Thursday, May 14, 2009

Volunteer depreciation

It is a rare company that, once having used volunteers, can go back to doing without their services. So valuable are volunteers as a work force that many companies plan their paid operations around the volunteers schedules and hire paid coordinators to keep the workers and volunteers happy.

But even if rare, there are such companies. I'm familiar with one which recently ran into a bureaucratic requirement for annual training for all volunteers providing service. A couple of employees had difficult meeting at the times specified. Instead of accommodations being made to ease their difficulty, the company just summarily dismissed them. Now we're short-handed and having difficulty meeting the service obligations

3 comments:

  1. What company was that? I'd like to avoid them.

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  2. Reminds me of my last significant calling.

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  3. It's the local government agency that runs our Meals on Wheels program. Meals on Wheels has a history of being bounced around to different agencies. Just when things are going well, someone forgets what we're in the business of doing.

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