Guidelines for drawing up and implementing a volunteering policy

Introducing a new volunteering policy can raise a number of issues, and staff involvement in working with volunteers has to be carefully considered. It's quite possible that staff may have fears about working with volunteers: for instance, that their jobs will be substituted, that they will have more work to do or that volunteers will get all the interesting tasks to do.

It's important that staff are involved in drawing up and discussing the policy. This process may identify staff roles that will involve managing volunteers and those that don't have that responsibility.

A volunteering policy should:

• Be based on consultation within the organisation.
• Clearly express the goals of your organisation.
• Explain why your organisation includes volunteers.
• Give guidelines on the nature of volunteer roles and how these differ from staff roles.
• Acknowledge that different volunteers will have different motivations.
• Give guidelines on recruitment (e.g. statutory interviews, who will do the interviewing).
• Highlight the policy on supervision and refer to volunteer agreements which will specify who will supervise and support the volunteer.
• Mention practical matters such as expenses, induction and training, insurance.
• Mention other policies where volunteers are included, such as health and safety, equal opportunities and confidentiality.

Other important measures include:

• Helping staff to see the benefits of involving volunteers.
• Getting staff input in creating volunteer role specifications.
• Supporting and possibly training staff who are managing volunteers.
• Regularly reviewing the volunteer policy, and possibly introducing staff and volunteer forums to monitor policy.
• Creating a new staff induction procedure to include volunteering issues as a matter of course.

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