Can Supporting Volunteers be a Form of Supervision?

Have you found that sometimes supervising volunteers can be tricky?

Volunteers are working for free and most of the time you need the help. Can you hold volunteers to a high standard of performance without putting undue pressure on them and possibly lose them as volunteers?

It might be easier to think about if we re-frame supervising volunteers into supporting volunteers. Supporting them to be confident and serve their clients and the organization with integrity. We often assume that people come to us with integrity and confidence but that is not always true. We can also assume that volunteers will utilize the skills that are taught to them in their basic training. I believe that most volunteers try to be guided by and use the fundamentals but, admittedly, they are hard to use if you are not practicing them regularly.

Supporting volunteers can look like a lot of what you are already doing for and with your volunteers. As you do these things, it is important to take note, via conscious observation and data-gathering, how volunteers are embracing the support you are providing.  Are they showing, via their behaviors, that they understand and are utilizing the fundamentals? Supporting your volunteers is as much about protecting your clients as it is about the volunteers.

How might you be currently supporting your volunteers?    

1. Thoughtful application questions and screening of volunteers before bringing them on service
2. Clear client interaction expectations given to volunteers right from the start in their basic volunteer training
3. Role-playing with new volunteers before they are sent into client situations and during all in-service trainings
4. Processing client interactions with volunteers after client sessions end.
5. Providing guidelines to volunteers for self-evaluations
6. Reading the written documentation that volunteers write after their client sessions.

How does this support translate to supervision?

1. Thoughtful application questions and screening hopefully will screen out people who might not be right for the volunteer job they are seeking. They can also help you place volunteers in the jobs for which they are best suited.
2. Clear expectations of post-training skills and behaviors support volunteer trainees because they know what will be expected of them and usually one of two things happen.
   • They self-select themselves of out a job they thought they were interested in pursuing
   • They work towards and practice to meet the standards you have set in the training
3. Observing volunteers during training activities gives you a good idea of who is “getting it” and who is struggling. It is important to take notes after training sessions in volunteers’ HR files so you remember what volunteers may need additional support in when training is concluded.
4. How will you ever know whether volunteers are capable of using the fundamentals if you never role-play with them? How you process the role-play with a volunteer will also give them a template for self-evaluation after client sessions have ended.
5. Processing client interactions in person with a volunteer happens best right after a session has ended but often there in not enough time. You should try and make this happen, if possible, on a semi-regular basis. Here are a few other ideas to help volunteers process their client interactions.
   • Read the volunteer documentation of the client interactions, when you see a situation that might have been difficult as helpful questions to hep the volunteer process the interaction.
   • Ask a volunteer to share a difficult client session during an in-service meeting. Ask the other volunteers attending the in-service to give helpful feedback.
6. It is important to read the written documentation that volunteers are writing about their interactions with clients. It is important to be clear about what you want included in the documentation. The written documentation should give you a clear idea of whether volunteers are utilizing the fundamentals. I would suggest asking them to document the following:
   • What was the client’s SOS?
   • Where might the client have been in the phases of a crisis?
   • What were the client’s issues surrounding her expressed need?
   • What resources/referrals were discussed?
   • What are the action steps the client agreed to?
   • What is the follow up plan? If no follow-up, why not?

All of this great support should give you:

1. A clear understanding of supervision as supporting and serving your volunteers
2. The information you need to know to support individual volunteers
3. The documentation and observed behaviors you will have noted in their HR folder when it comes to a formal evaluation of each volunteer