Onboarding new volunteers
- Building Onboarding into your Team
- Supporting your new Volunteers
- Inducting your new volunteer - flowchart
Building Onboarding into your Team
We know that one of the main reasons that volunteers stay with XR is that they find a community with us. So how can we ensure that we are as welcoming to as many people, and as many different people, as possible?
The Job of Welcoming
It is an integrator's job to find, contact and induct new volunteers into the team. It is the whole team's job to welcome them.
Make Sure:-
- a team member steps up to have a 1-1 chat with the new volunteer in their first week!
- a team member steps up to be the new Volunteer's "Point Person" or "Buddy" for their first few weeks, that single port-of-call if the new volunteer has any questions*; and
- the team invites the new voluntees to any social gatherings coming up or any activities they may wish to join.
- (This is especially important if you organise in multiple chats, ensuring they know what's happening)
*A buddy is vital for helping new members to feel welcome and find their feet!
The buddy's role/responsibility is:
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To make initial contact in the form of a friendly email, introducing yourself, possibly offering to meet for coffee or have a call
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To properly welcome them into XR by answering their questions, and allaying any fears they might have about getting more involved
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To generally be a friendly voice on the end of a phone and support them in finding their own place in XR
Some ideas for how a buddy can support a new XR volunteer:
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General meetups in a café to chat about their interests in XR, ask how they would like to be involved
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Inviting your buddy to a meeting that you are going to; you’ll be the friendly person already there, so they won’t have to go into a room of strangers
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Introducing your buddy to other XR people who are in areas that your buddy is interested in (art, media, outreach, performance actions)
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If they are ready to become involved, invite your buddy onto your local telegram group
As the Integrator, do think about how the local group will keep track of who is buddying whom.
New Volunteer in the Chat!
When a new volunteer is added to your chat (Mattermost, Signal, Telegram...) make sure to say Hi and welcome them. Make sure they know the purpose of various chats and where they can ask for help.
A Volunteer's First Meeting
Do:-
- ensure that the team has included their roles and pronouns in their screen names or start off with a round of names and role descriptions; and
- have a least one person offer to stay behind to check in with the new Volunteer, see how they found their first meeting and if they have any questions.
Don't
- use lots of acronyms and XR jargon! Try to have someone there to call people out on their jargon and ask them to define things.
Supporting your new Volunteers
Access needs
Find out about your new volunteer's access needs and any other ways they may need to be kept safe. These may include any disclosed disability that might affect their participation in our community (such as the use of assistive technologies to read emails and the web) as well as participation in events (such as physical access needs, mental-health issues and dietary or other invisible needs).
Gathering this information must always take account of someone's right not to disclose anything, as well as their need for proper support if they do disclose something.
You can find advice on ensuring that you support volunteers with access needs in the Access and Inclusion section of the toolkit.
Keeping each other safe
Any organisation needs to keep its members safe, and we need to make sure that we know if anyone in our community might be classed as vulnerable. If you find any concerns related to a volunteer (whether about their needs or about their potential impact on other volunteers), you may need to draw up a support plan so that volunteers can be protected from anyone who might harm them, either deliberately or accidentally. You should draw up a support plan in consultation with the volunteer who is its focus, and assure them that we want them to take part and are aiming to provide them with the support they need to do this safely.
Where else can volunteers get support?
Please signpost your New volunteers to the pages Care and Respect and Inclusivity in the Intro to XR
Please check your New volunteers have read these and understand the behaviour they are expected to follow.
Inducting your new volunteer - flowchart
