Why not an HR approach to volunteer engagement?

Imagine for me an HR department. HR departments:

  • make sure employees get compensated (payroll, etc),
  • reviews the organization’s HR practices in comparison to laws, standards, and best practices,
  • establishes policies for hiring, firing, etc.,
  • develop (or help other departments develop) job descriptions,
  • plan professional development for employees, and
  • help departments do performance reviews

among other services. They serve as internal consultants to the rest of the organization on managing employees.

HR departments are NOT responsible for supervising the organization’s employees (other than the employees in the HR department).

HR departments and volunteer resource departments both deal with people, with the main difference being that one group gets paid with money, and the other group receives other benefits.

However, volunteer departments often serve very different roles. Rather than supporting the organization’s volunteer engagement, they actually manage (recruit, supervise, schedule, etc) the organization’s volunteers.

Let’s view volunteer engagement through an HR model lens. What if we tasked volunteer departments with:

  • making sure volunteers get rewarded (though meaning, purpose, development opportunities, etc.),
  • reviews the organization’s volunteer engagement practices in comparison to laws, standards, and best practices,
  • establishes policies for hiring, firing, etc.,
  • developing (or helping other departments develop) role descriptions,
  • planning development opportunities for volunteers,
  • helping departments to performance review of volunteers, and
  • serving as internal consultants to all of the departments who engage volunteers,

BUT NOT

  • actually supervising all the organization’s volunteers (other than the volunteers engaged by the volunteer department)?

In this way, volunteer resource departments can mirror HR departments.

In this way, “volunteer programs” don’t exist; instead, there are programs and departments that happen to engage volunteers.

In this way, every department can become responsible for engaging volunteers.