Author Archives: Richard Dickson

This weekend our Conference in Bournemouth will be full of volunteers. And, for a myriad of very good reasons, tens of thousands of more Lib Dem volunteers will not be in Bournemouth. At Conference a handful of volunteers will receive awards from the Party for their service. And that’s right and proper. But all of them need cherishing and recognising as the heroes that they are.

There is almost nothing in paid employment that can prepare anyone for working with volunteers. Leadership and team management training in paid employment relates exclusively to working with colleagues who are paid to do what they do. Ultimately, where there is a formal contract of employment, the incentive of a positive appraisal, the reward of a performance bonus or even a promotion can be used to motivate people to get things done.

But managing people where they are doing what they’re doing simply out of a sense of belief and conviction is another higher set of skills altogether. Especially when the volunteer is almost certainly juggling their own paid employment, as well as being stressed with domestic responsibilities, the burdens of elected office and other community commitments. It’s about winning over the volunteer’s head and heart, their hands and their feet, their time and their wallet.

I’ve worked in the corporate world, higher education and in the voluntary and community sector. The latter is often wrongly referred to as The Third Sector, as though somehow it’s inferior to whatever are the first and second sectors. Sadly the charitable sector is littered with examples of organisations that have taken their volunteers for granted. Look at the damaging impact on volunteer engagement that can arise from service changes, from botched reorganisations and from the miscommunication of a rebranding.