Improving the Volunteer Recruitment Journey

In recent years volunteer involving organisations have continued to struggle with volunteer shortages. This trend is unlikely to end any time soon with the increase in the cost of living causing a greater need for many services supported by volunteers, while at the same time creating a barrier for many to volunteer. Additionally, the expectation from potential volunteers is to be recruited and onboarded as quickly as possible. An important step to recruiting volunteers is ensuring their recruitment journey is positive, streamlined and provides them with the knowledge they need to succeed in their role. Reviewing and improving your volunteer recruitment journey with a focus on the user experience is critical to meeting volunteer expectations. Here are some key steps to improving your volunteer recruitment journey.

🗺️ Map out the current and future volunteer recruitment journeys

By mapping out the volunteer recruitment journey, leaders of volunteers can document the current state, understand the interactions between process steps, people and systems, illustrate the flow, identify waste and opportunities for improvement. Here are some tips to support you:

1. Identify the key stakeholders who are involved in the volunteer recruitment journey and form a project team. Consider who can be involved in mapping the volunteer recruitment journey and who can add insight into what is happening now and what can be improved. Ideally a cross functional team will be involved in the mapping process to ensure items aren’t missed. Including volunteer representatives is essential and demonstrates that their opinions are valued.
2. Run a workshop for the project team to map out and review the volunteer recruitment process, beginning and ending with the volunteer. For example, start with a potential volunteer seeking information about volunteering at your organisation and end when they are a registered volunteer. The best way to do this is by running a workshop with key stakeholders (or representatives) and mapping the process out by using butcher’s paper and sticky notes. Use different colour sticky notes to identify process steps, systems, external suppliers, internal suppliers and improvement ideas.
3. Start by mapping out the process steps, for example ‘seek information’, ‘complete application form’ and then add the systems, external suppliers, internal suppliers and improvement ideas.
4. Include approximately how long it takes for each process step and between each step. This will identify when applicants are waiting for longer than necessary and help prompt opportunities to reduce the time and streamline the recruitment journey.
5. Identify any unnecessary steps (waste) and opportunities for improvement in your volunteer recruitment process. Examples of waste in a recruitment process include:
   • Unnecessary steps
   • Lack of standardisation e.g. induction checklists, email templates
   • Duplicated records
   • Applicants misunderstanding of the process due to it not being provided to them
   • Ineffective rostering e.g. inductions or training
   • Bottlenecks e.g. where applicants are waiting to attend an information session, induction, training or for their application to be read.
   • Unnecessary data entry, for example a volunteer filling in an application and a leader of volunteers entering the information into a database, instead of having an online application form feed into a volunteer management system.
   • Non-utilised skills
   • Recruiting more volunteers than required for a specific role
6. Run an additional workshop with the project team, following the steps above, only this time map out the future state once the improvements have been implemented.

📣 Communicate for your audience

Focusing again on the user experience, it is important to provide communication which is easy to read, relevant and engaging. Doing so will reduce barriers for many to volunteer and create a positive experience. Additionally, with a safety lens, a procedure or instructions that are too difficult to understand could result in a safety incident. Here are some tips to consider for communication with potential volunteers throughout their recruitment journey.

1. Ensure the information applicants need is provided to them at the appropriate time. Provide current information, written in plain English on application forms and your website.
2. Some basic principles that can be applied for writing in plain English include:
   • Use simple everyday words
   • Use headings and lists where possible
   • Use short sentences
   • Only use necessary words
   • Write in an active voice (we, you, us)
   • Avoid slang or jargon
3. Depending on your organisation, location and community, do you need to consider providing information in another language?
4. Provide engaging videos on your website, social media, and induction information.
5. Include current volunteers in promotional material and onboarding videos and training.
6. Only ask questions which are necessary on an application form. If for reporting reasons you are required to ask questions which could be viewed as irrelevant and personal, ensure these questions are optional and communicate the reason why they are being asked.
7. Communicate in a timely manner.