On Friday 15th November 2024, Chris Wade, Helen Timbrell and Rob Jackson held a unique event kindly hosted by the National Trust at their HQ in Swindon.

The event, started to address the long evolving trend of volunteering functions being housed in combined People functions of HR and Volunteering professionals.

We felt that the sector discussion on this is long-overdue. HR professionals are increasingly asked to take on such leadership roles or work in combined teams, often without much in the way of support or preparation, and less still in terms of helping exploring the many possible options for integration.

This sometimes leads to disgruntled volunteering and HR teams jockeying for space and influence, and sometimes difficult change programmes without an understanding of the benefits and challenges of volunteering.

Our approach was and remains to provide a supportive environment to help HR professionals gain insight into some of the challenges, context and skillsets needs related to developing volunteering. We recognised that there are many and varied ways of exploring the benefits or otherwise of integration, and we felt that this could be the beginning of building a supportive network to help people professionals on this potentially new journey. We feel that such a supportive environment will help HR and volunteer professionals alike and ultimately our volunteers and our causes too.

So, in this podcast, able chaired by Matt, Rob, Helen and Chris explore reflections on the day, implications for the sector and possible next steps on this journey.

I hope you find the discussion stimulating. Please leave your thoughts in the comments or contact us direct at podcast@TimeForImpact.co.uk . We are sure this debate will continue.

Chris Wade

In the podcast we reference Rob and Helen's 2023 podcast conversation on Advancing the Profession. You can access that here....

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3K76Eh90TYEg4mGXwxffvC?si=XwrVEyCwQtybDW0vJXSg3g

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/season-2-episode-4-helen-timbrell/id1556641117?i=1000606011872

There is mention of my article on curating volunteer experiences that you access here....

https://www.timeforimpact.co.uk/blogs/our-blogs/dont-manage-curate