Volunteering recruitment and retention rates

A discussion in another context got me wondering about volunteer recruitment and retention rates. We often hear concerns about declining numbers of volunteers and the fears for the sector. Do lines keep records and is anyone aware of what the patterns look like?

A couple of questions:

i) Are lines recruiting more volunteers than they are losing, are they at a steady state? What percentage of volunteers does a line normally expect to retain each year (assuming things like retirements, deaths etc etc)?
ii) What percentage of new volunteers are retained? My impression was that the retention rate was very low. It seemed people broke one of two ways - they either moved quickly on or they became hardcore volunteers. There never seemed to be much of a middle ground.
iii) Do lines investigate why volunteers are not being retained? For example, it used to be that if a volunteer came along and didn't stay that it was because 'they couldn't hack it/soft'. In other words, if there was a problem it was with the volunteer and not with the railway.
iv) What is the demographic make up of new recruits? Is there much break from the traditional older white male volunteer?

Obviously, I am not expecting anyone or any line to give out their actual data, but if people have impressions of ideas. I am assuming it is something the HRA would have talked about.

(If there is publicly available data and I've missed it and someone knows where it is I'd be interested in reading it).

 

I have looked at this recently from the records of our Windcutter Project. When it started, there were approx 12 members who worked fairly regularly for four years but then the numbers dwindled. There were several new people who came two or three times, over the years. Typically there were three or four "regulars". When the project had problems getting wagons moved and there was nothing that could be done then people drifted away. There were three deaths.
It is difficult to find out sometimes why people stopped coming as they didn't answer e mails.
Over 29 years we have had around 40 volunteers and have 9 at present, of which 5 are "regulars". There is a mix of ages but most of us are retired, so yes the typical profile.....and this is for the unglamorous task of keeping 50 to 80 year old steel mineral wagons running!

 

I can give some information with regard to the Middleton Railway.
1) I would suggest that we are recruiting more volunteers than we are losing at present, but this needs to be considered with regard to (2)
2) We keep a record of all volunteers who have a safety induction and in 2019 I did a count of those who were still with us, going back to the year 2000 and up to 2017. I forget the exact figures but it was about 1 in 6 of those who had an induction and were still with us and regarded as regular volunteers. I believe that this figure is about par over the majority of heritage railways.
3) We have not done any exit survey with regard to new volunteers leaving after a short period of time. Older volunteers tend to just fade away as their health deteriorates and the occasional one will move from the area. We have very much a locally based set of volunteers with just a few travelling more than 30 miles.
4) We have had the occasional ethnic minority volunteer but it has usually been for a specific reason and depart after a few months. i.e. wanting to gain engineering experience before going to college. In recent times our new volunteers have tended to be young although that is not exclusive and others are the early retirees. We are getting a good group of young volunteers at the moment and I think there is some truth in the suggestion that youth breed youth because they like working together. Whether these young volunteers will stay once they get into a relationship remains to be seen. What we are short of is the 30-40 year old volunteer with experience and years ahead of him, probably because such people are more involved with family life and responsibilities.

My biggest concern is not volunteer numbers but the necessary skillset to maintain the railway into the future. Very few have an engineering background and no one has steam experience.

 

Swanage Railway have a dedicated volunteer recruitment and retention manager, courtesy of South Western Railway Community Fund who is already getting involved in identifying needs and issues related to volunteering on the Railway. First impressions are very good, focussed on the main issues and identifying departmental needs.

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A big issue at the moment must be training & assessment of both of new volunteers and existing volunteers and how much this has been delayed in the past year, particularly in the safety critical roles with a longer training and assessment period which often will only have so many trainers.

 

Another thing to bear in mind is that a significant number of heritage railway volunteers don't in fact have a specific interest in trains!

They take up volunteering perhaps for social reasons, it's local to them, or they want to develop skills in different areas eg. marketing, catering.

Rather than the generic "We need volunteers" style of adverts, the opportunities can be promoted as developing specific skills eg "Want to gain catering experience?"

 

There was a very interesting article in the Gruaniad some years ago. In NZ, the rugby union is trying to up player numbers (which obviously I can't find now). What they worked out was that it is pretty much impossible to find anyone in NZ who hasn't had exposure to rugby, so they worked on re-catching escapees.
(The precise methods aren't specifically-translatable, but it's interesting in the context - they mainly stemmed around equalising matches at all bar top-level - ie limiting teams by size, or requiring player swaps if the game was being won by more than a certain amount. Obviously, the metric in rugby is quite simple - getting tonked every week is no fun).

 

I can't help but wonder if retention is more of a problem than recruitment. 1 in 6 although normal seems like a retention rate that is lower than it could be. It would be interesting to try to work out when people stop volunteering and whether it is after only a few visits or if there is another drop off after say 5 years etc etc.

I think it is well known that there is always a drop off in activity between the ages of 25-50 and this is across the board. For example it is one of the major concerns of political parties - very active youth wings, very active older members but very little in between.

The point about non-traditional demographics is that outreach is good but retention is an issue and it would be interesting to work out if retention could be improved. I think the critical mass point is interesting - youth breeding youth.

 

A problem, undoubtedly, but not a greater one than initial recruitment. I'm old enough to remember questions, back in the sixties, asking if, with the demise of steam on the "big railway", there'd be a drop off in interest in steam at all levels, from full sized railways down to Hornby's 00 gauge output.

Certainly, some research into why volunteers vanish off grid is needed. Death is likely to remain one problematic area and younger folk will continue to pop off for family and career reasons. The trick is, to re-engage the living further down the line. As my magic wand is still being repaired, the best I can offer are a few observations:

With all the well aired issues on certain lines (which shall remain nameless!), unless one already has 'boots on the ground', the only view any prospective newbie or returnee can have is formed by what's reported and discussed in mainstream and specialised media, plus the likes of our very own merry throng. Willy wavers and grandstanders, take heed.

In the many apprenticeship schemes of today, there's a resource which simply didt't exist 40 years ago. Clearly, not all lines are in a position to offer paid employment to those completing apprenticeships (especially after the bobawful last 15 months we're all just emerging from), but still, some active investigation into keeping some form of contact would seem likely to be beneficial.

Passed apprentices, even if not directly involved themselves, will go on to develop their own networks of contacts. Maintaining good 'arms length' relations could be a route which bears unexpected fruit down the line. Perhaps there's some scope for an annual apprentices "old boys" event, here and there? You know the sort of thing, a family day (or two) out, "Want to bring an interested friend?" Please do! If it were organised to reflect the national nature of apprenticeship schemes, a person who did theirs at, say, the MHR (do they run a scheme?), but now lives in Yorkshire would be elegible for an invite to the equivalent bash at, say, the NYM. Not a bad way to make their ankle biters aware we're here, either!

Before anyone throws up their hands in horror, the situation can only be addressed by greater flexibility and greater inclusiveness, these days increasingly needed across the board anyway .... unless we're worrying unnecessarily, of course.

When it comes to the skillsets needed to keep the wheels turning, I suspect metal bashing will be less problematic than carpentry. Whatever the product coming off the production lines, metals and their alloys, their production and processing, remain (a few older processes aside) a lot more familiar than sourcing and working seasoned timbers. In carpentry, adhesives and staples now reign where joints were once crafted in quality timber. In very many applications not lost to plastics, tree wood is history, replaced with crapboard, MDF and composites, none of which are really even any use in lighting up a steam loco!

 

". Death is likely to remain one problematic area" it is for nost people... (sorry, I know what you mean.

Apprentice re-unions are a good idea, coming back to the nzrfu point - if you have a limited pool, getting people back in is worth doing.

Children are a problem. Would a creche/childminder be a worthwhile investment?

WiFi/workspace? Plenty of people in flexible working/self-employed might be able to get down if they know they can pick up a job/urgent email etc

Does anyone do anything with ex-squaddies? The construction industry spends vast amounts of time promoting recruitment of soldiers etc. Not unused to hard graft in the rain. Free social life and all the shovelling you want? Might be an offer for some?

 

I suggest the problem is less with small children, and more once they get old enough to have their own views of what they want to do, or clubs they want to belong to. Certainly there've been plenty of times when my wife and I have had to divide our forces to manage the kids.

 

On the first one, probably.

On the second, I've always been struck (being ex-forces myself) that a lot of them find their way to heritage railways anyway. That and the Freemasons.

Mention of the masons is a serious point, because they do suck in lots of ex-squaddies precisely because what they're offering - comradeship, dinners, ready made network in the area, bit of a boys club, is what squaddies are giving up when they leave. I wonder if a bit of harder edged marketing might not do the same for the railways - although, as with the masons, it's always going to be better if word of mouth/friend of a friend.

Pushing on the door at the other end of the age group though, the SVR has already been mentioned with it's apprenticeships. not every line can afford that - or indeed offer the scope of work to give an apprentice full and proper training. But, I would suggest that every line should be fostering links with its local FE college if it hasn't already - lots of joinery, bricklaying, opportunities; and *if* one or two of them decide to come back in their spare time when there's not an assessment riding on it well then everyone's a winner aren't they?

 

I think that has been particularly hard on loco cleaners where we are. Once trains resumed running after the various lockdowns, we have generally moved to a "crew of two" model for social distancing. Inevitably that means driver and fireman. So no cleaner as third man getting line experience and some firing experience (and also, to a lesser degree, less opportunity for firemen to get driving experience).

I don't know to what extent that has hit retention, but my hunch is that even if things move progressively back to normal from now, in years to come when we look back at the throughput of cleaners --> firemen and firemen --> drivers, we'll see a great big hole for two years with very little promotion and with everyone set back by that amount of time in their progression. If you couple that with the normal age-based drop off from senior volunteers (possibly exacerbated by covid) I can see that putting extra pressure on the department to cover turns with a. smaller pool of qualified volunteers. Up to now that hasn't;t been too apparent because there are still fewer turns available, but if we go back to 2019 levels of turns, we may have fewer people to meet them.

Tom

 

although, certainly at the bottom end, isn't that also an opportunity for the keener cleaners (I was one once) to leap ahead faster than normal? And firemen (with the time available) covering more turns so making their hours quicker for driver? Although obviously can't rush in replacements at the top rung in the meantime. Like the old naval toast, 'a bloody war and a sickly season' there've got to be opportunities in the adversity for those as want to take them?

Part of me wonders, and I was going back anyway after 25 years out of active volunteering so more a coincidence in my case*, if this isn't going to be a brilliant time to start volunteering, though admittedly a weird one for the already volunteers.

*and to be clear, I'm not likely to be going MPD this time round so I'm not secretly hoping that this is my ticket to be driving by Christmas from scratch!

 

Every cloud ... I hadn't thought of it like that. Certainly I think there will be more turns available in due course for those keen to do them.

Checking my stats:

2019 Drove 461 miles; fired 700 and observed 279 (generally a cleaner doing the firing)
2020 Drove 23, fired 263 and observed 34 (right at the beginning of the year, pre covid)
2021 (to date) Drove 22, fired 176, observed 22.

That's a big fall off in my driving mileage (and more significantly, driver's side prep); and corresponding amount of time a cleaner has had opportunity to fire. Hopefully it will change back.

Tom

 

Actually, as an aside, having grown up with the SVR and gone on the cleaner rung at 14, I think the larger railways can be unprepared for how it works elsewhere - I know I was.

Riding on the footplate the other year at one of the smaller set ups (though still about 4 miles long I think) I was casually talking to the crew and they were amused by my references to the cleaners. That line didn't have the manpower to have any, and crews do their own prep and disposal. Good time to be joining the loco team there as a cleaner I'd have said - literally no one ahead of you and plenty of opportunities...*

*again, not the one I'm going to!

 

Another way of looking at this is to ask why people volunteer and what do they get out of it?
Several of our team talk of putting something back having been a visitor for several years. Another reason is to get away from the house....and or spouse(?). Do something different, use skills not used elsewhere, the banter with other like minded folk....And of course we get to watch the trains go by.

 

definite yes to all of that from me - although I actively want to do something that I've not got any skills in, and is as different to what I do for a living as possible!

I'm thinking S&T or something. MPD I'm a bit daunted by because I'm not an engineer (remotely) and the commitment seems a bit steep - got to fit in with (and commit to) rosters. I've got a young family... but I'll happily wield a paintbrush or something. Also with the footplate side of it, I'm wary of it for all the reasons I wanted to do it when I was 14 - 'everyone wants to do it' - bit worried about not coming up to scratch in a competitive world.

 

I think the Tanfiield had the best recruiting slogan and judging by some recent photographs it seems to work:

Learn skills

Gain confidence

Make friends.

 

What they get from management is Sh1t if they don’t do the managements way... a few managers think they know it all and try and rule the roost....