How does your church bring new volunteers onboard?
Onboarding is the process of acquiring, accommodating, assimilating, and accelerating new team members, whether they come from outside or inside the organization. (Onboarding, Bradt and Vonnegut)
There’s actually another “a” word that is a perquisite: align. Here’s how the authors of Onboarding define the key processes listed above.
- Align– make sure your organization agrees on the need for a new team member and the delineating of the role you seek to fill
- Acquire– identify, recruit, select, and get people to join the team
- Accommodate– give new team members the tools they need to do the work
- Assimilate– help them join with others so they can do the work together
- Accelerate – help them and their team deliver better results faster
Now that’s a list of “straight A’s” I will take anytime!
Though this list comes from a business book, there are great correlations for ChurchWorld as well.
For example, if your church values your volunteer team members, then they would make sure something like the process above is a part of your volunteer leadership development program. The role of bringing new volunteer leaders onboard shouldn’t be an afterthought.
My church considers the role of a team coordinator to be a volunteer staff position. In that role I may not receive a paycheck, but the importance of my role in the total scheme of what we do is not diminished one bit.
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