THE SMITH FAMILY
Educational Disadvantage
Rising to the Challenge
Optimizing the Volunteer Experience
EXPERIENCE CONSULTANT @
RXP SERVICES
GETTING ACQUAINTED
THE ENVIRONMENT
THE CLIENT
The Smith Family (TSF) has a vision to impact the lives of greater numbers of children in need through their education focused initiatives. This requires expansion and retentions of its existing volunteer base. The recruitment, onboarding and ongoing experiences of it’s large volunteer workforce is a critical success factor towards this goal. TSF also aims to be the volunteering charity of choice so that it can attract the best available resources in the market.
THE PROJECT
TSF would like to explore how they might harness a digital platform to optimise:
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the volunteering experience of volunteers through their lifecycle at TSF; and
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the experience and efficiency of volunteer workforce management by internal teams. viz. the Volunteer Coordination Unit (VCU) and their customers - other internal TSF teams consuming volunteer resources, on behalf of whom the VCU recruits volunteers.
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The project involved two phases.
1. The Discovery phase examined the journey and experience of TSF's​​​
- volunteers during recruitment, onboarding and ongoing volunteering; and
- internal VCU team in processing applications and accrediting volunteers to onboard
2. Co-design future state, prototype and test 1st iteration.
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The goal was that phase 1 would deliver impactful and actionable insights that would then drive phase 2, delivering optimal volunteer and employee experiences to fulfil TSF’s ambition to be the volunteering charity of choice.
THE PROJECT DELIVERY TEAM
MY ROLE
As the Experience consultant on the project delivery team my role was to lead the discovery phase of this project to deliver impactful and actionable insights that would drive co-design and prototyping of a future state. This would in turn influence the selection criteria for the digital platform(s) that would deliver TSF with a new volunteer management system. After delivery of the insights report, my role evolved into a project management and SME role, helping facilitate future state mapping workshops, giving feedback on prototype and conducting testing.
THE PROBLEM
TSF is heavily reliant on its volunteer workforce to deliver on its mission of a better future
through education. With plans to expand the impact of its programs, the recuitment
and retention of volunteers is critical to the sustainability of TSF's programmes.
We have been made aware that
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TSF experiences high volunteer drop out rates during volunteer application processing and between programme cycles. .
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TSF’s internal VCU team responsible for the recruitment and accreditation of volunteers, in response to Programme managers’ volunteer needs, are over stretched during peak periods and frustrated with the inability to serve their customers and volunteer applicants more effectively and efficiently.
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Keeping volunteers engaged and connected whilst volunteering is critical to volunteer retention and to their overall volunteering experience.
How might we provide engaging, useful and usable digital user experiences so that both internal team members and volunteers believe they are part of the family that deliver the best ROI for their time and effort.
THE DISCOVERY
FOLLOWING THE EVIDENCE TRAIL
RESEARCH & SAMPLING
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Contextual research
12 volunteer interviews.
5 internal VCU team interviews.
1 volunteer from a comparator charity.
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Desk Research – previous research done by internal TSF teams
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Workshops
3 delivery team ++ workshops
1 internal VCU team workshop
TOOLS USED IN SENSEMAKING
JOURNEY & EXPERIENCE MAPPING
A comprehensive moderation guide was developed to give direction to our interviews and ensure all relevant areas of our exploration and client’s requirements were adequately covered.
Journey mapping was used as the primary tool to create a shared understanding of the current state and capture research findings, including human and system interactions, pain points experienced, emotional state of end users and opportunities for change.
We started out with a high level mapping of the journey at the first workshop. I digitised this using SMAPLY and continuously updated it to reflect information gathered from further interviews and workshops. At each workshop the delivery team considered the additions and delved deeper to explore further each step of the journey from the perspective of the volunteers and the internal teams involved in the journey. The map became a central visual tool in creating and validating a shared understanding of volunteer and internal team journeys. Two journey maps were created.
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Becoming a Volunteer –covered the journey from volunteer application to accreditation to onboard.
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Volunteering at TSF – explored the volunteers' experiences at onboarding and a series of touch/engagement points, during their volunteering life cycle.
High level 1st iteration of of journey map
Final two journey/experience maps
Digitised journey map being refined through several iterations.
PERSONA ARCHETYPES
Our interviews highlighted the existence of very unique needs and behaviours amongst groups of volunteers. We explored this disparity further through creating and exploring persona archetypes to enable a shared understanding of volunteers and their unique vs. shared motivations, behaviours and needs-particularly communication and engagement.
Our research led to the discovery of 3 distinct volunteer archetypes. We further explored the impact of this on effective engagement and communication strategies Each of the persona archetypes was unique in their:
1. Motivation and reward for volunteering
2. Preferred channels and breadth of connection. We identified 3 levels of connection
- Organisation wide connection
- Team connection; and
- Connection to the mission
3. Preferred style of communication – content, channels and frequency.
SYNTHESIS & INSIGHTS
MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL
THEMING & PRIORITISATION WORKSHOPS
The delivery team grouped pain points and opportunities into themes, and then voted independently for the 3 most important pain points and opportunities. The results were conclusive and helped us focus on the most important problems to be solved in the next co-design phase of the project. We noted that while each of the themes had an impact on both experiences and efficiency, each prioritised category tended to impact experiences or efficiency more heavily.
Themeing workshops
Emerged Themes
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Automation
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Process Automation
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Process
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Process – Self Service
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Self Service
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Communication
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Comms – Training
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Training
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Training – Engagement
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Engagement
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Resourcing
Prioritised Themes
PRIMARY
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Process Automation​
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Data Capture
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Self Service
Impacts efficiency
SECONDARY
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Skill Utilisation
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Connection & Engagement
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Communication
Impacts experiences
OTHER
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Training
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Retention & Re-engagement
Impacts efficiency & experiences
KEY INSIGHTS
Whilst some of the insights validated what the client project team had suspected, there were others that came as a total surprise. e.g. the importance of better skill utilisation to the volunteering experience. The discovery results also quantified and pin pointed more accurately where and how much, the impact of poor experiences was felt. e.g. the importance of a communication and engagement strategy that took into account the different volunteer persona archetypes and its role in volunteer engagement and retention.
Insights
Emotional (Experience) Journey Map
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There is a general dip in the user experience of all 3 stakeholders, between attending F2F interview and start date of the volunteer. We referred to this as “the sad phase.”
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The VCU team’s experience is consistently negative until the volunteer is cleared successfully for volunteering.
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Once onboarded, ongoing volunteers generally had a positive experience of their volunteering. Programme volunteers' experiences were however dependent on their personal circumstances as revealed by our work on persona archetype.
Prioritisation
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At the core - process automation and early capture of quality data are the most critical areas of need and will have the highest impact on both user experiences and efficiency.
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Un-validated and incomplete data captured at time of application and paperwork submission increases the need for manual, labour intensive checking of paperwork.
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Lack of Integration between systems creates a need for data to be re-entered into various systems.
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Lack of self service opportunities for volunteers:
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increases the demand on VCU resources.
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leads to communication, connection and engagement styles and touchpoints that don’t meet the needs of the volunteer.
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creates missed opportunity to connect and engage – e.g. online forums for remote volunteers.
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There is no connection, engagement and communication strategy resulting in a ‘one size fits all’ approach and loss of engagement with volunteers.
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Volunteers feel more valued, rewarded and engaged when their skills are fully utilized. There is an under-utilization of existing volunteer skills.
Impact on Efficiency
Impact on Volunteer Experience
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Different themes impacted user experiences and/or efficiency to different extents.
"We all tend to engage differently with different expectations."
"Its not about delays, its about keeping people engaged with the process."
Impact of insight
These insights helped direct us to where in the respective journeys, the most effort was required in the next co-design phase, in order to have the biggest impact.
"Biggest bottleneck is in processing the paperwork"
"I haven't heard back from you. Screening takes sooo long."
These insights helped prioritise design goals and give direction to the co-design phase and team. We were able to choose and include features that would have the highest and most wide-ranging impact in terms of prioritised themes and consequently on user experience and efficiency.
"Improving quality of paperwork at beginning is going to impact VCU workload hugely."
By understanding how each theme's pain points and opportunities impacted the user experience of stakeholders and/or the efficiency of the process, we were able to understand the impact of trade offs and work towards a balanced outcome in the design of the future state.
REPORTING
Detailed and summary insights reports were prepared. All assertions were evidenced by quotes from volunteers and internal VCU team members.
FUTURE STATE CO-DESIGN
RE-IMAGINIG THE FUTURE
PROBLEM FRAMING
At this point it was critical that the project delivery team had a clear and shared
understanding of the problem that needed to be solved. The following
problem statements were crafted to provide boundaries and direction
to the collaborative co-designing of the future state.
How might we improve the volunteer journey so that all categories of volunteers have a seamless application, on-boarding and volunteering experience which empowers, informs and continuously engages the volunteer, improving their retention 
and performance.
How might we ease the workload and provide engaging experiences for TSF internal teams, whilst enabling efficient recruitment of volunteers through automation and digital technology.
CO-DESIGN WORKSHOPS
Two workshops were held.
The first to visualise what might be the key touch-points in volunteers' application journey, and the backstage actions required to support that journey in an automated and digitised environment. In designing the future state journey the team focused on the impact on internal team workload, time taken to recruit new volunteers and maintaining engagement with volunteers throughout the journey in order to minimise drop-out rates. Several alternatives were explored through role play and much debate.
The second focused on visualising the experience of volunteers engaged in day to day tasks during their tenure as a volunteer. As it was impossible to envision every activity of a volunteer in the alloted time, the team voted to prioritise 5 task areas that would be explored and prototyped.
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Community/connection - Events, Forums
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Content access - knowledge sharing, newsletters, connect to mission
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Training - access, reporting, scheduling, track-ability
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Skills matching - roles, search
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Feedback loops - always avilable, proactive
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The resulting paper future state maps were digitised into Service Blueprints and formed the basis of wireframing. The service blueprints served to show activity and interactions above and below the interaction and visibility lines, as well as back end system processes. It helped the team develop a shared understanding of the overarching journey and process, while the wireframes would help the team visualise at a more detailed level the screens they might encounter in the future state scenario. Wireframes were later inserted into the service blue print at appropriate points to further build out a fuller visual concept of the journey and process.
FUTURE STATE BLUEPRINTS
Future State Service Blueprint - Becoming a Volunteer
Future State Service Blueprint - Volunteering Experiences
FUTURE STATE FEATURES & BENEFITS
A key feature of the proposed future state was the method of matching volunteers and roles. In the future state, roles would be matched to volunteers - new or existing enabling recruitment of several volunteers for a role and for volunteers to be able to apply for multiple roles. Previously the system matched a volunteer to a role and consequently if a volunteer wanted to apply for multiple roles, they needed to make multiple applications. Additionally there had been no ability to search existing pool of volunteers able to fill a role, limiting utilisation of exiting resources.
Key Features
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Full automation of workflows
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Digital process governance
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Workflows across multi-disciplinary teams
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Dynamic forms with data validation
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Queue Management and visibility of pipeline
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Appointment booking platform
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Mobile document capture
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Personalisation with content recommendation
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Give feedback anywhere, anytime
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Integrated systems
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Community forums to connect & engage
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Visible and trackable training
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Searchable skills database
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Integrated LMS
Key Benefits to Stakeholders
VOLUNTEER
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Considerable reduction in wait time from application to start date.
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Increased engagement and visibility while waiting.
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Increased opportunities to engage through self service
VCU INTERNAL TEAM
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Considerable reduction in workload.
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Ease of collaboration across teams driven by digital governance
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Increased confidence in the accuracy and completeness if data
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Improved relations with other TSF teams (customers)
VOLUNTEER/PROGRAMME MANAGERS
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Empowerment and continuous visibility of volunteer recruitment pipeline and timings.
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Faster resource sourcing either through new recruitment or use of existing volunteer skills.
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Ease of connection with potential volunteers.
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Ease of obtaining validated, high quality documentation driven by digital governance.
PROTOTYPING
VISUALISING THE FUTURE
WIREFRAMING
Insights from the discovery phase and future state co-design directly inspired wireframe design. Whilst I did not create these wireframes myself, as the SME and voice of the customer representative, I provided feedback which led to adjustments before testing with volunteers and internal team members.
Sample wireframes
Matching one volunteer to many roles and use of conversational style to engage.
Queue management and visibility of pipeline with digital process governance.
Mobile document capture.
Integrated systems with fully automated workflows. Data captured via dynamic forms.
USABILITY & CONCEPT TESTING
We conducted usability and concept testing with a small sample volunteers and internal team members, by taking them on a journey - what we called "walking the wall". As this was a testing of first iteration, the testing was limited. However the feedback was overwhelmingly positive along with very constructive opportunities for further enhancements. The client was provided with test feedback and recommended next steps.
“ Yes definitely looks desirable, helps with keep prioritising as part of our job roles. This forces us to keep volunteer management prioritised.
“ Blew my expectations out of the ballpark. I am going to become such an efficient worker. ”
FINAL HANDOVER
A final presentation of the two phases of our work, including a 'walk the wall' experience and recommended next steps was given to a wider group of stakeholders.
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