308 Managing Volunteers

Unit Overview

308 Managing Volunteers is a unit in the CMI Level 3 module that helps the leaders within the organisation to establish approaches that involve handling the volunteers providing services within the organisation. Organisations must ensure that they can effectively handle the volunteers providing their services for the organisation to ensure that it meets its goals and objectives. Managing volunteers involves being able to set out their roles within the organisation and ensuring that it is an attractive venture that meets the needs of the volunteers and facilitates their engagement.

The leaders need to have effective skills that include building proper interpersonal relationships skills, developing communication ability, and focusing on improving its impact on the well-being of the people within the workforce. The leaders must understand the critical types of volunteers within the workplace and the challenges or benefits associated with working with these volunteers. They should also be able to effectively handle the induction, training, supervision, and support of the volunteers to ensure they are able to accomplish their roles and duties effectively in contributing to the organisational goals and objectives.

308 Managing Volunteers is a unit that focuses on improving the understanding and ability of the leaders to effectively deal with the volunteers that the organisation may have to ensure they positively impact the process of accomplishing the goals and objectives of the company. The unit provides the leaders with training and practical learning focused on interacting with the volunteers. This involves building the ability to develop policies within their areas of responsibility that are effective in dictating the working practices that are geared towards the volunteers as well as boosting the contribution of the volunteers to the organisation. The unit is taught in 25 hours of guided learning and contributes 5 credit values towards the completion of the CMI Level 3 module

Suitability of the Unit

308 Managing Volunteers is a unit that is important in building the interpersonal excellence of the managers and ensures that there is effective leadership and management of volunteers. It is critical for leaders in different areas within the organisation to put up measures designed to improve the contribution of volunteers. This involves creating approaches through which the volunteers can be integrated tot eh organisation in different teams and areas of responsibility to boost their performance. The unit is effective in improving the understanding and relationships between the volunteers and managers within the workplace. It helps the new or aspiring leaders to develop effective approaches that they can use to impact the performance of the volunteers in line with the organisational activities.

The unit is designed to cover the learning needs of first-line managers and supervisors within the workplace. It helps these leaders to understand the nature and types of volunteers in the areas of responsibility as well as the benefits that these volunteers have on the organisation. Additionally, the first-line leaders are guided to understand the challenges in dealing with volunteers and develop approaches to overcome these challenges within their areas of responsibility. The unit is also applicable to other stakeholders in areas where there are volunteers providing services and contributing to the accomplishment of the organisational goals. Individuals interested in leadership roles can also pursue the unit to prepare them for the activities involving volunteers.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• understand the reasons why organisations should engage with volunteers and the benefits that volunteers may get within their volunteer roles

• understand the legal and organisational requirements associated with managing volunteers

• Understand the key elements and purpose of volunteer agreements

• Understand the process of recruiting and selecting volunteers to meet the organisational goals and objectives

• Understand the process and features o inducting volunteers into the volunteer programmers

• Discuss approaches that can be used to plan work for volunteers and the methods of monitoring the practices of volunteers in accomplishing their duties and responsibilities

• Explain the approaches that can be used to respond to problems that could be experienced when handling and managing volunteers

• Explain the skills and attributes that leaders must develop in building and maintaining effective relationships with volunteers

Key Learning Areas

308 Managing Volunteers is a unit that aims to build an interaction platform with volunteers to ensure that they are able to achieve the desired goals and objectives. The unit covers critical areas of learning that include:

Understanding the Role and Benefits of Volunteers

This area of learning is important in ensuring that the learner understands volunteers. It focuses on ensuring that the learners achieve an understanding of the type of volunteers that could be used within the workplace to boost the performance of the teams and organisation in general. This area of learning also focuses on ensuring that the leaders are able to play their obligations towards the volunteers.

Understanding the Approaches to Managing Volunteers

This area of learning focuses on ensuring that the learners understand the different methods of managing volunteers. This involves understanding the approaches that are legal and ethical for interaction with volunteers. Since the approaches within the workplace are external stakeholders to the workplace, it becomes important to ensure that the organisation sets effective methods and approaches to improve performance. This involves being able to effectively achieve the desired levels of management of the volunteers.

Building Effective Relationships with Volunteers

This area of learning focuses on establishing the abilities of the leaders in building effective relationships that can be sued to ensure that they are able to achieve the desired goals and objectives. This involved being able to effectively handle the volunteers and improve their performance continuously through effective communication and relationships. The area of learning also helps the learners to understand the principles and approaches that can be used and established to ensure that the leaders are all placed in fulfilling their roles in relation to interacting with the volunteers and optimising their performance.

Evaluation

On completing the unit, the learners are required to complete an assessment; the assessment of this unit focuses on a written assessment where the students respond to a template on content learned within the unit.