Willing to do the hard work

There is plenty of scope for volunteer work in areas including health, welfare and the environment

Voluntary work can be a stepping stone to the paid workforce or simply valued for rewards that are rare or absent in the commercial sphere.

Volunteer agency figures show that a high numbers of volunteers are immigrants who find it a good way to get to know their new home and how it works. Included in the category are students who do volunteer work to get practical or hands-on experience in a field they are studying.

Tina Reid, executive director of the NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations (NZFWO) says it was a myth that young people don't volunteer.

"There are a lot of young people working voluntarily in all kinds of work," she said, citing sports coaching, environmental projects, and youth work as particularly attractive to the young. "Volunteering is definitely a diverse workforce."

Some people, including those wanting a career change, take the step from volunteering for an organisation to doing paid work for it.

"By volunteering you get experience, you get to understand what kind of agencies there are and what kind of jobs are around," Reid said.

In a sector with a low profile among recruitment firms volunteering to find out what's around is probably a wise course.

There are a few niche HR consultants - a new online service, goodworks.co.nz goodworks.co.nzis targeted at social services work - but the voluntary agency sector is so huge and diverse that it is impossible to recruit sector-wide, Reid said.

Often people now working in the sector had spent most of their time in the commercial world, coming to their agency jobs "because they wanted to feel they were making a difference doing something other than working in a big corporate," Reid said. "They've deliberately applied for jobs at places such as Barnardos and Plunket."

One who made the switch from commerce to community agency is Order of St John HR director Tom Dodd. In New Dialogue, the newsletter of the NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations (NZFWO), he said there was abundant opportunity to gain a stronger sense of "doing something meaningful".

"While you might gain a sense of self-worth by doing a good job achieving targets in a commercial business, simply maximising returns for the shareholder isn't as fulfilling as the sense of impacting positively on the quality of life for people or the world around you."

Dodd dismissed the idea that voluntary sector work was easier or less challenging than that in a commercial environment - often a barrier to attracting employees who viewed it as not a "CV move".

"In my experience, this is an unfair perception and many employees in the commercial sector could learn a lot about doing more with less by working in the voluntary sector," he said.

Many voluntary sector organisations were relatively small and values-driven, could be more inclusive, accepting of differences, had more flexible working environments and a family atmosphere.

"Given that we spend a lot of time at work, and environment is important, this can be seen as a positive that counter-balances relatively lower rates of pay," Dodd said.

For all the differences between voluntary and commercial organisations there's one thing the two business types have in common - employment relationship issues.

A high response rate to a survey earlier this year by the NZFWO and the Labour Department suggested human resource matters are vexed area for voluntary organisations.

Reid said the 130, often full responses from a range of agencies, also demonstrated the issues were important to voluntary groups. A series of workshops has been planned to tackle the most difficult matters, the first to be held in Hamilton tomorrow. Two others will be run in September and October.

The survey showed that the most difficult issues for voluntary organisations were performance management (61.1 per cent of respondents), salary review processes (51.6 per cent) and workplace conflict (46.8 per cent).

Policy development and understanding workplace obligations were highlighted by more than a third of respondents. Almost 40 per cent had recognised the challenges and sought training last year ranging from short, targeted seminars and workshops to tertiary qualifications.

The upcoming workshops have been designed to train, provide ongoing resources and promote discussion and Reid said it would be a major achievement if there was more open talk about the sector's employment relationship issues.

"It's been too hard to talk about for a number of reasons. Most of us have to make the funding applications and run the fund raising programmes that raise our own salaries so we are aware that there's not much money to go round," she said.

Reid said there were many people in the sector on reasonable salaries and developed pay structures, especially in agencies with large government contracts that had had to compete for staff.

"I think people often work in our sector because they get to work in areas they are really keen to work in and they see their work as really satisfying," she said.