Oxford University Hospital Trust (OUH) is an NHS foundation trust encompassing four hospital locations in Oxford.
Volunteers are vital to the smooth running of each hospital location, with roles available in most hospital departments; volunteers can be involved in complex activities such as marshalling, Dementia Cafes, PAT dogs, department acting, cardiac rehab gyms and reading to children… to name just a few!
Every single volunteer role plays an essential part in OUH’s hospital’s mission to provide compassion and respect to all who access their services and to support around 200 volunteers was proving to be a difficult task for the Voluntary Services Department
Challenges faced:
- Excel spreadsheets had to be manually updated for each new volunteer
- Keeping information up to date was almost impossible
- A constant back and forth between volunteers over email regarding shift attendance changes.
- Lack of real data and insight regarding the volunteer impact
Matching volunteers to activities
Megan Bray, Voluntary services assistant shared the challenges faced by the team on a daily basis with us. Typically the volunteer team would spend at least a week creating their schedules and then identifying suitable volunteers for an activity at one of their locations. This was often arranged via email which was extremely time-consuming and meant battling with a high volume of emails, their admin time was further increased if a volunteer was unable to attend their dedicated shift.
The Volunteero missions and scheduling features have significantly reduced the time spent sorting department rotas and filling shifts. These can now be created and posted to the Volunteero app in just a few clicks. Volunteers self-serve and manage their availability on the app, claiming shifts they’d like to do and leaving ones they’re no longer available for. It also empowers volunteers to take ownership of their volunteering and plan longer in advance.
“ It allows volunteers to see their own missions and sign up for rotas straight away, but it also allows us as a team to advertise different missions and encourage volunteers to sign up for something new!”
They plan to keep expanding the number of Volunteering roles they have to offer to match the demand from departments and potential new volunteers.
Volunteer engagement
By freeing up time previously spent on admin, Megan and the team are now able to spend more time connecting with their volunteer teams to foster meaningful relationships and retain volunteer engagement. Oxford University Hospital Trust told us that their volunteers really enjoy using the app and seeing the range of new opportunities that are posted regularly. This helps to empower volunteers to take control of their roles, inspiring them to take on new activities and get more out of volunteering.
In addition to this, the addition of Volunteero’s custom reports feature gives volunteers a dedicated space for having their voices heard by allowing OUH to customise the short snappy reports that volunteers complete after all volunteering activities.
“Volunteers love creating reports and they’ve been so useful for capturing specific info that has been forwarded on to the correct departments for action “
Measuring impact
Before Volunteero, Oxford University Hospital Trust didn’t have a formal volunteer reporting process. Capturing consistent data across their 300-strong volunteer cohort was nearly impossible. They mainly received verbal feedback which was difficult to log, track, action and then follow up, so they were raring to go with custom reports once we got started on Volunteero. Having a dedicated space for capturing volunteer feedback has proved to be the most useful addition to their Volunteero experience by benefitting both the staff and volunteer teams
“To be able to capture the info from Volunteers who are based on-site at times we are not has been so vital for flagging up areas for improvements and checking on volunteers wellbeing. The insights have been extremely useful evidence for end-of-year reports and monitoring data.“
Capturing this information is now instant, as volunteers are prompted by a push notification to submit a report post-shift and since launching with their volunteers in January their cohort of volunteers have racked up almost 1000 hours total of volunteering and submitted over 250 reports.
What's next?
Onboarding Volunteers
Oxford University Hospital Trust are fortunate to receive a regular influx of volunteer applications, however, it would typically take the team around 6 weeks to vet, train and then onboard volunteer applications. The next stage of their rollout is to take advantage of Volunteero’s recruitment feature which will enable them to create bespoke opportunities which can be posted to the Volunteero marketplace and be embedded into their website. Megan and the team are really excited to start using the forms and submissions feature across all their hospital sites and are looking forward to streamlining their volunteer onboarding process and reducing barriers through our application tracking, customised processes and automated reference features.
“Volunteero has completely alleviated the stress associated with manually inputting admin/recruitment processes, as well as managing evening and weekend volunteers. Its automated system streamlines scheduling, allowing for smoother coordination and ensuring that every volunteer can easily find their place in supporting OUH's missions. With Volunteero, administrative burdens are minimised, freeing up time and resources to focus on what truly matters: Supporting our Patients and Staff with compassion and respect. Big thanks to the Volunteero team for all the help throughout this process. It has made our working lives so much easier!”
Here at Volunteero we are looking forward to helping Oxford University Hospital Trust to further grow its volunteering programmes all while capturing the impact of the amazing work they do.
If you’d like to hear more about how Volunteero can streamline your volunteer processes then book a demo today!
