These people are vital to daily management of volunteer involvement for all parties: the staff of each specific work area, the volunteers assigned there, and the volunteer office trying together to make volunteer management consistent and effective throughout the organisation.

 

The work of a liaison is not necessarily demanding or continually time consuming. As with so many other recommendations in this book, however, the responsibility must be handled intentionally. So everyone in the team must know who the point person is, and if something related to volunteers arises, the liaison must be able to prioritise dealing with it.   

 

 

...As CEO, you can make certain that employees are trained to support the volunteer office in its relations with the public. Reception desk personnel and others with front-line public contact responsibilities should project a friendly and appreciative image to all prospective and active volunteers. In a small office, this requirement extends to all staff who routinely answer phones or greet visitors for one another. (This is a great example of behaviour change that benefits everyone, not just volunteers.)

 

Unfortunately, we have all grown accustomed to the ubiquitous presence of automated voicemail systems [which]...for prospective volunteers may be an unhelpful hurdle to jump in the process of considering whether to give time. At a minimum, test the system to make sure that contact with the volunteer office is a specific option to select and that it is easy to leave a message - not to mention ensuring that a staff member calls back soon!

 

Similarly, prospective volunteers are increasingly submitting e-mail messages and online applications, which carry the expectation of a prompt reply. It is vital to acknowledge that the electronic application was received, pledge to get in touch again within a certain amount of time, and then do so.

 

One other staffing point is that the director of volunteer involvement is not a substitute for volunteers. If a scheduled volunteer is absent for whatever reason, it is not appropriate to expect the director of volunteer involvement to go to the team and handle the volunteer's work for that day. This is, of course, no different from expectations we hold for employee supervisors. If an employee is not present, the work is generally held until the person returns; the supervisor does not step in to do it unless some emergency warrants this. Actually, since volunteers are deployed in the organisation in various work areas, if a task assigned to an absent volunteer is critical, the most appropriate substitute would be a line worker in that team - not the director of volunteer involvement, who is not part of the team.