Knowledge transitions: using narrative to understand the issues of attracting & retaining volunteers

Slide 1: Knowledge transitions: using narrative to understand the issues of attracting & retaining volunteers Chris Fletcher—Director, Knowledge Management Asia Pacific region Deloitte Consulting Facilitating Knowledge Transfer and Retention in the Modern Workplace The Sebel, Melbourne 19 February 2008 Source: Flickr: dyjohen

Slide 2: The Future of Volunteering in Australia Fact: Meals on Wheels rely on volunteers Statistic: Average age of a volunteer: 60+ Question: What happens to Meals on Wheels when the pool of volunteers dries up? Question: What motivates / drives people to volunteer?

Slide 3: Approach: Pre-hypothesis research

Slide 11: Some early takeouts Breakdown of SMI categories 129 6 78 501 less than 17 yrs 17 - 59 years 60+ Manager of Volunteers Majority of SMI’s are from the 17 – 59 Year group – need to look at balancing the survey community Breakdown of SMI categories - Education (Total) Breakdown of SMI categories - Employment (Total) Breakdown of SMI categories - Most important reason to volunteer (Total) Post Grad Self Emp 350 Retired Degree/Dip 300 F/T No. of SMI's Technical 250 Casual 200 Yr 12 P/T 150 Looking Yr 10 100 Student 50 <Yr 10 Not Curr 0 d k ty re ve er e n ac e xp ic i li o A e b 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 lv 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 ti th si ho b b m N E o o si as m d v e rk et c m in n ai p No. of SMI's s o g o o No. of SMI's p u W n e il y sp y to ar io ts M ve m re lig s y s a fa o as d y H e C en M R E v In ri F Possible link between level of education, type of employment & reason for volunteering

Slide 12: Some early takeouts Breakdown of SMI categories - How often do you Breakdown of SMI categories - Length of time volunteer (Total) volunteering (Total) 300 180 160 250 140 No. of SMI's No. of SMI's 120 200 100 150 80 60 100 40 50 20 0 0 s s s s yr th A yr yr yr yr cc y ll y N y er 1m ly 1 l kl 0 0 th -5 20 O ai ev to ua -2 -1 ee on < D up c > 1 N nn 10 pe 6 W M A S Significant no. of respondents have been volunteering for more than 6 years, predominantly on a weekly basis Breakdown of SMI categories - Story tellers intent Breakdown of SMI categories - Emotional Intensity (Total) (Total) 300 250 250 200 No. of SMI's 200 No. of SMI's 150 150 100 100 50 50 0 e e ce n n ce 0 m ag is ai ai r is en ic fo t pl r er l e - ve in ou -v e tra e +v rt In flu +v om nt em C ly u gly nc ng Ne In E C on R o E Str Str Significant no. of stories were told with the intent to encourage or inform, with an emotional intensity between neutral and strongly positive

Slide 13: Some early takeouts: Rewards Observation: It seems that the more frequently people volunteer, the more likely they are to have minimal rewards. Interpretation: Frequent volunteers are less rewarded (thus unappreciated)? Frequent volunteers are less in need of reward?

Slide 14: Some early takeouts: Praise Observation: The most negative stories involve lack of praise, and the next-most-negative stories involve excessive praise. Positive stories tend to involve neither Interpretation: Praise is definitely preferred, and a lack of praise is considered worse than excessive praise. This would seem to say that praise motivates volunteers more than rewards.

Slide 15: Some early takeouts: Connectedness/Control Observation: Higher peak for isolation in strong negative; slightly negative has a high peak for over- controlling; both extremes tolerated to some extent in the positive stories. Interpretation: With respect to isolation versus control, it would appear that volunteers prefer too much control to isolation. .

Slide 16: Some early takeouts: Skill use Observation: The positive-recommendation story (first question) elicited more essential responses, and the negative-recommendation story elicited both unused and essential responses. The question about the future of volunteering elicited more essential than unused responses. Interpretation: Volunteers associate being essential to the organisation with a positive force in volunteering, although negative stories about being overly essential are also found. (It is a double-edge sword?) Volunteers think that the future of volunteering will include essential roles for volunteers in organisations.

Slide 17: Some early takeouts: Options Observation: For the question about options and opportunities, difficulty of access is associated with negative views, but \"too many options\" is not, nor is it strongly associated with positive views. Interpretation: Difficulty of access is definitely seen as a problem, but the problem of too many options seems not have registered as a real problem in those surveyed. Perhaps in reality people don't have too many options? Or maybe they don't mind having a lot of options and don't feel overwhelmed by them, or have strong preferences and thus don't mind that there are many possibilities?

Slide 18: Some early takeouts: Emotional Support Observation: People who live with others, whether family or not, are less likely to tell stories in which \"excessive\" emotional support is evident than people who live alone. Interpretation: For people who live alone, volunteering provides critical social support, whereas for people who have other means of connecting, emotional support is not as important.

Slide 19: Some early takeouts: Help making choices Observation: The prevalence of people having choices \"made for them\" increases as people volunteer less often. Interpretation: This would seem to say that people who volunteer often both get more say in what they do, and get less help deciding what they should do to help. People who volunteer only occasionally are probably assigned tasks, partly because they don't know what is needed and partly because they don't have a role of permanence. That may be inevitable, but the interesting group is the people who volunteer daily. They may be an underserved group who might feel exploited and unsupported. People who volunteer weekly and monthly seem to have found a middle ground, where they feel for the most part supported but not overly controlled.

Slide 20: Group: 17 – 59 Years The recognition that people in this story received was -- False praise X The people in this story feel – over controlled and managed People – Over controlled & managed Recognition – False Praise Strong positive correlation – patterns starting to identify trends

Slide 21: Summary Statistics for graph: The recognition that people in this story received was -- False praise X The people in this story feel – over controlled and managed Number of items: 48 X axis (The recognition that people in this story Y axis (The people in this story feel -- over controlled Correlation received was -- False praise) and managed) Use parametric correlation test? no Mean: 68.6809 Mean: 68.7751 Spearman ranked correlation coefficient: 0.6432 Median: 85.3316 Median: 89.9598 Spearman ranked correlation slope: 0.6432 25th percentile: 41.0714 25th percentile: 34.9398 Spearman ranked correlation significance: 0.0 75th percentile: 99.2347 75th percentile: 98.7952 Significance threshold: 0.05 Standard deviation: 35.5747 Standard deviation: 36.9285 Correlation is significant? yes Skewness: -0.8268 Skewness: -0.8432 Skewness standard error: 0.3536 Skewness standard error: 0.3536 Skewness z value: -2.3386 Skewness z value: -2.3849 Skewness denotes normal distribution: no Skewness denotes normal distribution: no Kurtosis: -0.7283 Kurtosis: -0.9024 Standard error for kurtosis: 0.7071 Standard error for kurtosis: 0.7071 Kurtosis z value: -1.03 Kurtosis z value: -1.2762 Kurtosis denotes normal distribution: yes Kurtosis denotes normal distribution: yes

Slide 22: Graph SMI by Filter (17 – 59 Years)

Slide 23: Emotional Tone of Story The Recognition that people in this story received was – False Praise X The People in this story feel – over controlled and managed Strongly Negative (3) Negative (9) Neutral (8) Positive (15) Strongly Positive (11) The People in this story feel – over controlled and managed X For people in this story, their choice of organisation to volunteer for is -- too hard to choose Strongly Negative (4) Negative (4) Neutral (18) Positive (17) Strongly Positive (17) The recognition that people in this story received was -- False praise X The type of organisation in this story is one where -- People have to fend for themselves Strongly Negative (5) Negative (4) Neutral (9) Positive (4) Strongly Positive (1) For people in this story, their choice of organisation to volunteer for is -- too hard to choose X For the people in this story, becoming a volunteer would be described as being -- Too hard to Strongly Negative (3) Negative (6) Neutral (10) Positive (9) Strongly Positive (3) access the right opportunity

Slide 24: Linked Characteristics (+ve relationship): 17 – 59 Years Recognition: False Praise Rewards: A complete waste People: Lines denoted show strong positive correlations in the indexes that of Resources Over controlled & were applied to the stories. If one factor was high, then the linked managed factor was also high Choice of organisation: Too hard to choose People: Isolated & Ignored Type of Choice of organisation: Rewards: organisation: Recognition: Fend for Minimal & tokenistic Made by someone Non existent themselves else

Slide 25: Linked Characteristics (-ve relationship): 17 – 59 Years Recognition: False Praise Type of Choice of organisation: People: organisation: Rewards: Fend for Isolated & Ignored Made by someone Minimal & tokenistic themselves else Rewards: People: Opportunities: Complete waste of Over controlled & Too many Resources managed options Skills & capabilities: Unrecognised & unused Choice of Opportunities: organisation: Too hard to access To hard to choose right opportunity Lines denoted show strong negative correlations in the indexes that were applied to the stories. If one factor was high, then the linked factor was low

Slide 26: Balancing the Survey community • Low representation of < 17 years - Decision made to not include this group in first iteration of project • Nil representation from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders - Decision made to not include this group in first iteration of project • Minimal CALD representation - Pursuing local community groups to improve representation • Small representation from 60+ age group - Targeting specific groups in this segment to increase representation

Slide 27: Some lessons • Lead time to generate participation is extensive when dealing with the community • Do not frame expectations of participation on corporate experience • Do not rely on community leaders to effectively communicate with constituents • Different strategies are required for different demographic groups • Web based tools need to be supplemented by other ways to access community responses i.e. Face to Face, recorded interviews, phone-in service, paper based tools • Explanation required to participants that this is NOT a traditional survey approach

Slide 28: Next Steps Timeline for project completion: - Workshops 26 – 27 February 08 - Intervention Design – implications for policy workshop – 10 March 08 - Completion of project and recommendations April 08 Opportunities for Project extension - Corporate sector benchmarking volunteer programmes against Future of Volunteering narrative set - Additional funding from government to access additional representation from Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander, and under 17 demographics

Slide 29: Next Steps – AVT Workshops

Slide 30: Next Steps – AVT Workshops

Slide 31: You can participate too! Access the survey: http://www.cognitive-edge.com/surveys/fov/

Slide 32: Where else can this process be used? • Employment lifecycle - Recruitment - Induction - Succession facilitation - Ongoing culture audits - Exit Interviews • Distributed Research • Client Satisfaction • Any where you need to make sense of complex problems in order to act

Slide 33: A member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu