Abstract
Working with volunteers is a challenging occupation, especially in an environment of increasingly precarious casualisation. Although this trend is evident in other types of work, workers’ engagement with the purpose and mission of volunteerism can particularly emphasise blurred boundaries between the work and non-work spheres, potentially confusing employee identities. Emerging from an ongoing ethnographic study, this account draws on Sally’s precarious experiences as a leader of volunteers in the conservation sector. She reflects on the joys and challenges of leading volunteers in a messy environment of paradoxically interacting overwork and underwork, while highlighting issues of precarity and balance within and beyond her role as employee.
Introduction
Research into volunteer work has gradually emerged in the literature on work, employment and society (Maddrell, 2000; Taylor, 2004; Wilson, 2000). Unsurprisingly, this often focuses on volunteer motivations and experience (Wilson, 2000) or managerial perspectives of volunteers regarding recruitment, retention, training or performance (Maddrell, 2000). There has been little scholarly interest in the employees supervising volunteers day-to-day, despite their crucial role. Even when research includes such employees, it tends to view them as a minor contextual factor. For example, Pegg et al.’s (2012) study of volunteer tourists includes interviews with their leader, although primarily focusing on the volunteers themselves. There is little engagement with the blurred boundaries between volunteering and employment, especially in relation to ground-level volunteer supervision. This article shares the work experience of Sally (the anonymised co-author – all names are disguised), who reflects on her experience of precariously casualised employment, leading groups of volunteers, and how this interacts with her own volunteering.
The article evolved from an ethnography of EPV, an anonymised Australian conservation organisation. EPV is a non-profit NGO with 14 offices across Australia, managing 12,500 local and international volunteers on over 2000 conservation projects annually. Most of EPV’s work involves habitat maintenance (e.g. weed removal, planting native plants, fire and flood recovery) or research (e.g. surveying flora and fauna). Sally’s office normally organises about seven daily projects each week and one or two overnight projects monthly, employing two full-time and up to four casual team leaders. Each project utilises approximately 10 volunteers and one paid team leader. EPV has no guaranteed income stream, being financed by a mixture of competitively awarded grants and partner organisations (many projects are supported by commercial partners). Volunteer tourists (participating in residential projects) also pay a small financial contribution.
Sally was recruited as team leader after two years of volunteering with EPV (she continued to volunteer on other daily projects occasionally, when not leading teams). She originally volunteered as a student and began the team leader role after her studies. Like many young Australians, she experienced unpredictably casualised employment (Campbell and Burgess, 2018). She was available at short notice and prearranged projects were cancelled if insufficient people volunteered. Many of Sally’s weekend projects took place in a conservation park about 200 km from the city, where EPV was predominantly involved in data collection for environmental research projects, maintenance and weed control. Both authors worked together on many such projects during the fieldwork and Sally was interviewed both alone and within group interviews. Her narrative, below, developed from this fieldwork and three additional meetings to collaborate on the article’s content and approach, exploring issues raised during the main research project.
The article begins by exploring the interrelated concepts of work–life balance (WLB) and precarious employment in volunteer supervision. It continues with Sally’s narrative, where she describes the residential weekends, developing into broader reflections on the nature of her work and employment relationship.
Blurring work–life and volunteer–employee balance
The relationship between work and non-work has long interested social researchers, whether exploring WLB or the gendered nature of employment, two closely related concepts (Eikhof et al., 2007; Taylor, 2004). Issues of overwork, such as unpaid overtime impinging on non-work or private time (Van Wanrooy and Wilson, 2006), are complicated by potential underemployment when zero-hour contracts present employees with uncertain, precarious working conditions (Warren, 2015). Sally’s account of volunteer–employment demonstrates work–life blurring on the frontline (OtFL) of conservation work in Australia.
The concept of WLB remains controversial; indeed, scholars question whether work and life are separable spheres of human existence (Bloom, 2016). Some prefer to recognise an inseparable duality and ‘integrative effect’ (2016: 589) on human experience that can contribute to identity development. Even when work and non-work spheres/activities overlap, so ‘temporal boundaries between work and other activities have become blurred’ (Williams et al., 2008: 738). This is where Sally’s experiences offer insight into work–life interaction, especially given her further integration of both volunteer and employee roles/identities.
The work tasks of leading volunteers further complicate Sally’s work–life integration and blurring. Her role on weekend projects – essentially leading volunteer tourists (Pegg et al., 2012) – shares some elements with leisure tourist representatives; while ‘[t]our reps become tour reps because they have learned to be good holidaymakers’ (Guerrier and Adib, 2003: 1415), Sally became a leader of volunteers because she had learned to be a good volunteer. There are differences between these leadership roles, however, not least in attitudes towards working in ‘free time’ (Guerrier and Adib, 2003: 1413). Although both recognise unpaid overtime as inevitable, the tour reps seem to do so more grudgingly, while Sally almost embraced it as reinforcing her other, volunteer, identity.
Such a dual work–volunteer identity complicates employee work–life separation. This is illuminated by Taylor’s (2004: 38) suggestion that work is best conceptualised not by ‘whether it is paid but whether it involves the provision of a service to others or the production of goods’. Accordingly, Sally’s original volunteering represented a form of unpaid work that influenced her attitude towards her unpaid overtime later. The boundaries between formal paid and unpaid work in organisations like EPV are often unclear, especially when encouraging blurred interactions between paid and unpaid formal work. Sally and some other colleagues began their relationship with EPV as unpaid volunteers before becoming employees. This represents a variation of Lewis et al.’s (2017: 590) ‘high-commitment management programmes designed to blur boundaries between work and non-work’; Sally’s volunteering already demonstrated considerable commitment to EPV. Her narrative explores her blurring of volunteer–employee roles, seeing additional work (preparation and debriefing) as volunteering, rather than unpaid overtime. Tellingly, her passion for conservation often led her to exclaim that it isn’t really like work at all. She identified herself as a passionate person; her especial passion was for the environment, but she was also passionate about EPV, her volunteers (and their learning) and her work. She sought to contribute to conservation and share her passion with volunteers. She particularly emphasised her relationship with the volunteers, showing considerable sensitivity to their needs and expectations, striving to balance these with the need to get the conservation work done.
Work precarity
Campbell and Burgess (2018) present an Australian perspective of employment precarity, arguing that the concept has broadened considerably. They extend it ‘beyond the standard/nonstandard jobs dichotomy’ leading to ‘an evaluation of the conditions that contribute to the “quality” of work’ generally (2018: 58). They suggest precarious employment includes casualisation and heterogeneity of casual work, earnings uncertainty and work-time insecurity, especially in relation to zero-hour contracts, temporary migration and youth employment. They also link this to housing precarity, suggesting that even permanent employment is potentially precarious, especially, but not limited to, part-time work. This is something, like casualisation, that has become a ‘distinctive feature of Australian employment’ (2018: 59). The OECD (2019) reinforce this, showing Australia has a particularly high proportion of short part-time jobs, with a quarter of Australian workers subject to casual contracts, half without guaranteed hours. Baines et al. (2019) suggest that such workplace insecurity is becoming normalised in some sectors, such as care work, and Sally’s account illustrates a level and acceptance of such normality in her work. Subject to a zero-hours contract, her work hours and income varied weekly, with unpredictability being more precarious than low pay alone. Even semi-regular work – she normally led one weekend project per month – was subject to short-notice cancellation.
Precarity extends beyond low and unpredictable hours and income and is exacerbated when over and under-employment interact. In an earlier OtFL article, Simpson and Smith (2019: 714) coined the phrase ‘precariously (over)working’. They demonstrate a link between income uncertainty and maximisation of opportunity when work is available, pressuring individuals to work excessive hours. In Sally’s case, identities of conservationist and volunteer complicated her employment relationship. Overwork was less associated with seeking extra pay than working beyond paid hours when she accepted unpaid work as necessary and in-line with her identity. This echoes Aronson and Neysmith’s (1996: 65) earlier findings about the potential overlap of identities of ‘formal service providers and informal caregivers and of their paid and unpaid work’. In Simpson and Smith (2019), Sarah felt financial pressure to work excessive hours, while Sally’s baseline hours, for a typical week, would be relatively low; she effectively worked unpaid overtime, despite not receiving full-time working hours and pay. This potentially increased her broader precarity, making it more difficult to engage in other paid work.
Employees have many different experiences of workplace precarity, despite some shared elements. In Baines et al. (2019), Paul’s care work experience displays similarities to Sally’s uncertain hours and unpaid additional work, though his narrative represents an experienced employee facing changing working conditions as precarity increases, while Sally was starting a career within this reality. Sally, in her first job, was therefore more likely to rationalise such extra work as normal, especially coming from a volunteer tradition. Roderick and Schumacker’s (2017) exploration of professional football incorporates yet another aspect of precarity. Schumacker faced seasonal and day-to-day precarity, influenced by potential injury and performance, in an occupation with the added precarity of a relatively short career. He focused more on the end of a sports career, while Sally was starting hers. Although the context is different, Sally demonstrates similar impacts, explaining ‘it was a precarious job because it just wasn’t providing me a normal person’s life’, given the short and long-term uncertainty she and Schumacker faced every week.
Precarious implications
As short, unpredictable working hours (Warren, 2015) and longer, informal (unpaid) working hours become normalised (Williams et al., 2008), workers like Sally face various types of precarity. Unpredictable employment contributed to her and her partner’s reliance on private, shared rental accommodation, subject to relatively short-term leases and reliance on co-tenants in the insecure Australian private housing market, when unable to obtain a home loan. She faced the need to work beyond her paid hours, using conservationist and volunteer identities to justify such overemployment. Leading a team of volunteers for a weekend required extensive preparation on Friday and debriefs on Monday; the official weekend itself started at 07:00 Saturday and ended about 19:00 Sunday (36 hours of full responsibility for the needs of her team and project tasks). When relating her experience to other OtFL narratives, it is clear that precarity has many individual forms, wrapped around some similar elements. The interaction of Sally’s type of underwork and overwork combined with her ethos of volunteering to make it difficult to seek additional work to supplement her precarious income. While she rationalised this as another form of volunteering (easily done, as that was her original EPV role), EPV saw this as part of the all-inclusive ‘gig’ (Simpson and Smith, 2019: 711) of weekend team-leading, although not formally included in her contract and hours of work. This created a challenging employment conundrum; while passionate about her work and employer, she felt there was little chance of a long-term secure career in the field.
Sally’s experience raises some important and challenging issues that future research could explore more fully. In particular, more research into the practicalities and tensions when ‘gig’ style employment and normal-hour contracts (whether casual or regular) exist alongside each other in an organisation is essential to better understand employee relations, especially employees’ relationships with employers and with any fellow employees who are subject to different types of contract.
Sally’s story
From volunteer to team leader …
I volunteered with EPV two years before working there. I wanted to take my hat away from university where I was studying ecology, but still wanted to do something environmental, because that’s my passion. One day I was volunteering on a project and Clare [team leader] told me EPV were recruiting another team leader; she said: ‘You know what? You’re a biologist; you’re an ecologist. You’d be perfect for this job. You should definitely apply.’ I was, like, ‘That’d be great. That’d be awesome,’ so I applied and volunteered for whatever projects I could, to strengthen my job application.
It was great because, once I got the job, I already knew something about it – besides all the stress I guess [laughs]. Like, I had an idea about OH&S [Occupational Health and Safety] because leaders had explained about safety procedures, but I didn’t realise it was so important to the job. I didn’t know I’d need to learn defensive driving, first aid, that sort of thing. It wasn’t that expensive – $90 to get the first-aid training and do CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). Nowadays, I know how important it is for the job, because if something goes wrong, that 1%, it’s catastrophic. So, we had OH&S training online. That’s like: ‘How would you proceed if you’re in an environment infested with snakes? You would (A) call it a day; (B) call the office . . .’ and ‘How do you induct volunteers and make them aware of the procedures?’.
There’s a training day when you go out with another team leader; I went out with Clare. She was, like, ‘You do it and I’ll observe you’ and after that she’d come to me and say, ‘Hey, you had to say this; you had to do that’. Every month, a manager checks with us, like, ‘Did you say this today? Did you do that today?’ and then asks the team ‘Did Sally say that?’ to check I am doing the job.
I was in love with the position from the start . . . It’s very convenient, being a volunteer, just sit back and relax and do what you’re told. I thought ‘Yeah, that’s easy’. When you’re leading, things get more complicated, dealing with difficult people and getting the job done, but it was a fantastic experience. Dealing with different volunteers from different walks of life can be tiring at times. You get along with some people easier, some people are harder . . . but, good times, really good.
There was lots to think about, getting my head around the difference between volunteering and team leading. I think a big characteristic of the leader is proactivity. You need to do things for yourself, which might have helped me get the job. When I was volunteering, if I saw the leader struggling I’d go and help without asking questions. I’d just get things done and that takes you to another level – a team level; that’s an important trait to have. When I volunteered – it’s probably a big self-reflection – every time I saw someone doing something, I’d ask myself: ‘Would I be able to do that? Would I be willing to do that?’. When I volunteered, I’d watch leaders and take notes, like ‘I could definitely do this’, ‘I would love doing this’, ‘What would I improve?’, ‘What would I do different?’.
Sally’s l-o-n-g weekends
When we had a weekend away, with one overnight, I was responsible for the team’s safety and to make sure they were well fed, healthy and happy. I was open to whatever concern – however I could help. We had some time for doing the project and some for showing them how important the place is – not only to learn about it, but so they can say: ‘Hey, I’ve been there and it’s important!’. So, if the government ever wants to pave the whole area over, they’ll say: ‘Hey, no! I’ve been there before. I know how vulnerable the area is.’
I do enjoy the idea of volunteer tourism; I think it explains a lot, because it’s a little bit of both, you know? Because you’re volunteering and learning, but also having fun. Helping the environment. Volunteer tourism kind of describes everything the weekend is like. You learn a bit of ecology, do some tourism and some volunteering.
Okay, for starters, my weekend wouldn’t start on Saturday, but on Friday. I’d volunteer myself to come the day before, organise the vehicle and make sure everything was ready. On Friday morning I’d buy the food: I’d get together with Sara [coordinator], organise the food, check if there are any food requirements and adapt accordingly, plan the meals and what we’re going to cook, etc. Then load up the van and go home. Sometimes I’d take the van so I wouldn’t have to leave my car at the office all weekend. Friday night I’d organise the project plan, too, exactly what we’d do. I’d write it in my diary to tick-off over the weekend.
I’d arrive at the office around 7 [a.m.], Saturday, because usually there are little things that you haven’t thought about – volunteers who turn up only with shorts [ill-equipped] – and leave for the park around 8. I’d check the weather and traffic conditions in advance. I think it’s in my veins now, how to get there, but I would always put on the GPS to make sure there was nothing that’d delay us.
We’d get there around 10–10.30 [a.m.]. I’d show the volunteers the accommodation, unload the van. I’d explain what we were going to do and then have the safety induction, before doing an example task [survey, weed removal, etc.] before lunch. A practice to get their heads around what we’d be doing and then back to camp for lunch and we’d make a sandwich together.
Afterwards it was back to the project task. I’d normally finish lunch a little earlier than the volunteers, just to make sure everything was ready: tasks divided, equipment ready and all that. Then we’d drive back to the site and work until about 5 [p.m.]. Before the end of the day, we’d go for a walk around the park, do some sightseeing. Then dinner.
I think the night was normally the bit the volunteers really enjoyed. After work we could relax and think about what we did and get to know each other more. In winter, we’d sit around a campfire and in summer we’d have a barbecue. It was always quite nice. Sometimes we’d go for a walk or do a night survey, have a look at the bats and other nocturnal animals – after all, that’s when they’re about. Then we’d go to bed – around 10, I reckon; wake up Sunday around 7–7.30 [a.m.], breakfast, then continue the task. We’d return to camp for lunch, then clean-up and pack the vehicle. We’d get back to the office by 5 [p.m.]. I wouldn’t leave until I’d completely unloaded everything and cleaned the vehicle, around 7 [p.m.], then I’d go home.
Monday I’d work at home and report back to Mary [manager] – normally by email . . . I’d send her the stuff, compile all the data/report, type up whatever we saw [other relevant observations] . . . and that was volunteer work for me. Sometimes I’d do it in the office; type the data and give it to Mary. Then we’d have a chat – how everything was. It’s funny now I’m saying it, because it’s basically four days’ work, paid for two. But that’s okay [laughing], partially because, as with everything I do, I was very passionate about it . . . thinking about the division between paid work and volunteer[ing] . . . So, two more things. I needed to study the day before. I might need to learn about flora or fauna, to show volunteers and give them interesting information, such as where [feral/invasive] stuff came from, why they are here, to answer their questions: ‘Why am I weeding these plants? Why is it an issue? It’s green. It’s beautiful. Shouldn’t we just leave it alone?’. I’d try to share knowledge with volunteers. The second thing is, because I’m not the most experienced team leader, I had a golden rule: ‘If I don’t know what it is, we don’t remove it!’. Yeah. If I’m not sure, I search books . . . the Internet. ‘Oh, it looks like a weed’ was not enough for me. I needed to be sure. I got really concerned about removing a plant. I’d rather just leave it – rather than, ‘Boo-boo, whoops, sorry. I pulled the wrong one out!’ That would be awful. The point of the weekend was to protect the native plants or animals. We want to make sure they’ll be there in 100 years and I’ll bring my great grandson to see them.
Sally’s challenges
As team leader, I think my influence on the group was so important. I’d come to them pretty happy, tell them jokes, laugh with them. That’s an essential part of the job, I think. If I was unhappy, I’d try to put that all behind me when I got out of the van with the volunteers, as best I could. I think nothing affected me more than stuff in the office if things were tense, but that’s private and had to be separated from the volunteers. I’m very sensitive and because I looked up to everyone in the office – everyone had so much knowledge and years of experience – I was kind of, like, ‘Alright, if someone tells me off, I am the worst culprit in the world’. But that was private; I couldn’t feel like that . . . I couldn’t pass it on to the volunteers.
Feedback from volunteers was so important. Because EPV is very people-focused – I mean, it is environmental work, but with people, with volunteers. I was so passionate about this and I loved the job so much. I think what we did was so important, but, whatever else happened, it couldn’t be as important as being good for the volunteers, showing them how important their work was, you know . . . inspiring them, I guess that’s the word. Just trying to put any problems [to the] back [of my mind] . . .
It wasn’t always easy to get feedback from the volunteers. I told Clare I wanted a suggestion box inside the van. But she thought it’d cause problems, so I didn’t go through with it, but I always wanted more feedback. You want to do your best and it is in your hands, so if someone wasn’t happy, I wanted to know. I liked our group discussions [group interviews were held on some Saturday nights during the fieldwork]. I mean, I enjoyed talking to the volunteers and those were the times they gave me useful feedback and . . . I don’t want to get upset with this, but, I loved EPV so much and thought it was so important and we did GREAT work. I was so passionate about it. I wanted to make it work. I wanted to see the volunteers really engage. I wanted to see the volunteers happy with the work that they did. I wanted to see them coming back, so I wanted to do everything possible to make sure that happened and have feedback about whatever I could do better. Whatever would make them happier, I would do it and – this bit is tricky – when it came down to the food-chain, they [volunteers] often seem to be the least important. Because the first person I needed to make happy was Mary, then Paul [managers], then head office, you know? But I think, if I had a magic remote-control to change EPV for the better, I’d make it all about the volunteers, not about the head office.
I had a volunteer who wasn’t following my instructions. I explained, ‘You need to do X’ and she would do ‘Y’ and I’m, like, ‘No, I’ve told you like tens of times, please do X’ and she kept doing ‘Y’ . . . That made me upset because she was experienced. She thought she was doing the right thing, but I had the training. We had our procedures, the way things needed to be done. It doesn’t matter what background she had, she needed to follow my instructions. That was a bit hard. On that particular day I had another really bad experience . . . there was a thunderstorm on the same day and, oh God, it was so hard to keep up being happy and, like, ‘All right guys, it’s going to be fine. Let’s get back to the vehicle and not die’ [laughing]. Yeah. It was hard sometimes . . .
There was another volunteer who didn’t integrate with an otherwise strong group. That was difficult. She had travelled a long way especially for that project, so I wanted to ensure she was happy and having fun, but couldn’t get much feedback from her. I guess it was her personality. She was like an outlier from the group. We sat on the grass eating oranges and she wouldn’t join us. Things like that – which is fine, just different. It’s like she wasn’t ‘in’ the same music as everyone else; we were dancing, having fun. But I could be completely wrong. Maybe she had a great time and thought it was amazing, she just didn’t express it. Different personalities . . . I needed to be able to cope with that and, as a team leader, I was always asking questions, always making sure that she was comfortable, and asking: ‘Are you sure that you don’t want to . . .’, ‘D’you wanna do this?’, ‘Are you guys happy with this?’. Making sure we had our breaks and stuff, because I know, in an enthusiastic, engaged group like that one, it’s easy to forget about the outsider.
Final reflections
Working for EPV
I’m someone completely, 100% in love with the environment. I’ve never been in love with anything more – don’t tell my partner; though he probably knows – and I wouldn’t change that. With every single part of my life, I try to do something towards it. From buying ecological dishwasher powder to my work, I do everything I can to help the environment. Since I was a kid it’s been such an important part of my life. So, if you asked me ‘What defines you?’, I would say ‘environment’. That’s for sure. Maybe I’m not doing as well as I could. Maybe I should be vegan. Maybe I just have a very positive and a too romantic view of my work . . . I know I do. The only way this affects me emotionally – and that’s why I’m trying not to cry now – is that I wish I had more work and time available . . . not just for work but volunteering, just so I can have more contact with EPV’s work, because it’s an organisation I believe in. It fits completely with what I think should be happening, although I’m not doing as much as I’d like, not like just to be paid, but to have contact with it.
Afterword
A final thought . . . this is mainly seen as women’s work and I think it is less valued for being seen as easy work that anyone could do. That’s upsetting for me because when I look back at team leading, I think . . . okay, I haven’t had much work experience, but EPV is one of the hardest jobs. It was s-o-o-o-o hard. And I believed I could do it really well. You need people skills, organising skills, time management and first aid, and all those things. It needed so many skills. It was so hard, so exhausting. I hold my hands up to other leaders being able to do it every day and still keep their head over water, because it’s a really, really challenging job for low pay. Like, it’s ridiculous. Yeah. While we’ve been talking now I’m thinking about everything . . . The pay was just really weird. I mean, the job that had so much to do and so many skills to apply and so much to be dealing with – that the pay was just weird. In that sense, I suppose it was a precarious job not just because it wasn’t providing me a living wage, but because it was not really a normal person’s life.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Peter Sandiford would like to thank Sally Green for collaborating on the article and for sharing her story. Many thanks to Dr Ian Roper and to the three anonymous reviewers for their guidance and feedback.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
