How to manage volunteers effectively: Improving productivity with volunteer management software
Productivity improving technology is something that most, if not all of us have access to in our personal and professional lives and can easily take for granted. For many, our smartphones are organising our diaries, navigating us to destinations, monitoring our health and capturing our memories – they even float our data effortlessly back to the cloud for safekeeping.
And even those that push against the tide with technology innovations, find themselves eventually swept along in solution-based apps, hardware or gadgets that help us do more in less time, or solve something that we never knew needed fixing. Let’s face it, we all need a simpler, smarter, more organised way to live.
So when it comes to our professional work lives, there are yet more exciting solutions for everything from project management applications like Trello and Asana to collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack. Each bringing its own set of enviable time-saving features that help streamline how we work and add valuable minutes to our day.
Volunteer management should be no different, which is why upon beginning the search for a software or app, it’s easier to drive a decision for your organisation if you know which problems you need to solve. Maybe you need to simplify your recruitment process, standardise your rota system or centralise your volunteer communications, maybe it’s all of the above?
Whilst productivity may not be in that “must-have” list, or indeed the main driver behind your strategy, it is an inevitable byproduct of successful and meaningful technology. No one comes along asking to improve productivity, it’s just expected, but it’s only truly achievable if what you are providing is done properly and with purpose.
“We’ve thought about the problems and created time-saving solutions”
At Assemble we focus largely on volunteer management solutions and taking the hard work out of admin-heavy tasks such as recruitment, rotas and events, amongst other features. Together with our customers, we’ve demonstrated that by automating workflows, innovating and standardising processes and improving communication we can free up valuable time to focus on what matters most.
Each feature on Assemble has been through hundreds of tiny iterations through our years of working with volunteer managers. We’ve grown with our customers and combined the understanding of volunteering with our expertise in software development to improve Assemble in ways that make data easy to collect, manage and interpret. We are aware it’s the little nuances that make all the difference to productivity, which is why we are continually tweaking and refining for a better experience.
“User experience and usability matters to keeping the volunteer journey moving”
We combine well designed features with excellent user experience (UX) to neatly guide our customers and volunteers through each part of the volunteer journey. Whilst software like Assemble provides time-saving functions, there is a very human element to consider – we are all technically still at very different paces right?
For this reason, intuitive simplicity is key. There’s a big expectation nowadays to find the solutions we use at work as easy to use as those at home. Anything too complicated will leave users frustrated, confused or feeling out of their depth – which quickly equals unproductive (and unhappy).
Well considered UX is often massively underestimated for reasons that vary from not enough budget, to over-engineered development or lack of understanding of the end users needs. With Assemble, everything from human behaviour, to commands and coloured buttons are considered for ease of use and a sense of familiarity. As a result, users adapt quickly to our software and are confident, empowered and ultimately more efficient.