Volunteering Magazine, Issue 106, April 2005
By the book
Mark Restall, senior information officer at Volunteering England, outlines what voluntary and community organisations should include in a volunteer handbook.
Good practice advice on volunteer policies abounds what should be in one, how to write one or revise it. Ive written thousands of words on policies over the years. But despite constantly referring to volunteer handbooks, theres little information on what a handbook should actually contain.
To understand this it can help to compare volunteer handbooks with volunteer policies.
A volunteer policy is a document that sets out the overall principles that will govern how the volunteer programme is run. It acts as a central hub from which other policies and procedures spring for example, equal opportunities and health and safety. Its likely to summarise and signpost readers to useful sources of information. The policy is normally written with the entire organisation in mind, as it can also help trustees and paid staff to understand why volunteers are being involved, and how the organisation will work with them.
On the other hand, a volunteer handbook carries information that will be helpful for the volunteer as part of their day-to-day work for the organisation. One way to think of a volunteer handbook is as a back-up to induction. Starting in a new environment isnt easy. Theres a lot of information to take in, names and faces to remember, details about the role to absorb, and so on.
Although not as important as a volunteer policy, handbooks can be extremely useful for volunteers. Volunteer handbooks are not a substitution for induction. You cant get away with handing new volunteers a few sheets of A4 on their first day and leave them to get on with it.
Theres no blueprint for a volunteer handbook. Some organisations use handbooks as more of a guide to the type of work volunteers will be doing. Others have one document that combines both handbook and policy, though preference would be to have a shorter policy separate from the handbook.
Do you need a handbook?
If youre only involving a small number of volunteers infrequently, then a handbook might not be such a priority. However, the more volunteers you have, and the greater distance there is between volunteers and their supervisors, the more important the handbook becomes.
Even if you feel that your organisation is small and friendly enough to do without a handbook, its still worth having an induction pack of some sort to collect together your policies and procedures for volunteers.
What should be in the handbook?
This really depends on your organisation. Put yourself in the place of a volunteer. What information might you need to feel part of the organisation? It can help to ask current volunteers what information they would have liked to see written down. Some things about your working environment or office culture may seem perfectly obvious to you but could be mystifying to an outsider.
Background information on your organisation.
Most volunteers want an understanding of what they are doing and how they are helping.
What does your organisation do and why?
Somewhere in the pack you might want to include something like an organisational chart to explain how the organisation works. Newcomers to the voluntary sector may not be aware of how trustees relate to the organisation, for example.
Day-to-day life in the organisation
Your handbook is the place to give the kind of information that will make the volunteers life easier. For example, it could tell volunteers that they are welcome to make drinks using the tea and coffee in the cupboard above the kettle, or give them information about where to leave bicycles.
You could explain internal communication are there pigeonholes for volunteers? Staff meetings? Volunteer meetings? Do you have an intranet?
Expenses
Your volunteer policy might say that you reimburse out-of-pocket expenses, and list those that you consider reasonable. The handbook can explain exactly how to claim take your receipts and the pink claim form to the finance manager.
Practical health and safety information
Obvious information here would be the fire exits and assembly points. First aid officers and where the first aid box is kept could also be identified.
Policies and procedures
Some organisations choose to collect together polices and procedures relevant to volunteers in their handbook. Its a sensible thing to do, but they are best placed as an appendix. Having them in the main text is likely to make the handbook a bit heavy going.
Accessibility
As with all volunteer documents, its important to ensure that it is both accessible and readable. Theres no point in going to a great deal of trouble putting together something that people wont read because its impenetrable and boring, or that excludes readers with sight problems, dyslexia or learning difficulties. You can make documents more accessible immediately by using a clear sans serif font such as Arial, at 12 point at the very least 14 is preferable. Using clear informal English also helps.
Examples of handbooks
As already discussed, the actual nature of the handbook depends on your organisation. To get a feel for the variety of handbooks it can be worth looking at some of the many examples available on the internet. Typing Volunteer Handbook into www.google.co.uk throws up a number of examples. Butterfly Conservation Scotlands handbook is aimed at volunteer fieldworkers monitoring butterfly and moth numbers.
Most of the information is about monitoring and recording techniques, which is obviously ideally suited to the needs of its volunteers.
It also includes information on health and safety, insurance and expenses. Not to mention the handy advice on using butterfly nets that if you arent looking like an idiot then youre not doing it right!.
Skills volunteer handbook is a good example of a straightforward document that covers the information volunteers are likely to find useful. Its available at: www.skill.org.uk/
So, for example, the section on While youre in the office covers:
- Breaks and refreshments
- Noticeboard and information
- Staff meetings
- Office outings
- Use of phone and photocopier
- Smoking
- Dress code
- Insurance
- Health and safety
- First aid
- Privacy
Volunteers are told:
You can help yourself to tea, coffee and water during the day. There is a kitchen on our floor with a fridge, a toaster and microwave that you are welcome to use.
We really hope you enjoy volunteering with us. However, in case there are any initial worries, we treat the first three weeks you spend with us as a trial period. At the end of that time we will have a chat and if you want to stop volunteering with us, thats OK. If you want to clear up some concerns or maybe change some of the tasks youre doing, thats also when we can discuss it.
While of course it would be pointless for organisations to copy the Skill handbook, they could do worse than copy its informal, informative approach.
Skill: National Bureau for Students with Disabilities is a UK national charity promoting opportunities in post-16 education, work-based learning, volunteering and transition to employment. For more information visit www.skill.org.uk
