Make matters clear to your volunteers

Citation

Pitt, M. (2010), "Make matters clear to your volunteers", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2010.04418dab.001

Make matters clear to your volunteers

Article Type: Employment law outlook From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 18, Issue 4

With jobs hard to come by and young people, in particular, keen to get decent work experience, some cash-strapped businesses are using volunteers to do jobs they might otherwise have offered to paid employees.

Companies operating in the media, sport and events industries are especially likely to attract volunteers keen to prove to prospective employers that they can do a good job.

The potential for exploitation of this willing workforce is great, as volunteers have few of the legal protections of paid employees. But such poor treatment may not only poison industrial relations within the firm, but also the company’s reputation outside.

The best way to avoid any misunderstandings is to draw up a volunteer agreement dealing with matters such as expenses, training, health and safety, liability and insurance, and copyright.

Companies should ensure that volunteers are paid nothing more than out-of-pocket expenses. If this rule is breached – if, for example, the person receives regular expenses payments even when sick or on holiday – the volunteer may be able to claim that he or she actually works for the company and is entitled to the national minimum wage and time off.

The only benefit volunteers should receive is training to improve their ability to do the work they are carrying out.

Health and safety training is particularly important. Although much health and safety law applies only to workers and employees, companies do have a duty of care towards volunteers and so should take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of them being injured or falling ill.

Employers should carry out risk assessments and make sure that their existing insurance policies extend to volunteers. Drivers using their own vehicles should inform their insurers of their voluntary activities – although this should not cause their premiums to rise.

Copyright could seem a trivial issue, but it could have enormous implications if volunteers are, for example, writing reports or designing leaflets for the firm.

While copyright normally belongs to the person who creates the work, copyright law says that material produced by employees belongs to their employer. It does not mention volunteers, though.

Companies should therefore ask volunteers to transfer copyright to them or agree a licence giving the business the right to use the work within agreed limits.

Following these few basic rules should help to ensure that volunteering remains a positive experience both for the volunteer and the company involved.

Meanwhile, two inquiries I have received in recent weeks give mixed messages about the state of the UK economy.

One client, who had to make some employees redundant last year, tells me that business has now improved. She wants to know whether she can re-employ any of her redundant staff.

But another client, who believes he has cut everything else to the bone and reducing employee pay is the only way he can now make ends meet, wants to know whether he is allowed by law to do this.

The answer to the first client is easy. She is free to re-employ her former workers, and so benefit from their knowledge of her firm’s systems and procedures. I would simply urge her, if she is not intending to re-employ all the people she previously made redundant, to make sure she can justify objectively how she selects the people she takes back.

She should also spell out, in a written contract for each individual, that he or she is being taken on as a new employee, since more than four weeks have elapsed since the person was made redundant. This makes clear that none of his or her previous work will count towards continuity of service.

The second client sees cutting the wages of all his employees – and himself as managing director – as a way of avoiding redundancies. He has been watching closely the attempts by the British Airways management to get its pilots and cabin crew to do the same work for less money.

Businesses that do not have the option of salary reductions written into their employment contracts can cut wages either if they can get their employees to agree, or if they have a sound business reason to need to do so and can show a fair and reasonable procedure in dealing with the situation.

The former can take months of negotiation. The latter may not necessarily take as long but does require diligence in dealing with the process to ensure that the employees are treated as fairly and reasonably as possible given the difficult market conditions. If this process is being considered I would advise employers to take sound legal advice first.

Of course, discussions with employees can open up imaginative alternatives to pay cuts or redundancy. At BA, for example, a number of employees have volunteered to work shorter hours or take a year of unpaid leave. They had long wanted these alternatives, but had been afraid to mention it because they had not wanted to appear to lack commitment to the company.

Mike PittEmployment-law partner at Greater Manchester solicitor Pearson Hinchliffe Commercial Law. He can be contacted by e-mailing michael.pitt@pearson-hinchlif.co.uk, or by telephoning +44 (0) 161 785 3500