Christian Retailing

INSIGHTS: Recruiting, training and rewarding volunteers Print Email
Written by Staff   
Tuesday, 22 February 2011 02:29 PM America/New_York

by Luane Bastianelli

Recruiting: Usually, we have a wait list for people to volunteer. We bring people in when we get potential volunteers. We call them, screen them, see what their availability is. They will go onto a sub list, or we will try to move them into some type of support position through the week.

From there, if a volunteer has a weekend that they cannot work, they can contact these (new) people and have them come in and work for them. And then we invite them to join our team on a regular basis. Over our five campuses we have over a hundred volunteers.

Training: We do several different things. When they first come we do orientation with them ... it’s kind of like a scavenger hunt. I have a number of questions, items that they need to look up, things that they need to research within the store. They take a clipboard and kind of roam around the store and try to find the answers to all of these questions.

Some of the questions involve interacting with other people on the staff. I like to have my seasoned volunteers help to train the regular volunteers because the one thing that is always a challenge with volunteers is a lot of times they don’t feel confident. They work a couple times a month, and it can take a long time to say they have actually been with us a month.

It’s very encouraging to them to see, "Wow, I do know more than I thought." So, I usually pair them up after orientation with somebody on the team. We’ll take them through the basics on the computer and they’ll be side-by-side with somebody that’s been with us for awhile.

Motivation: We just love on them, we appreciate them. We make sure we think of them for birthdays and their anniversaries with us, and when they have babies and sick people in their families, loved ones that have passed away. We try to treat them like family and like we like to be treated. Doing that and, too, making sure that the time that they spend with us is well-spent.

I don’t think anyone wants to come in on a Sunday, stand around and feel like, “What am I here for?”. We also do a lot of training with them. We use a lot of different models, like with Zondervan's Bible study. A lot of the vendors now are offering customer service training, where you can learn about the product and in doing so you earn either an item from their stock or maybe a credit for items to purchase.

—Luane Bastianelli was manager of The Resource Center at Kensington Community Church in Troy, Mich.