Over the summer months, the AIP team has been analyzing the current state of accreditation volunteer management and working to identify key areas for improvement. This work has progressed in five phases: planning, reviewing materials, gathering constituent opinions, analyzing the data, and developing an action plan. Having now completed each of these, we are pleased to share our findings and offer a look into next steps we’re taking.
We based our analysis on a tool called the Volunteer Management Audit from Energize Inc., which we selected because it considers the full scope of industry practices in volunteer management. The tool allowed us to assess twelve core areas of volunteer management that were most pertinent to our program: planning and resources, staffing, volunteer work design, recruitment, interviewing and screening, orientation and training, volunteer/employee relations, supervision, recognition, recordkeeping and reporting, evaluation, and volunteer input. By scoring each of these and validating them internally, we reached a consensus on where we stood against an “ideal” state and determined both strengths in our program and areas in greatest need of improvement. We were also able to identify what was unique about the way we engage our accreditation volunteers.
For the purposes of our analysis, we considered scores over 85 per cent to be excellent, while scores between 50 and 84 per cent were deemed to be fair, and scores below 50 per cent were considered poor. Staffing and supervision scored highest with 94 and 86 per cent respectively, while recruitment, screening, reporting, and evaluation – which all scored below 50 per cent – were identified as the areas in need of greatest improvement. Participants in the process noted that the scores exceeded their expectations in many areas.
Knowing which specific areas to improve was an important piece of the puzzle, but in order to measure progress, we also needed to establish a baseline for the accreditation volunteer management process as it currently existed. To do this, the accreditation team worked to develop a comprehensive overview of the workflow in the form of a process map. The map created provides a clear picture of the processes that are in place today, and it also identifies dependencies and inefficiencies within the existing system.
The next step following this was to develop the action plan itself. In developing an approach to closing gaps in the Accreditation Team’s volunteer management program, we needed to weigh several factors: organizational appropriateness; the availability of personnel resources; the speed at which any change can be tolerated by staff and volunteers, given other initiatives at Engineers Canada; dependencies stemming from the AIP; organization-wide volunteer management initiatives; and recommendations from Engineers Canada’s Task Force on Nominations.
Based on all of this, we’ve now collaborated on and begun implementing an action plan that outlines the improvements we intend to make in each of the twelve areas. The implementation phase began at the end of July 2018 with the development of common role descriptions for all accreditation volunteers, the review and update of orientation manual (including policies and procedures), and the establishment of an accreditation volunteer advisory group. These initial steps will be followed with other key changes that we’ll communicate in the coming months.
To ensure that we’re on-track in achieving our objectives as we proceed, we will re-measure program progress every 6 months for the next year and a half. In the longer term, these periodic measurements will be aggregated to establish a baseline for an overall volunteer management program evaluation strategy, which will be measured again three years after the full implementation of the program is complete.
For the time being, however, the move into the implementation of our volunteer management approach marks an exciting milestone in a plan that has been a long time in the making. If you have any questions or comments about the process and where it’s headed, please contact Mya Warken at Mya.Warken@engineerscanada.ca.
