News item: “It has closed more than 40 museums and other attractions because of staff cutbacks to save money.”
No - not the UK, but Greece. Could the same thing happen here? And if so, would museum directors feel attracted to the idea of using volunteers to fill in?
Possibly. But if so, it is to be hoped that second thoughts, or a straightforward briefing from the volunteer manager, would soon show this to be a bad idea.
Why? Because the tacit agreement between professionals and volunteers is that the efforts of the latter must be confined to a net addition to the planned input of the paid staff. Temporarily under-implementing the professional staff complement has no place in the creation of work for volunteers.
Thirteen years ago the British Association of Friends of Museums (BAFM) was funded to research volunteering and volunteers across the heritage sector.
One of the results was the publication in 1999 of the association’s Handbook for Heritage Volunteer Managers and Administrators.
Recently revised and updated, the handbook is comprehensive, logical and, in the view of Robert Crawford, the former director general of the Imperial War Museum, an essential tool.
It is a deliberate attempt to persuade heritage management that volunteers are not simply an add-on to their HR load, but something quite different.
Volunteers have different motivations and rights from paid staff, and their managers have different and additional responsibilities which need to be taken into account.
While many museums acknowledge that they could not open their doors without their volunteers, it seems surprising that little training on their management and administration is available.
This was highlighted last year in another sector when two Citizens Advice Bureau volunteers claimed in separate incidents that they had been unfairly “sacked” and subsequent investigations by their organisation found in favour of the volunteers. In other words, the local management was at fault – which ought to sound a small alarm.
However, the truth is that volunteers in museums and other heritage institutions should not have a contract of employment.
They should have instead an agreement which is binding only in honour and depends very much on excellent relations, especially thoughtfulness and good manners, between management, paid staff and volunteers.
In a recession museums may well be surrounded by plenty of potential volunteers. But they must not be taken on to replace permanent paid staff. Indeed, they should not be taken on at all unless a volunteer post has been defined for each one.
Peter Walton is responsible for volunteering management at BAFM and was a leading member of the former National Volunteer Managers Forum
