Merrill Associates

Kate Brooks, University of Sheffield, published research in Voluntary Action (Journal of the Institute of Voluntary Action) about a series of conversations with volunteers to gather their perceptions about volunteering, and their personal motivations for volunteering. She identified three practical findings from her work: 1.) the need to balance "cause" and work skills; 2.) the need to establish clear goals for how and when volunteering can create a personal positive impact; and, 3.) the need to actively listen to the insights, expectations and assumptions of volunteers. Ms. Brooks concludes that her narrow study points to an ongoing need for volunteer mangers to engage in constructive dialogue with volunteers.

This idea of active or intentional listening was recently promoted in HR.com, the Human Resources Management Magazine. In his article, "10 Conversations That Can Transform Your Workplace", Tom Terez suggests managers can learn much from employees [volunteers] by harnessing the power of informal conversation in the workplace. The skill is to use these conversations as opportunities for meaningful discovery rather than everyday gripe sessions.

Following are six sets of questions designed to facilitate discussion about volunteering in your organization.

1. Engaging work - When was the last time you so enjoyed the work that you completely forgot about the time? What made it so interesting, the work itself, the process of the work, the people you were working with? What made the volunteer work an engaging activity? Seeing results ~V What results do you look for? What makes you feel your efforts are having a positive impact? What type of information would help you better understand and recognize the impact/outcome of your work?
2. Challenges as opportunities - What are the biggest challenges/barriers in the work you do? What opportunities for change or new approaches can you identify based on the challenges you face? Is there an atmosphere that promotes a certain degree of risk taking? Is it acceptable to trying new approaches or designing new ways of doing the work? If you had the authority, what would you do? What holds you back?
3. Productive time - How much of your time is wasted on meetings, paperwork, procedures, etc.? Are their ways this unproductive time can be restructured into more meaningful activity? Do you s0ometimes feel like you are doing busy work? How can we best facilitate the environment so that you have maximum use of your time?
4. Listening to gossip - What do others, volunteers and paid staff, say about the organization, the work, and the customers, when they are talking informally? What are the criticisms you hear? What seems to be the number one complaint in this volunteer setting (workplace or organization)? What do people wish they had more time to do? What would need to happen to make this a happen?
5. Teamwork and community - Is there truly an emphasis on teamwork and a sense of shared community between paid staff and volunteers? Is there a sense of shared community among all volunteers or volunteer groups? Do we reward individual achievement as well as group action? Does the workplace feel like a cohesive unit or a loose collection of diverse styles and agendas?
6. Respect - Do you see everyone treated with respect? Does the organization treat everyone, consumer, paid staff and volunteers with respect and dignity? Do you feel valued, on a day-to-day basis, for the contributions you make as a volunteer?

If we really want to understand what it is like to volunteer with our organization, we need to listen to our customers ~V our volunteers. These discussions should not be seen as gripe session, but rather as dialogues designed for meaningful discovery. These conversations are best done as informal conversations that focus on one or two thought provoking questions or themes.

Ms. Brooks suggests that we use these conversations to consider the following:

• How is ideal volunteering described? What kind of attitudes and actions is it assumed to involve? What are volunteers most looking for?
• How is this volunteer work contrasted with other forms of volunteering? If people volunteer for different groups or do a variety of work, what are the contracts and comparisons?
• What repetitious and/or reoccurring themes are there?

Making the time to listen, intentionally listen, beyond the every day chit-chat can provide excellent insights about volunteer expectations and experiences. Learning organizations listen to their customers and seek ways to improve based on customer input. Volunteer managers should continually monitor volunteer conversations as a way of increasing their understanding about the motives, expectations, frustrations and assumption of volunteers.

Highly successful volunteer programs continually listening to their customer:

There is openness to the possibility for change, an eagerness to improve performance and conscious, organized efforts to learn from and about volunteers~R experience in the organization.
(Allen, 1996)

Brooks, Kate (2002).Talking about volunteering: a discourse analysis approach to volunteer motivations.Voluntary Action, Volume 4, Number 3, Autumn 2002. Pages 13-28.

Terez, Tom (2003) 10 conversations that can transform your workplace.
HR.com Downloaded 3/05 from:http://www.hr.com/hrcom/index.cfm/WeeklyMag/65E28C61-C7C2-4948-9FB7CAAD5799CDCD.