until a big annual break.

Whatever our circumstances are, there are things we can do to try to make the most of some time off to recharge our batteries. Here are four that I try and do regularly:

Get a change of scene. Even if only for a day or even a few hours. Take a trip to somewhere new or different. Don’t stay at home the whole time, especially if that’s also where you work. If you are a homeworker like me, the temptation to just deal with a couple of emails could be too great. Put some distance between you and your laptop. Go for a walk in a park, visit a nearby city or heritage site, have a coffee at the cafe down the road. As the cliché says, sometimes a change is a good as a rest.

Turn off your devices. Disconnect work email. Divert calls to voicemail. Be brave, and turn off your phone. No social media, no alerts pinging at you. Even if you can’t physically get away, mentally take a break from all that occupies you in daily life. Juts a couple of hours of this can help.

Read a book. Grab a novel and let yourself be transported to a different time, place, circumstance, or even universe. If reading isn’t your thing, try an audiobook. No visual stimulation, just immersion in something different.

Meditate. This can help you relax, especially if it involves visualisation where you can visit a beach or park or other relaxing setting in your mind’s eye. If you’ve never tried meditation before, I recommend Balance, not least as you get a year for free!

As this article goes live, I have been back at work for four days already. I’ve got some more time booked off in October. I’m full of good intentions to actually take that time off work, because in previous years I’ve just carried on through to Christmas. I’m also intending to try to manage my workload a bit better, so I’m not so exhausted when the next break comes along.

If you want, I’ll let you know how I get on.

How have you taken a break this year? Did it make a difference to you? Why?

What can you plan to do now that will give you a break in those long months between summer and Christmas?

What top tips for taking a break would you share?

Whatever your thoughts, please leave a comment below and share them with me and others.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Why is mindfulness great for Volunteer Managers?

I am pleased to welcome Karen Janes as a gust author for the blog today. I have had the privilege of working with Karen over the years and and pleased she has chosen to share her thinking on the importance of mindfulness for those of us who lead volunteer engagement.

So, without further ado, over to Karen.

I’ve been a volunteer for many years and for many different organisations. For the most part of my career I worked in volunteering – I’ve been a Volunteer Coordinator, a Volunteer Manager and a Head Of Volunteering. The common theme for me, is that whichever part you play in it, the role of the volunteering team is very complex and demanding. How are we supposed to cope?

Unlike other teams, the volunteering team has to balance and meet the needs not just of the volunteers, but also the needs of the organisation, its employees and often its beneficiaries too. They need a wide understanding of how diverse departments across the organisation work, in order to understand how volunteers can fit in and contribute. And they have to influence paid teams both upwards, downwards and across the organisation

It’s not uncommon for the volunteering team to have to provide the full range of HR type services to their volunteers – marketing, recruitment, coordination, training, management, advice, motivation, communication, problem solving – as well as being responsible for strategies, policies, risk management and reporting. In my experience, there’s often whole teams and departments of people focussing on each of these things for the paid employee teams.

Rarely is this the case for volunteering.

The volunteering team has to juggle all of these needs and activities, often with limited people and limited time; whilst often working with very large teams of volunteers. In one organisation I worked for, a part-time Volunteer Coordinator working twenty-one hours a week could expect to have to coordinate a team of maybe 180 volunteers – giving their time across the whole working week, as well as during evenings and weekends. I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

Whilst this is all going on, the role of the volunteering team is often misunderstood, undervalued or an unappreciated. They may not have the seniority, visibility, credibility, budget or support to do what they’d really like to do and achieve the transformative magic we all know is possible when you get a team of motivated and engaged volunteers, in the right roles, with the right training and support, behind a cause they are passionate about.

It’s unsurprising then that Volunteer Coordinators and Managers are always striving to meet everybody else’s needs without a moment to think about their own – overworked, working long and irregular hours, having to positively support everyone, resolving conflict and relationship difficulties between employees and volunteers, dealing with mountains of processes and admin. As well the simple task of engaging and inspiring people to give up their free time to join them!

At the end of my twenty years in the sector I was stressed, overwhelmed, burnt out, exhausted and, quite frankly, I‘d just ran out of steam with it all. Unfortunately, I know my story isn’t unique. Many experienced volunteer managers are moving on to different roles, different sectors or, like me, different ways of making a living entirely. And many others are exhausted, on the brink of burning out or feeling overwhelmed, disengaged and losing their passion for the role. It’s such an important distinctive, inspiring, fun, engaging and rewarding role that we can’t let this continue to happen.

This is just one of the many reasons I launched my business, The KJ Way. I teach brain-based mindfulness tools and practices that Volunteer Coordinators and Managers, and other charity managers, can use when they really need them to help manage stress, avoid burnout and overwhelm; and build their own resilience, effectiveness and wellbeing.

Mindfulness, like volunteering, is something I am very passionate about, and that’s because, like volunteering, I’ve seen and felt its impact. Mindfulness has transformed my life: it’s helped me to overcome stress, anxiety and depression. It’s helped me to be more resilient, effective, and focussed and to remain calm and composed during a crisis. It’s taught me to respond intentionally rather than reacting emotionally to situations (for the most part!) and it’s helped me to experience more balance, equanimity and joy in my life.

So, what is mindfulness?

I like this definition from Jon Kabat Zinn, the founder of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programme. Mindfulness is “the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”.

For me, mindfulness is about paying attention to the moment you’re living while you’re living it, bringing all of your mental energy and focus into the moment – not being distracted by ruminating on the past or worrying about the future. It’s also about being curious and open to what people and experiences and situations are really like, rather than judging them through the lens of your pre-conceived expectations. It’s the practice of paying attention to the moment you’re living, whilst you’re living it and a willingness to accept and be with what is. It’s a way of being, that allows you to experience much more of life’s wonders in every moment.

Why is it so good?

Mindfulness isn’t hard to do, and it doesn’t take long to do either. But it is a practice, it does require some commitment to using the techniques and bringing a more mindful approach into your day to day life. The benefits are impressive, I’ve felt them, I’ve seen them in others, and neuroscientists and researchers have proved them too (Mindful.org have a fab summary of some of this research). Over time, mindfulness has been proven to change the neural pathways and networks in our brains and improve our resilience, attention and focus, compassion and empathy and our awareness of our sense of self.

Mindfulness is becoming more and more popular and widespread with organisations around the world turning to it to support their people with a wide range of organisational, HR and Wellbeing challenges and priorities.

I’m committed to sharing these benefits of mindfulness in workplaces to help people to bring their true selves to work, with more energy and resilience, and to continue to feel passionate about what they’re doing with their working lives.

If any of this resonates with you, and you’d like to:

manage your stress and avoid burnout
learn how to respond rather than react to situations
maintain your focus in face of constant distractions
learn how to be aware of and manage your emotions and thoughts
improve your focus and effectiveness
have more energy at work
embrace change more easily and help others to adapt to change too
deal with difficult relationship issues

Mindfulness might be just what you need too!

How to do it

There are many ways to practise mindfulness and bring a more mindful approach to your life. There’s lots of formal foundational meditation practises like the awareness of breath, the body scan, and meditations for attention, and for cultivating compassion. These can take as little as five minutes to complete, but most people do something between 10-20 minutes several times a week.

With our busy workloads and stressful lives, it’s not always easy to fit in a full meditation, so for workplaces, I really love to share a range of micro practices. These literally just take a few moments to do and you can reach for them in any moments of need, pressure, stress and challenge throughout your day.

Why not give it a go!

“STOP” is one of my favourite micro practices that you can try on your own.

STOP is an acronym standing for Stop, Take, Observe and Proceed. You can use this simple and fast practice any time you need a moment of mindfulness. For example, when you are triggered by something stressful, you’re struggling with a change or difficult situation, or when someone has said something, and you think you’re about to respond in a way you might later regret!

STOP allows you to pause in the face of a stimulating event. It creates a space for observing your feelings and thoughts and allows you to access deeper resources within you before you respond from a place of wisdom, strength and presence. STOP helps you to learn how to respond rather than react to situations.

Each step just takes a few moments to complete, and the more you practise STOP when life is calm, the more accessible it is to you, and the more you can rely on it, when you really need it in those moments of challenge, change or stress. Once you know the practice, it can take just take a minute or so to go through it all.

So, let’s go through the steps:

Stop – literally stop or pause what you’re doing, give yourself a moment to come to rest and collect yourself.

Take – take a few slow, long, deep breaths. Try to notice the sensations of the breath in the body – you may feel a rise of your belly or chest with every inhale, and a fall back of your belly and chest on the exhale. Or maybe you feel the breath at the tip of your nostrils – cool air coming in, warm air going out.

Observe – observe your experience right now in this moment. Become aware of the position of your body, feeling the support of the floor under your feet, noticing any sensations that are here – is there tightness, stiffness, aches? Sensing any emotions that are here in this moment – is there anger, irritation, boredom or perhaps restlessness or joy? Noticing thoughts too – is your mind focused on this moment, or is it distracted by the past or the future? Is it calm or busy, cloudy or clear? Not judging what you find as good or bad, or right or wrong, just being aware of what’s here and letting it all be.

Proceed – as you start to calm down, break out of autopilot mode, and start to feel a sense of being grounded in the present moment – try to be open to the choices you have right in front of you. Ask yourself, what’s the best way to move forward from here? What’s most important to you right now? How would you like to show up in the next moment? Then proceed taking the next steps in your day from this place of greater wisdom, strength, presence and choice.

Come along to a free group session!

The STOP practice is just one of many practices that can help you to achieve more balance, calm and control in your day. If you’d like to try out some more, why not come along to one of my weekly group mindfulness sessions?

We meet over Zoom, on Friday lunchtimes at 12.30p.m. for half an hour. We explore one practice together and have chance to chat about it too. I’m opening these sessions up to guests, for free, every Friday in September 2022. Don’t worry if you can’t make every week – just come along when you can. Click here to register and receive the Zoom details.

If you’d like to find out more about how Mindfulness can help you and your colleagues, please do get in touch for an informal chat (email me or call me on 07919 561446) or check out my website. You can also register to receive regular tips, practices and invites straight into your inbox or find me on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Five tips for recruiting volunteers

Regular readers of this blog will know that I mainly write thought leadership articles on important and timely issues for volunteer engagement professionals. Every now and again, however, I like to throw in a more practical, how-to, post.

Buried away on my old blog site, I found an article from 2015 exploring five top tips for recruiting volunteers. When I re-read it, I felt it needed editing to improve it (everything can be improved!) and it deserved a new lease of life on the current blog. So, here it is, and I hope you find it helpful.

1. Target

A common mistake people make when recruiting volunteers is implying that anyone could do the role you require filled.

It’s a technique that can work, but is only really appropriate for roles where the only criteria for being a good volunteer is you have a pulse, here why it is often called warm body recruitment!

For any other roles, I always recommend you target, target, target.

Here are some questions to ask:

What do you want the volunteer to do? It’s a question that’s frequently ignored, or very little time gets spent on it. Make sure you give proper attention to the things you want volunteers to do so you can answer the next question.
Who would be the ideal volunteer for this role? If you need a driver, then you want people who can drive and who probably have a clean licence. Maybe they also require access to a car. If the driving is to collect furniture for a charity shop, then the person likely needs to be fit and healthy to cope with the lifting. Get as a specific as possible. Avoid saying anyone can do it. That may be the case for some roles, but if you segment that broad audience into categories, you will be better placed to answer the final question.
Where are you likely to find them? Avoid the clichés like advertising in doctors’ surgeries and libraries unless you think the ideal volunteer is likely to be found there. To continue our driver example, why would you want a driver who’s at the doctors? What leads you to think you’ll find drivers hanging out at the library? Where might you find fit and healthy drivers? If you need them during the day, where might they be?

2. Ask

Once you’ve got your target group identified, do not forget to actually ask them to volunteer. Sounds stupid, I know, but research consistently shows that people who don’t volunteer feel like they haven’t been asked to give time.

Ask, ask, ask.

Keeping asking.

And when you’re done, ask some more.

Don’t just recruit a couple of times a year. A potential volunteer may see that recruitment ask but not be available when it’s made. Three months later, that person can give you some time, but you’re not asking any more, and they’ve forgotten you ever did.

3. Sell

Please, no adverts for volunteers that say, “Help! We need volunteers”, or “Help! We urgently need volunteers”. That approach stands out (in the wrong way!) from all other forms of advertising by selling what you need, not by explain how a product (in this case, volunteering) will make the buyer fitter, happier, healthier, more attractive etc.

Sell your volunteer opportunities like a business would sell its products. Focus on the benefits of someone volunteering, not the features. When we buy something, we don’t just look at what it can do, but how it will help us. Same with volunteering — show people how volunteering will meet their needs, don’t simply tell them what they will do or how desperate you are for help.

Oh, and please don’t generically say ‘make a difference’ when recruiting. Everyone says that. Why would I make more of a difference with your organisation than another one? If you want to say your volunteers will make a difference, then say what difference they will make, and how it will be of benefit to them.

4. Respond

At this point, nobody has actually become a volunteer. All you’ve done is clarify what requires doing, who would be the ideal person to do that, and then communicated your offer to them. Hopefully, people will respond. Hopefully, the ‘right’ people will respond, saving you countless hours wading through unsuitable applications.

What happens when they do?

Do they get a speedy response (including outside usual working hours) thanking them for their interest in volunteering, explaining the next steps and being clear about timeframes? Or do they hear nothing as their enquiry vanishes into an over-full inbox until someone get rounds to responding, maybe a week or two down the line? Do they get a friendly voice on the phone or a disinterested, over-worked colleague who doesn’t even know about the organisation’s need for volunteers?

Far too many times potential volunteers get the disinterested colleague, or they wait for days for an email reply. Volunteer Managers then claim nobody wants to volunteer, or it’s getting harder to recruit.

Put simply, if you are going to ask for some of people’s precious spare time, make sure you have the capacity to provide great customer service to them when they do get in touch. Make use of simple tools like out-of-office email and voicemail messages, so people instantly know when you’ll reply, and when that might be. Check out volunteer management software that can automatically email people who apply with a welcome message.

5. Scale of engagement

The days of people signing up for regular, long-term volunteering on day one are pretty much gone. That was true before the pandemic and is even more true now. People don’t thrill to that kind of commitment any more. This is often misinterpreted as the days of long-term, committed volunteering being over.

I disagree.

We can get people to make the kind of regular commitments we want, but we have to be patient and plan for it. We need to offer a scale of engagement, with regular, committed, long-term volunteering at one end, and shorter term, flexible, bite-sized, easy to access opportunities at the other. Then we then start them at the easy end and, as we get to know them, we try to encourage them to move up the scale. It may take weeks, months, or even years, but some volunteers will climb the scale to give you the committed service you desire.

By the way, this approach can also be great if your volunteers have to be criminal record checked before they start volunteering. If you have some quick, easy, time-limited opportunities available then they can get stuck into those whilst the result of the check is pending.

So, there you have it, five quick tips on recruiting volunteers.

If you’d like to get better at volunteer recruitment, then Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd can help. Get in touch today for more information.

Now it’s over to you. What are your top tips? Please share them below.

Find out more about Rob and Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd on the website.

Response one

Response two

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reMarkable

Dropbox

Fantastical

Things

Evernote

Readwise

Snpid

Otter.Ai

Ulysses

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Tactic One — Strategic Volunteer Integration

Clear Vision and Role Definition

Streamlined Onboarding

Tactic Two — Tech-Driven Engagement Enhancement

Volunteer Management Systems

Virtual Engagement Expansion

Tactic Three — Empowerment and Community Building

Personalised Recognition

Leadership Cultivation

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Poor Communication

Lack of Volunteer Training

Failing to Match Volunteers with Suitable Roles

Ignoring Volunteer Feedback and Recognition

Inadequate Volunteer Supervision

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How did I get here?

My advice to you

My top tips

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So, what is mindfulness?

Why is it so good?

How to do it

Why not give it a go!

Come along to a free group session!

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1. Target

2. Ask

3. Sell

4. Respond

5. Scale of engagement

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