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.

Above all else, working with volunteers requires appreciation, patience and gratitude. As volunteers we choose to do what we do. We‘re under no contractual obligation. It’s true we are an army, and that the Liberal Democrat army is an army that other political parties covet. But we cannot be ordered around. We need cherishing. We need affirmation. We need never to be taken for granted.

Many years ago I recall our then Party President saying we need to make unreasonable demands of each other if the Party was to succeed. No! 

The physical, emotional, intellectual and even spiritual wellbeing of our volunteers is what’s vital to the Party’s future success. Yes volunteers will go to extraordinary lengths for the party, but only if they feel they are genuinely appreciated. Not having unreasonable demands made of them.

For a Liberal Democrat it may be hard to quote Henry Kissinger. But, at least in terms of quality volunteer engagement, he was right to say such quality is about ‘the subtle accumulation of nuances, a hundred things done a little better.’

So at Conference this weekend by all means let’s give some much-deserved awards to a few volunteers. 

But the best thing that we can do for all of our volunteers is this: 

to show, day in day out, that we care who they are and what they do. 

And, please, let’s get even better at doing so.

* Richard Dickson joined the West Midlands Liberal Democrat Regional Executive in 2021 and became Chair in January 2022. He is a District Councillor in Warwick and a Warwickshire County Councillor. Richard Dickson is a Lib Dem Councillor in Warwickshire.