Rewarding Volunteers



Rewarding Volunteers

Introduction

Most of the businesses today seek services of the volunteers in order to gain financial benefits and to cope up with the understaffing issues. In addition to business and health organizations, the online schools and universities face serious issues of understaffing which can be resolved to a large extent using the services of volunteers. The online university would have to execute suitable style of leadership, in order to manage the team of volunteers efficiently. Although, people usually work as a volunteer with the aims of helping others and not to gain any financial benefits, it is always better to pay some reward to the volunteers in order to encourage them and keep their moral up.

Understaffing at the Online University

If the number of employees in the workplace falls below the number which is required for effective operations, the situation is known as understaffing. Over the period of past few years, the businesses which focus more on cutting down their expenses have been facing serious issues of understaffing. In addition to the company's will of cutting down their expenses, there may be various other reasons behind the problem of understaffing; usually these reasons highly vary from company to company. In particular for the online university, it is hard to find a large number of volunteers because of the financial standing of such universities. Although many people like to work as volunteer, a greater majority work to be paid. Thus, if the organization faces financial constraints and fails to pay the people with financial rewards, the understaffing and non availability of volunteers remains a serious issue. This is one of the major reasons why the online universities often have understaffing problems

One of the leading causes for the problem of understaffing at an online university may be the poor leadership style. Due to the change in business environment, the leadership has become more challenging and complex (Bennis, 2007). Efficient leadership style ensures coordination of activities between the managerial and regular staff members, which is vital for any successful business transaction. It is the leader's role due to which the operations of any organization run smoothly. The major role of the leader is to provide guidelines which are to be followed by the other staff members. However, the individual staff members may not be provided with sufficient guidelines at the online university; thus the workforce of the university often remains confused about how to perform their tasks. As a result, majority of the staff members may easily deviate from their routine responsibilities, causing severe disruptions in the routine business transactions. The management of the online university should consider the fact that appropriately designed style of leadership is essential for developing work motivation in the employees. If the employees are not motivated sufficiently, they may find themselves reluctant to work and may resign from job; thus problem of understaffing rises.

In addition to effective leadership style, another necessary factor for the management of staff successfully is to provide them with proper communication ...