Onboarding

The organization is a member based, non-profit focused on women's leadership development. The organization is comprised of four corporations, or entities, and each entity is operated by independent staff and boards of directors, as well as being supported by volunteers. Within each entity there can be multiple departments, and the volunteers are recruited and trained based on each department's needs. A common sentiment and complaint was that volunteers were inconsistent in their role performance and understanding of the expectations of the organization. In addition, there were differences between how separate volunteer teams were trained within one department. The difference in recruiting and training lead to inconsistencies in expectations, communication and retention of volunteers.

The organization has over 6,000 volunteers filling over 1,500 unique roles. Volunteers reside in countries all over the world, with the majority residing within the United States. Comfort with technology ranged from digital natives to volunteers uncomfortable navigating technology. While some volunteers have been engaged with the organization since they joined, others left and re-engaged later in life.

Because each entity, department and team had specific training that was required for their volunteers, the focus of this orientation training needed to be key expectations that applied to all volunteers throughout the enterprise.

The organization had access to a learning management system (LMS), but it was not accessible to all volunteers. A document repository, called The Resource Center had already been established as a "go-to" place for volunteers to locate important resources and included a dedicated page just for volunteers.

Volunteers are required to be subscribed to all organization electronic communications. This creates an equal opportunity to communicate with all volunteers about expectations and to introduce the orientation trainings.

An important component to success was going to be the ability for the orientation training to be self-directed. As adult learners, they required the flexibililty to self-direct their orientation learning due to competing priorities such as caring for families, schooling, work, etc.

A common question that members and volunteers ask is "how does this apply to me?" The orientation training needed to include examples and opportunities for volunteers to see how the information would be applicable to them and their role.

With all these key considerations in mind, it was determined to that a comprehensive checklist would be an ideal solution. The checklist would be delivered via e-mail and include a variety of tasks and responsibilities to acquaint the volunteers with the expectations and resources of the organization.

Additionally, 5 e-learning modules would be created and stored in The Resource Center for all volunteers to access during their orientation and throughout their terms.