Expectation of structure – specific task allocation

An experience that was lived through by a number of research participants referred to their anticipation that they would be allocated a particular task when they arrived for their duties and be told what and how to do things. However, for some research participants this had was not the case:

―I thought there would be some assigned roles, not for the whole six, seven hours. I just thought, you know, like ‗We‘ll need X number of volunteers to do this. We will need x to do that.‘ But it didn‘t happen. I expected a bit more organisation.‖ (Ivy, p. 5, l. 208-211)

―I expected to... come to something a lot more organised, know exactly where we [volunteers] would be going, give us duties to do. That didn‘t happen. Instead we had to sort ourselves out.‖ (Maureen, p.1, l. 28-29)

Whilst some research participants expected to be allocated a particular task, the concern of others rested on being allocated duties that corresponded to their skills and preferences:

―... as long it was something that I felt I could do.. I mean, I did say to the coordinator that, you know, uhm.. ‗I‘m not too keen perhaps, you know, using the computer‖ because I thought we might be part of the registration but.. she said ―Oh no. You won‘t have to do that.‘ And I said I would be happy to do the meet and greet. I suppose that‘s because I felt that‘s perhaps where my skills lie. You know, I was looking for something that I would feel comfortable with.‖ (Sandra, p. 2, l. 59-65)

In the case of Sandra, the need to ‗feel comfortable‘, i.e. to be at ease with her volunteer duty because she felt she had the skills to carry out a particular task might be interpreted as the volunteer‘s need for a comfort zone by matching the task with people‘s skills. It may be argued that inherent in Sandra‘s recall of her informing the volunteer coordinator that she wasn‘t eager of doing the computer work as part of the registration but would rather do the ‗meet and greet‘ is the expectation that therefore she would be listened to and allocated the latter task. These expectations of being allocated a preferred and/or do-able task might have been enhanced by the volunteer recruitment process at required volunteers to indicate their job skills and preferences, when they applied for the WFG‘08. For example, on his volunteer application, Bernard had stated his interest in helping out with a particular sport event which consequently resulted in the following anticipation:

―I expected to see some of the action. They asked me... what events was I interested in and so on and so on. And I specifically put down cycling. That is one of the things that I am interested in. It is something that I do in my free time. And since they asked me I … I somehow expected to work on a cycling event… and to see some of the action.‖ (Bernard, p.2, l. 72-75)

Whilst his preferences for a specific sport had been met and he was asked to help out at indoor and outdoor cycling events, Bernard was frustrated with the way the information about his skills had been handled. He had anticipated that the details that he sent to the event volunteer coordinators when he applied for the WFG‘08 volunteer

sport tournament and used to allocate a particular job that matched his skills and knowledge:

―When I went to the arena for the indoor cycling or spinning event. the guy said.. the guy in charge, a very good guy, he had done a lot of preparation beforehand but he said to me ‗what would you like to do?‘ As if he didn‘t know. I mean we were specifically asked beforehand in an email. Something like ‗what can you offer?‘ ‗What have you got? Have you got any of the following skills or experience?‘ And it was things like… IT, the minibus driving, time-keeping… have you cycling experience or something like that. And I put down ‗I can offer this, this and this‘. So I thought ‗Great‘, you know. ‗I‘ve been asked all this. I told them when I applied for this. And now look, they don‘t seem to know!‘. …there was no structure... it was quite frustrating having to tell him what I put down in the application.‖ (Bernard, p. 17, l.825-836)

A few days later, he found himself in a similar position at another cycling event where rather than being told what to do he was asked what he would like to do:

―And I found that… when I did the cycling event up at Aintree… it was the same thing. The coordinator asked ―well what would you like to do?‖. And I had expected to be told ―You‘re doing this and you‘re doing that‖, you know. I mean, I told them in my application what I can do and would like to do. But he said ―What do you want to do?‖. So I said ―What‘s available?‖. And he said ―Registering the competitors when they are coming in‖. So I did that, but I was frustrated with the lack of organisation.‖ (Bernard, p.2, l. 88-92)

From these two accounts the expectation of structure in terms of specific role allocation based on the information that the volunteers provided in their application, repeatedly emerges. In a way, one could say Bernard expected ‗to be heard‘ by managing his application details accordingly and to be consequently given a task tailored around his knowledge and skills – instead, he was asked again and again ―What do you want to do?‖. On the other hand, it appears as if Bernard expected from the respective event manager with and for whom he would be working to ‗know‘ him in terms of his knowledge and skills which in view of the hundreds of volunteers that were recruited was not possible. Whilst these findings raise the question how the personal information

that volunteers provided in the application were processed and used to plan the use of human resources during the WFG‘ 08, they also provided food for thought to what extent event organisers need to manage volunteer expectations at the pre-event level, e.g. through appropriate pre-event communication with volunteers about their allocation of generic or specialist task. Last but not least, these findings raise questions about the appropriate management style and their influence on volunteer satisfaction during the event, i.e. should volunteers be given the opportunity to ‗pick and choose‘ or be told what to do. Another factor that seems to have built up expectation of structure was the communication between the respective event manager and the volunteers prior to the Games. The volunteers were provided information sheets about the particular activity or sporting event they would be helping out with, in advance including details of meeting, briefing and finishing time, information about volunteer duties and items that volunteers should wear and/or bring along, e.g. waterproof jacket, sun screen etc. These details seemed to have shaped the anticipation among some volunteers that things would take place as planned and communicated by the respective event manager and/or volunteer coordinator:

―The organisation I thought, uhm, for the volunteers, was raising questions. … we were given... the guy, the event organiser [in charge of the cycling road race], beforehand.. he had done a lot of preparation and he had emailed out, uhm, a plan of the track... of the course, the roads where the race was going to be and said that I‘d be going to Point A or something like that on the day when we turned up. And like everyone else, on the day when we turned up, that was out of the window. It all was different from what were initially told.. our jobs, the layout of the course….It was a real mess!‖ (Bernard, p.2-3, l. 88-92)

―The idea about volunteering was that the time that they wanted me to arrive was the time that the organisation of the event started, so that they didn‘t get me there an hour or two hours before hand. When I turned up at for the swimming tournament, I was the only one. Later…I was told later that I had been too early but that was the time I was told – in writing - to arrive at the Salt House! The whole tournament was just a mess! There was no clarity about what was expected from the volunteers on that day.‖ (Ivy, p.9, l. 436-442)

Drawing from my own experience as a WFG‘08 volunteer, I could identify with the respondents‘ lived experience of unmet expectations as I also had experienced similar situations, for example in the morning of the open water swimming tournament where volunteers were subject to miscommunication from the side of the event organisation resulting in volunteers reporting for duty an hour too early - at 0700hrs - as they had been instructed to. Furthermore, the meeting point where the volunteers were asked to assemble turned out to be not the correct one. As a result, those who were waiting at the ‗wrong‘ meeting point eventually missed breakfast that was provided by the event organisers. This resulted in dissonance among volunteers once they met with other volunteer groups who had received the updated information about the meeting point, in the course of the morning. Furthermore, having been part of the group of volunteers that were involved with the open water swimming competition, there was a lack of guidance which did not match my expectation of structure which arose from the organised manner in which I had been informed about what this event entailed and what activities had to be undertaken by the volunteers. For example, the event manager did not introduce herself which led to confusion about who of those present at the venue not wearing volunteer uniform, was in charge of the volunteers. For a while we all stood around not knowing what we were meant to do. A few volunteers were then briefly told what the registration of the swimmers entailed and it was left to them to communicate this information to others. In addition, it was left to the volunteers to arrange the registration, the venue layout and to allocate tasks of the registration process among each other.