Employee Volunteering: A Qualitative Project and Recommendations by HEE
Tags: Report
15th November 2021
0 Likes
‘It helps us as much as it helps others’: Perceptions of Employee Volunteering in the NHS
NHS Health Education England is delighted to publish ‘It helps me as much as it helps others’: Perceptions of Employee Volunteering in the NHS qualitative project report following the exploration into the lived experiences of employee volunteers within the National Health Service and Voluntary, Community and Sector Enterprise sector.
The benefits of employer supported volunteering programmes are wide-ranging to the individual, the employer and organisation the volunteer supports. ‘Volunteering gives employees the chance to build connections with their local communities and give back to society while working on issues they feel passionate about. They also gain the opportunity to develop key soft skills in areas such as coaching, leadership and organisational abilities’ (CIPD, 2021). However, there is limited research into the benefits in relation to the individual’s learning, skill gain, work and career development, employees volunteering within their own organisation and at times of crises.
A qualitative project was therefore commissioned to explore individuals’ lived experiences of volunteering, their motivations, and the learning and impact to careers and skill development. The report highlights case illustrations and quotes from the volunteers throughout the report to ensure the voices of volunteers are central and to ensure the experiences of volunteering and the difference it makes is highlighted. The report makes a series of recommendations for organisations undertaking employer supported programmes and provides recommendations for applicable learning across the National Health Service and the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the volunteers for sharing your experiences; without your time and contributions this project would not have been possible. Thank you to the organisations who have supported the communication of the study and thank you to the University of Portsmouth for undertaking the project on behalf of NHS Health Education England.
Mark Radford Carly Schoepp
Chief Nurse Officer National Programme Manager
NHS Health Education England NHS Health Education England
and Deputy Chief Nursing Officer for England
Executive Summary
The aims of this project were to explore the impact of volunteering by NHS employees in relation to issues such as learning, skill gain, work and careers. Commissioned by NHS Health Education England, this report uses qualitative data drawn from semi-structured interviews with 3 volunteers across England. The study was conducted in summer 2021, with the shadow of the pandemic still continuing to influence the work of the NHS and its employees. As a qualitative piece of work the findings are not generalisable, but they do shed light upon the lived experience of those NHS employees who choose to combine paid work, voluntary work (either within or outside the service) and home life.
Staff are engaged in a wide variety of voluntary activities within the service including helping to feed patients on busy wards, acting as conversation partners with stroke victims, acting as NHS ambassadors to encourage and inspire next generation NHS staff, and stewarding at vaccination centres. But staff are also involved in external voluntary effort for organisations as diverse as the Pankhurst Trust, the Trussell Trust and the Prince’s Trust.
Employees’ reasons for volunteering are by no means uniform. We found evidence of staff wanting to give something to the service ‘over and above the paid role’, and of wanting to do something in accordance with their values. Some employees were looking for roles or tasks that would help them personally, especially in dealing with stress or anxiety. One interviewee spoke of their volunteering as having therapeutic value and another of wanting to do physical helping tasks in contrast to their mentally demanding paid role. This finding supports a recent study by a researcher at Cambridge. Howlett (2021) reported on a study conducted by Fleming using data from the Britain’s Healthiest Workplace Survey. This suggested that of all the wellbeing initiatives being promulgated in organisations currently, volunteering is the one activity which demonstrably improves mental health (Flemming, cited in Howlett, 2021).
In volunteering none of our interviewees spoke of learning gain as a motivating factor in itself, however volunteers do derive a range of learning benefits including improved networking skills, communication, presentational and problem-solving skills. This finding echoes previous research in other contexts. Some interviewees were able to identify very specific gains such as improving their computer skills, but often learning appeared to be of an incidental informal kind, unanticipated and often unexpected.
Senior staff undertaking voluntary roles were able to point to volunteering as a way of connecting with frontline staff and the fundamental operational work of their Trust. This was especially the case with those interviewees who no longer had patient contact or who, by the very nature of their role, would not otherwise have any direct patient contact. Some individuals spoke about the value of their volunteering experiences when developing policy and in seeing the impact of strategic decisions at ground level and the learning that comes with this experience.
A number of themes emerged around the role of the line manager and the organisational climate for volunteering. In particular, a greater need for clarity about some voluntary roles and the way in which employee volunteers (those volunteering within the service) are managed. There appears to be a need for a more consistent approach to helping those employees interested in volunteering get access to information about opportunities. Some Trusts demonstrated a highly professionalised approach to managing the process of volunteering. However, there also appear to be inconsistencies in terms of time off for voluntary activities with some Trusts having a clear policy and guidance and others with limited or no specific guidance of which interviewees were aware. We suggest here that a model Trust policy developed and disseminated by HEE could make a valuable contribution towards broader consistency across
NHS Trusts.
Recognition and support for the contribution made by employee volunteers is also of importance. It may, for example, be helpful for Trusts to generate and share case illustrations of successful employee volunteer activities both in terms of internal voluntary activities and external ones. Marketing, HR and communications teams could assist in helping to publicise such success stories.
Volunteers were asked if their voluntary activities were or should be discussed in appraisal meetings. For some interviewees this was considered positively, especially where they felt they could point to some direct benefits for the work role such as particular learning gains or a better understanding of operational challenges. Other interviewees did not think their managers knew about their voluntary work or would be especially interested in it. For some interviewees, volunteering was considered a personal choice and an entirely private matter. Thus, there is no consistent opinion on this subject and we suggest that recognition by line managers should be
encouraged as good management practice, rather than implemented as a structured process.
Because this study sought out the experiences of individuals, the report which follows leads with quotations taken directly from interviewees so that the voices of the employee volunteers predominate. The report also includes four slightly longer case illustrations to give the reader a better insight into NHS employee volunteers’ lived experience and perceptions.