Volunteer recruitment best practise

Dear Janine,



- I would recommend giving new and especially younger volunteers some reward in the form of publicity for their work. This could, for example, be some news article or 'thank you' letter to their boss to show that they are enhancing their employer's organisation's image and publicising it. This might also have the beneficial feedback effects of both enhancing the employer's willingness to support the activity and further motivating the volunteer.



- When attempting to recruit volunteers this could be mentioned, i.e. in the publicity sent out which is seeking to attract participation.



Regards,

Rob H.

I think that there is a lot to be said for Robert's idea. The problem, of course, is that so many people do valuable volunteer work for the IET, and how do you decide who to publicise and who to not? You would probably have to double the number of IET staff just to keep on top of it. :)



In my experience, the IET staff already do a great job of making volunteers feel appreciated for their work.



Best Regards,



David

In Cov. and War we invite target directors, professors and local chairmen of sister organisations to our annual dinner as guests. We get them to volunteer to find suitable members for the committee and also as STEM Ambassadors and helpers to circulate events and to help at significant events such as our www.imagineeringshow.org . We also invite event speakers to the dinner rather than taking the for dinner after their presentation. This also gets more contacts and helpers. Kind regards. Derrick (Hon. Sec. and SLO, Cov. and War.)

ps: Do advertise our Imagineering Show to your Members/contacts if you are within an hour or so drive from Coventry.

It sounds like we are missing out, not having an annual dinner? Did somebody mention Younger Members, we haven't seen one of those in ages. We have a loyal but small band of volunteers, the majority of whom are retired and so theoretically have a bit more time on their hands. Certainly some new vigour and diversity would be most welcome, but recent recruitment drives have come up empty, all our new volunteers have been personal introductions via current inmates.

Alex Barrett:

It sounds like we are missing out, not having an annual dinner? Did somebody mention Younger Members, we haven't seen one of those in ages. We have a loyal but small band of volunteers, the majority of whom are retired and so theoretically have a bit more time on their hands. Certainly some new vigour and diversity would be most welcome, but recent recruitment drives have come up empty, all our new volunteers have been personal introductions via current inmates.

Is it that you're not getting any reponse at all from the recruitment communications? Or are they responding and then meeting the committee and deciding that it's not for them? The only reason i ask is that if most of the committee members are retired then it might seem to these younger applicants that they won't fit in.



If this is the case it would be interesting to see if anyone has any ideas about how to get around this issue.

Aaron, in response to the last two campaigns, if memory serves, I've had one email response. As the guy was geographically far afield, he never followed up on my reply. None have ever got as far as meeting our collection of dinosaurs.

I'm interested in the similarities and differences in approach that would be beneficial when recruiting to Local Network and Technical Network committees and sustaining participation. It seems to me that there are some subtle but important differences.

1. 
   Technical Networks attract participation through webinars (as well as physical events) - there is no face to face contact possible in a webinar. They also depend more on online communication (including MyCommunity) - again without the face to face contact.

• 
  Technical Networks appeal to specialists who are often geographically dispersed and require employers to permit/subsidise attendence (including travelling time) - this rules out social events

• 
  Technical Network committees meet by phone more than face to face. It took me over a year from joining the committee before I met the other committee members face to face.

• 
  Technical Networks are not directly associated with Younger Members groups, as Local Networks are (but perhaps they could be?) so they lack a "pipeline" of youthful but experienced committee members moving from YM to Senior committee

• 
  Technical Network activities are less easily visible to the average engineer/manager (whether they participate or not) because they lack geographically concentrated publicity such as events calendars and posters

From this list it looks like Local Networks have a relatively easy situation in terms of recruitment/participation. I'm not trying to pretend that is the case.



Increasing recruitment and sustaining participation is of critical importance to the Tribology Network. We are planning a recruitment email "shower" some time later this year and need to make this an effective exercise as it can't be repeated often and appears to be the standard solution.



I'll continue to follow this discussion with interest.

Geoff, I think Technical Networks have one key advantage - a shared common interest, your members come to you to follow their interest area. The Local Networks have to try and motivate the rank and file, who are members simply because it is the done thing or the route to registration. We get a good audience from retired members, but working engineers just don't want to know, no matter how relevant or useful the material we put on for them.

Alex,

If I understand correctly what you have said, then I agree that one way to recruit to the committee is to simply increase event attendance then rely on the tail of the bell curve of motivation, i.e. that a small minority of people will want to get involved to run events. This might be termed a Sabermetrics approach! A rule of thumb might be that if one in 100 IET members is an active volunteer today (does anyone have the actual numbers?) then if we run an event with over 100 in the audience and mention at the end that we have a vacancy if anyone is interested, one may volunteer and stick with it in the long term. This would obviously be more complicated if IET members make up a minority of audiences at IET volunteer-run events (again, does anyone have the actual numbers?).

Regarding reasons why people attend volunteer-run events, e.g. evening lectures by LN's, and some do not, maybe that is because it depends on whether they find engineering that interesting? I think there is a risk that we, as engineers with higher than normal motivation, can sometimes overlook the possibility that some people in our profession are in it primarily as a job and can't wait to leave the office at the end of the day - and there would be nothing wrong with that. It has always rung hollow to me that engineering is promoted as a way to change the world, any more than another profession. Most people who I have worked with have never seen it that way, and I think that most teenagers are too sceptical to be won over by such a hollow argument. This point undercuts most of the promotional initiatives I have seen come and go, and I can remember the Year of Engineering Success quite well. It concerns me very much!

I agree with your point about the common interest factor in TN involvement. From the LN perspective, what proportion of your audience come to only one or two events per year, i.e. the ones that interest them specifically, and what proportion turn up every single time? Would it be fair to say that in general, the former group are the ones following their interest, and the latter group are coming for other reasons?

Could the answer to the original question simply be to find a group of happy, satisfied volunteers, ask them what they gain from their involvement, and use the answers in some kind of publicity drive?

I would like to add one important point to the original question, however. The aim should not be simply to get people to join volunteer committees. The aim should be to help them contribute productively and efficiently, and therey find satisfaction that enables them to sustain the commitment. Maybe we should look at our norms and practices as existing committee members in this regard.

Geoff, there is certainly a 'hard core' of retired old boys who obviously enjoy an evening out at our lectures, and keep us company when we fail to attract a wider audience. Some general interest lectures such as 'bee-keeping' and 'chair making' attract a wider audience with a lot of wives and families attending. Topic specific lectures such as 'CERN' attract those with a particular interest area. CPD lectures such as 'circuit simulation', 'MATLAB' or 'advantages of thinking in terms of current' fail to draw out the intended audience of practicing engineers.



To be honest, we don't do much of a IET Volunteer "hard sell" at events, beyond having a call to arms on our rolling presentation that precedes the event itself. I became a volunteer partly to discover why I remain in the IET, and partly because it felt right at the time - and I stayed becuase I enjoy the business of running a local network. I would comment that few working people have the spare time to give that the key posts on network committees demand, I've sen a few try and withdraw quite quickly as they realise that they can't afford the commitment. Having said that, more hands would make for lighter work.