A moment of realisation occurred to me as I was preparing for this newsletter: You don’t see many people volunteering to do what they do in their paid work. It’s pretty logical really - why would anyone do something all day for money and then turn around and do the same thing for no pay? Volunteers need to be extending themselves, to be gaining something from their donation of time and effort. The on-the-job training that we give our volunteers is vital in the grand project of keeping the learning pathways growing. And it’s safer to assume that a volunteer is new to a discipline rather than an old hand who can do the task “standing on their head” and without being fully briefed.
It’s reasonable to assume a few things about volunteers:
- They are in it to give something to the association and to the art
- They are in it to learn a skill - or two or three and they don’t necessarily know all there is to know about the job, its possibilities or how best to tackle it.
- They are intelligent people with plenty of initiative - or they wouldn’t have offered
- They may also be a bit over optimistic about their knowledge and capacity - being outside their normal work experience.
I think we should plan the succession of important skilled positions by getting in advice or even a consultant to look through the task and set it up with the new volunteer so that they can learn and perform in the task.
Food for thought.
Jenny Rickards
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