On 3 November, Volunteering Victoria members took part in a workshop exploring what makes volunteers tick.  Facilitated by Hudson Talent Management Consultants Guy Drerup and Lindsay Peterson, members were introduced to the theory of volunteer motivation and invited to debate their experiences of theory versus practice.

Guest contributor Guy Drerup has agreed to share his understanding of volunteer motivations as a base for effective recruitment and retention strategies.

Volunteer recruitment is typically a challenging process for a host of reasons. Whether it be matching a candidate’s good intentions to a role, determining capability to do the work or even just attracting enough candidates, these challenges arise in a variety of ways.  Even after a candidate has been recruited into a role the challenge continues to motivate and retain them, which can be quite costly for many organisations if time, money and effort have been invested in inducting and developing people.

Think functional

Fortunately, there is a simple and highly effective way of thinking that can dramatically assist with how volunteer organisations approach the attraction, selection and retention of their staff.

The functional model examines what motivates different volunteers who perform the same activity.  Having been applied by leading volunteer researcher, Gil Clary, the model includes six functions that have been comprehensively identified as being served when individuals participate in volunteer activity. These are:

• Values – volunteers feel their personal values align with the activity
• Understanding – volunteers learn, do, or understand something they otherwise would not in their paid job or other interests
• Social – volunteers have the opportunity to make friends and socialise with people they know
• Career – volunteers seek to build their skills, capability and experience by completing particular roles
• Protective – volunteers aim to avoid or protect themselves against aspects of their ego that detract from their self view; for example, their personal voice says: “You’d better volunteer or you are a bad person”.
• Enhancement – volunteers participate because the activity strengthens or enhances how they feel about themselves;  their personal voice says: “Because you volunteer, you are a good person.”

The functional model has been tested through a large amount of research across the globe and found to be sound, valid and applicable to all sorts of volunteer organisations.

Attraction

When considering how to recruit new volunteers we must first plan how to attract people to join.  Questions to ask include:

• How do we attract new volunteers?
• What mediums and channels do we use to communicate with prospective volunteers?
• How do we construct and write our recruitment message?

Combining the answers to these questions with the functional model, it is possible to develop a clear and effective attraction strategy that will deliver great results.

Too often organisations create slogans, posters and websites that fail to engage with candidates.  A well-constructed recruitment message should consider the six functions of volunteering for potential candidates you wish to target.  It should leave the candidate feeling confident that they can find satisfaction by participating in your volunteer activity.  The message should motivate the candidate to get up and out of bed, energise them to hurriedly get changed after work or drive them to reserve time on the weekend for your activity.  A properly-developed recruitment message brings a far greater likelihood of the right candidates knocking at your door.

Selection

After getting the right candidates to show interest in volunteering with you it comes time to make a selection.  The functional model can be usefully applied again to understand candidates’ motivation for seeking volunteer employment.

However, simply asking outright “what motivates you?” risks receiving a crafted response that paints the candidate in a shining light.  A more effective way is to gather evidence of activities the individual have participated in, get them talking and ask probing questions about how different incidents have made them feel satisfied or dissatisfied.

If your questions are not subtly drawing out the motivations of a candidate, you risk selecting someone who will only do half the job, affect other volunteers and potentially be difficult to manage.  Get it right, however, and you will have an excellent team member who is driven to deliver what your organisation needs and is worth their weight in gold.  The information you derive from an interview can also be used to support managers; knowing what makes a person ‘tick’ goes a long way to getting the most out of them.

Retention

Understanding what motivates new and existing volunteers aside from the work that needs to be done is central to retaining them.  There are a few somewhat unavoidable factors that affect a volunteer’s level of participation, namely those that compete for their time and energy and are typically major milestones or changes in life.  Recognising that these events will occur and compete for the attention of your volunteers, it is best to tap into their volunteer motivations to support satisfaction and increase the likelihood of retention.

• Values – immerse volunteers in activities that stimulate and appeal to their values
• Understanding – challenge volunteers to pursue the pinnacle of technical expertise and capability in your organisation
• Social – create opportunities for volunteers to socialise during their work and informally outside of standard volunteer work
• Career – understand what sort of paid work volunteers want to pursue and the skills needed, then assign supervised tasks to take them in that direction
• Protective – while this function is less likely to be observed explicitly, managers can still carefully gauge whether it is important and reinforce the motivation with well-chosen words, e.g. “How would you feel if you weren’t volunteering? I know some people who would be harsh on themselves if they didn’t make the time.”
• Enhancement – more likely to be observed than the Protective function, reinforcement through simple recognition can go a long way to leave volunteers feeling satisfied, e.g. telling volunteers that they are “doing a good job” and reminding them of the impact they have on people’s lives.

Strengthen your approach

The functional model is not a panacea for the inherent challenges that occur with attraction, selection and retention of volunteers.  There are many variables, often out of your control, that will from time to time moderate the effectiveness of your efforts.  At the same time, the functional model offers an excellent approach to strengthening these essential activities.

About the writer

Guy Drerup is a Talent Management Consultant at Hudson and a volunteer life saver.  His Master’s thesis explored “Volunteer motivations and turnover intentions”.  Volunteering Victoria is grateful for Hudson’s ongoing support as sponsors and experts in human resources management.