Volunteering Disruption!

Have you come across the word “Disrupt” What exactly is it? According to Melanie Burgess in an article written for News.com “ In a nutshell, positive disruption is corporate terminology for changing things up and solving problems from a new perspective. It is closely linked to another buzzword, innovation. The most commonly used example of disruption is ride-sharing mobile app Uber, where the creators disrupted the taxi industry by solving the problem of expensive transport and tackling it from a peer-to-peer perspective.” Melanie goes on to write “ Despite disruption often coming in the form of new technologies, a Randstad survey reveals more than four in five Australians are unconcerned by the idea of technological advances affecting their job in the future.”

Melanie goes on to quote Juanita Wheeler, organiser of TEDxBrisbane and founder of consulting firm Full & Frank who says the best way to become a disrupter is to read.

“The greatest minds and the people most innovative and creative and continuously looking for better solutions across all aspects of life are people who read,” Juanita says. “They might see an idea in architecture and apply it in science or see an idea in a travel company and apply it to foreign aid funding.” She recommends reading research articles from universities as well as keeping up-to-date on science, technology and current affairs. “The more widely you read, the more inquisitive and creative your ideas become,” she says. “It’s completely out of vogue to some extent but to me it’s everything. The beauty of it is that reading is free.”

Linda Ronnie writing for The Conversation in an article titled “Why it’s important for HR to get out in front of workplace disruption” states “There is no doubt that future workplaces are going to look different and that they’ll be run differently too. More and more companies are hiring freelancers and remote work among full-time employees is also becoming the new normal.”

Is it important for Volunteer Leadership to get out in front of workplace disruption? I say - of course!

As Linda says “ Monitoring teams and keeping up to date with projects can be done via a number of platforms and more electronic solutions will become available over time. Already, companies are making use of cloud-based solutions, voice technology and machine learning to manage their people”

We cannot afford to miss the relevance of this in the volunteering space. How can we adapt to new and emerging technologies that can assist us in harnessing the power of community giving for our organisations?

The traditional modus operandi of volunteer engagement still continues but if we fail to read, be inquisitive and to be creative we will be left behind. Take for example an this in Linda’s article:

“Global consumer goods giant, Unilever, is already taking advantage of this. It’s launched a pioneering digital recruitment process that’s shortened its hiring cycle from four months to just two weeks. This saves 50,000 hours of candidate time while reducing recruiter screening time by a massive 75%. More than that, the process is fun and rewarding for candidates and they get better feedback about their participation regardless of whether they are successful or not.”

Now apply this to how we recruit volunteers? Is your process fun and rewarding for volunteer candidates? It should be! Could you reduce your volunteer recruitment screening time by 75%?

As Linda says “ New approaches are appealing especially to Millennials and the Generation Zs – young people who are tech savvy and used to interacting on multiple platforms, and who will dominate work spaces of the future.”

How are we converting that talent and those skills into volunteering? The idea of disruption brings up many questions for us in the sector.

Are we shifting the mode of volunteering to suit volunteering of the future?

Are we using the right language to recruit the next gen of volunteering?

Are we harnessing present and emerging technology to drive innovative volunteering?

Are we reading and continuously looking for better solutions across all aspects of volunteering?

I believe that some groups are doing well. They are mostly in the Activist sphere where they are mobilising at place and harnessing technology to be agile and effective. We can learn a lot from them. We must to simply keep up and to do so we must disrupt!