In some areas staff are embracing volunteers and understand the positive impact that they have; however, this may vary from one department to another within the same organisation,

What’s working well

• Approaching staff members with previous experience to champion volunteers
• Having a designated staff member (eg ward manager) to take on volunteer inductions and offer support for new volunteers.

Challenges

• Continual staff changes.
• Lack of staff time to carry out inductions.
• Trying to get a slot on corporate inductions.
• Volunteers lacking in confidence and training.

Top tips from our guests

• Show the monetary value of volunteers by calculating the number of hours they are contributing, based on minimum wage.
• Meet face to face with staff and help them understand the benefits that volunteers can bring to their department
• Ask volunteers at the end of their shift to give feedback which can then be shared with the wards / departments. In one organisation the positive feedback they are receiving from volunteers is creating a better understanding and encouraging staff to invest more time.
• Allocate a named mentor for every volunteer.
• Offer staff training to demonstrate the value of volunteers. One of our guests would like to create a video as part of this training.
• Don’t wait to be invited to staff meetings / ward huddles - ask if you can go along to see if there are opportunities to promote your volunteers
• Arrange for staff champions to promote volunteering as part of department meetings.
• Organise a meeting with all your staff champions every 3 months.

Volunteer Service Manager guides

• One of our guests is looking at writing a guide and is interested to hear if others have done something similar. If you have any useful information, please reply on this Forum.

Comms

• If your organisation has sites spread across a large area it can work well to hold a promotion day for volunteering at each location.

Useful resources shared by our guests

Hospice Ward volunteer role description

Volunteers in Partnership flyer – see attached below