The Journey of Volunteer Onboarding; Benchmarking

Starting in September, a perfect storm of issues came together to create a backlog of volunteer onboarding. The volume of applicants increased as programs were re-opened up after being closed due to COVID, management changed, and the supervisor position became vacant. This issue had been building all year long, but everything came to a head at this time. The onboarding process was not designed to handle the increased volume and reduced staffing and as a result the structure and flow of onboarding reverted to a focus on putting out fires, rather than advancing steps (completion of one step should trigger the next action). The process did not take into account the volunteer onboarding journey and redundancies bogged down the process. Having just been onboarded as a new employee, the new Supervisor compared the process with HR to the volunteers. The team immediately recognized that onboarding should not take 6+ weeks to accomplish. Brainstorming session led to the identification of the following issues: Leadership change created delays, open supervisor position for several months reduced staffing, re-opening programs created a flood of applicants, Putting out fires replaced the process resulting in steps missed and the workflow interrupted. Conclusion: Continue tracking length of time for each step. Ask for feedback from applicants and Program Champions