8 May 2025

Focused Discussion | Managing change in your organisation

Network members came together at this session and shared their ideas and experiences on building confidence and resilience in times of change.

Some of the changes discussed

• Recruitment freezes
• Fixed term contracts coming to an end
• Funded programmes prematurely cut
• Staff changes

Questions to ask yourself

• Are there any actions you could take that would influence some of the changes?
• Are the senior roles who will be making those changes fully informed and understand the impact whether positive or negative that those changes would make?

Being the change

When taking on a new role you are ‘the change’ and this can cause uncertainty and anxiety amongst those who you will be working with. Good communication with kindness and empathy with your new colleagues is vital.

Top Tips on building resilience and making changes from network members

• Focus on building case studies and stories to reinforce the positive impact and good work that volunteers do.
• Access support internally. For example, your wellbeing service team.
• Engage in forums with people from other similar organisations.
• Bring volunteers into the change to make them feel part of it.
• Little surveys that give the volunteers a voice. Use something like Microsoft Forms and ask, "What is going well? What is not going well? Can anything be done better?”.
• Remind them that they are not ‘JUST’ volunteers.
• Integrating with the ground staff to find out what would help them in their day-to-day job so the volunteers can help them to help their patients to get better and to have a better experience.
• Restructure your volunteer roles to suit the needs of the staff.
• Work closely with the teams that are going to directly benefit. To get staff onboard try to link it to their strategic objectives and learn to speak their language so that it’s easily understood.
• Find out what skills the individual volunteers have and adapt a role to suit them and the service.

Communicating change

People can react to change in different ways so it is important to make sure that there is a clear understanding of how any changes will affect them.

• Work with your Comms team to put information out regularly to volunteers and staff.

Volunteer management systems

Two organisations are looking at installing volunteer management systems to improve efficiency.

Useful Links and Tips

• Five Guiding Principles for Agile Change Delivery
• Fire Metaphor: From 'Burning Platform' to 'Burning Ambition' (Leadership Transformation) - YouTube
• How great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek - YouTube

If you’ve spotted that a volunteer or member of your team is suffering badly with anxiety and want to act on it, here are some tips to make sure your conversation runs smoothly:

• Use your office or go to a private place
• Ensure that nobody interrupts
• Don’t pass judgements
• Allow them to speak openly and pay attention
• Focus on making progress – what will make the employee feel better?
• Arrange for a follow up meeting to review the situation