Reduce Early Turnover With Better Volunteer Orientations

By Tobi Johnson, MA, CVA, Tobi Johnson & Associates | VolunteerPro

As leaders of volunteers, the way you design your volunteer orientations has everything to do with the next steps volunteers will take. These first experiences also often determine the initial depth of commitment a volunteer is ready to make.

As “architect of the volunteer experience,” you get to choose. You get to decide the mood, information, and outcomes of your new volunteer orientations based on what you include and what you leave out.

It all starts with understanding what onboarding is all about.

New Volunteer Onboarding: Planting Seeds for the Future

Many organizations focus on sharing rules and guidelines during their orientations and miss what’s going on under the surface.  Good volunteer orientation involves a socialization process. “Organizational socialization” is the work we all do to master the attitudes, values, knowledge and expected behaviors needed to participate as a loyal member of any group. It is how we learn to fit in.

The more connected volunteers feel — to the organization and the people in it — the greater likelihood they will become long-term contributing members of the team.

Socialization is inherently slow. New volunteer orientation cannot occur during a single event. Rather, it is a process of adaptation where volunteers experience a wide range of emotions internally — surprise, fear, ambiguity, etc. — while they wrestle with past and current expectations and make sense of an unfamiliar environment.

Rapid New Volunteer Orientation and Onboarding

Include orientation activities and information across the initial stages of the volunteer lifecycle – in the recruitment, screening, training and placement stages of the relationship. This will help solidify their connection with your organization and increase your chances of developing a mutually satisfactory partnership. Here are six research-based practices to promote rapid onboarding:

1. Focus on the collective versus the individual — Expose newcomers to common experiences with a group, versus unique experiences in isolation from other newcomers. Because volunteers need to be able to bond with others, it may be more helpful to schedule orientations at regular intervals when a critical mass is ready, rather than conducting them one-by-one or by directing volunteers to an online course that is completed in isolation.
2. Design formal versus informal orientation activities— Use specifically designed activities and materials while segregating newcomers from incumbents, versus using no prepared materials and immediately mixing with existing volunteers (e.g., learning on the job). Throwing folks in to “sink or swim” isn’t helpful, nor are orientations that are conducted verbally without backup materials.
3. Provide sequential versus random opportunities to learn— Communicate the sequence of learning activities. During the screening process, provide volunteers with a training plan that describes what will happen and when.
4. Establish a fixed versus variable completion time frame— Communicate specific deadlines for completing each socialization step. Although “work-at-your-own-pace” orientations may seem tempting and responsive to volunteer needs, it may be more helpful to set up achievable deadlines for each step.
5. Use mentors— Provide newcomers access to experienced organization members as role models or mentors. Buddy systems really work, and research shows that they are more helpful when a buddy is there to answer everyday questions (like “where do I find the copy paper?”), compared with conducting technical training for assigned tasks.
6. Provide positive reinforcement — Provide newcomers with positive social support and affirm their personal characteristics as opposed to giving negative social feedback, at least until newcomers adapt. That said, volunteer recognition shouldn’t be reserved for volunteers who’ve been around awhile or relegated to your annual recognition event. Build it into your orientation activities right from the start.

These are only a few ways to add structure, consistency, connection, and predictability to your induction process. This makes it easier for volunteers to feel secure that they are on the right road to making a difference.

Is Volunteer Orientation Training Better Online or On Land?

After you’ve decided what to include in your new volunteer orientation journey, decide how and where activities will take place. Will it occur online or on land?

One study showed that face-to-face training is more effective in helping newcomers identify with the organization and its people.  On the other hand, in terms of specific job tasks, online training may work just as well (provided it is well designed). So, a blended model of learning that combines both online and in-person may be ideal, with time spent learning tasks in an online environment and socialization and values-based sharing occurring in person.

How to Encourage Deeper Volunteer Participation Right from the Start

To help newcomers negotiate the unfamiliar waters of your organization, and to encourage deeper levels of participation, here are four support tactics that can be integrated into your orientation process to reduce turnover and improve your results.

1. Establish predictable rituals— Rituals increase feelings of safety and reinforce connections between the values of volunteers and the organization. They can be a terrific way of reinforcing the interconnectedness of the team. Rituals don’t have to be complicated. They can be simple things you do at the beginning of a meeting or a shift that are expected and fun.
2. Encourage peer-to-peer friendships— Relationships increase feelings of responsibility and commitment. In addition, both formal and informal peer mentoring and knowledge sharing help ease the burden of socialization. Think about ways you can “sow the seeds” of better connections between volunteers.
3. Offer formal skills-based training— Although most of what we learn is on the job, formal training can help increase self-confidence, connect the dots and provide a roadmap for organizational socialization. Even if the volunteer position isn’t highly technical, volunteers still need to be oriented to how your organization does business, and how to be a better ambassador for you.
4. Point out program impact — Volunteers need to know that learning the ropes at your organization is worth it. Make sure you continue to talk about how your organization is making a difference and how they fit into the larger picture. Programs tend to share this information during the recruitment process, but volunteers need to hear more about your program’s effectiveness when they are on the fence about how much time and energy they will ultimately commit.

Here’s the bottom line – you spend a significant amount of time and energy recruiting volunteers. It makes sense to design your volunteer orientation so it meets the needs of both volunteers and your organization.  It should help build confidence and momentum toward service on the part of volunteers, and increase the paid staff’s confidence in volunteer abilities and commitment.  It should also be a place where people come together to forge new relationships across your organization that, when combined, create a force for the greater good.

About Tobi Johnson, MA, CVA

Tobi is the President of Tobi Johnson & Associates, a training and consulting firm that helps nonprofit organizations transform their volunteer strategy and leverage the power of community to meet their missions. She is also the founder of VolunteerPro, an online training hub that helps busy volunteer coordinators build reliable, time-saving systems to grow and scale their base of high-impact volunteers. Tobi has trained thousands of leaders of volunteers around the world in modern leadership practices that meet the needs of today’s volunteers. In 2019, she launched the Time + Talent Podcast where, each season, she and her co-host interview volunteer managers who share their most innovative ideas and approaches.