“Don't you want to stay?” The impact of training and recognition as human resource practices on volunteer turnover

• Published date: 01 June 2019
• Author: Ruodan Zhang,Marlene Walk,Laura Littlepage
• Date: 01 June 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21344

RESEARCH ARTICLE

“Don't you want to stay?”The impact of training

and recognition as human resource practices on

volunteer turnover

Marlene Walk

1

| Ruodan Zhang

2

| Laura Littlepage

2,3

1

School of Public and Environmental Affairs,

IUPUI, Indianapolis, Indiana

2

School of Public and Environmental Affairs,

Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

3

Public Policy Institute, Indiana University,

Indianapolis, Indiana

Correspondence

Marlene Walk, School of Public and

Environmental Affairs, IUPUI, 801 West

Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202-5143.

Email: mwalk@iupui.edu

Managing volunteers is a difficult undertaking. This study

draws on human resource (HR) management theory and

literature to investigate the effect of two HR practices—

training and recognition—on volunteer turnover. We use

longitudinal administrative data collected by an Indiana

nonprofit organization, which contains individual volun-

teer characteristics, organizational HR practices, and

information on actual turnover behavior. We found that

recognizing volunteer contributions with awards predicted

volunteer retention in the following year. Training did not

have a direct effect on volunteer turnover, but interacted

with gender; men who received training were more likely

to stay than women. The study contributes to the literature

on HR management in the volunteer context, adds to the

emerging literature on awards as incentives for volunteers,

and addresses the common method bias by using

longitudinal data.

KEYWORDS

human resource management, human resource practices,

turnover, volunteer management, volunteers

1|BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE

In 2015, about 25% of U.S. adults donated 8.7 billion hours of their time to nonprofits (Bureau of

Labor Statistics, 2016). Volunteering, defined as activities performed in formal settings in which time

is freely given to benefit others without remuneration (Cnaan, Handy, & Wadsworth, 1996), is, thus,

a major source of (unpaid) labor for nonprofits. Indeed, beyond universal board service, an estimated

80% of all charitable nonprofit organizations rely on volunteers for service provision and

Received: 4 December 2017 Revised: 30 September 2018 Accepted: 4 October 2018

DOI: 10.1002/nml.21344

Nonprofit Management and Leadership. 2019;29:509–527. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nml © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 509

management (Hager & Brudney, 2008). Nonprofits, in turn, are better able to provide services and

offer programs in diverse areas such as education, the environment, or human services.

Managing volunteers, however, is a difficult undertaking. Due to their noncontractual relationship

with nonprofits, volunteers “vote with their feet”and leave organizations when they are dissatisfied.

As such, the volunteer nature of work challenges traditional retention strategies, which operate under

the assumption of mutual dependency between employee and organization (e.g., exchange of labor

for a wage; Simon, 1951). Indeed, volunteer turnover has been regarded as an increasing challenge to

nonprofits' provision of services (Garner & Garner, 2011). Reliable statistics are scarce, but the Cor-

poration for National and Community Service (2015) reports annual turnover rates between 24 and

47% for the organizations with which they work.

Contributions to the volunteer management literature in the past few years have led to a better

understanding of the intricacies of volunteer turnover. Scholars have identified a range of significant

predictors for volunteer retention such as voice (Garner & Garner, 2011), volunteer role identity

(Grube & Piliavin, 2000), perceived competence and efficacy (Ripamonti, Pasquarelli, Ravasi, &

Sala, 2016; Wu, Li, & Khoo, 2016), distributive justice (Hurst, Scherer, & Allen, 2017), as well as

volunteer motivation (e.g., Garner & Garner, 2011; Gazley, 2013; Nencini, Romaioli, & Meneghini,

2016). Aside from individual volunteer motives and dispositions, effective management within the

organization also contributes to volunteer retention (Gazley, 2013; Hager & Brudney, 2008).

Scholars have also examined volunteers' perceptions of the organizational context impacting retention

success such as organizational climate (Nencini et al., 2016), the design of volunteer roles (Alfes,

Shantz, & Saksida, 2015), organizational support (Alfes, Shantz, & Bailey, 2016), and job resources

(Presti, 2013). Rather than relying on individual perceptions of volunteer management practices, this

study builds on these findings and adopts a management perspective by drawing on objective mea-

sures of human resource (HR) practices that impact volunteer retention. Our research question is: To

what extent do HR practices of volunteer training and recognition influence actual turnover of volun-

teers? In answering this question, we particularly focus on the effects of training and recognition on

volunteer turnover while using longitudinal administrative data containing information on 7,595 vol-

unteers and controlling for their demographic information (such as age, gender, race) alongside vol-

unteer context information (such as roles, ranks).

Scholars have increasingly investigated the applicability and transferability of HR management

practices to the volunteer context. Their findings indicate that certain HR practices can impact volun-

teer attitudes and behaviors, and therefore, improve volunteering outcomes, such as retention rates

(Saksida, Alfes, & Shantz, 2017), as well as organizational outcomes, such as client satisfaction rat-

ings (Rogers, Jiang, Rogers, & Intindola, 2016). Even though efforts have been made to develop a

theoretical understanding of the potential for HR practices to impact volunteer retention, this research

area remains underdeveloped (Alfes, Antunes, & Shantz, 2016) leading Bartram, Cavanagh, and

Hoye (2017) to note that there is an “absence of research on the impact of HRM within volunteer and

grassroots community organizations”(p. 1907–1908). As such, this study responds to calls for

research on the impact of HR practices on volunteer outcomes (Alfes et al., 2015; Studer & von

Schnurbein, 2013) by focusing on two prominent HR practices—training and recognition—and their

impact on volunteer turnover. Particularly, we test the HR bundling perspective (Delery & Doty,

1996; MacDuffie, 1995) in the context of volunteers, indicating that HR practices work best if uti-

lized in well-aligned bundles.

We also contribute to the emerging awards literature (Frey & Gallus, 2017; Frey & Gallus, 2018;

Gallus, 2016). Originally stemming from economics, awards have been proposed as a valuable instru-

ment of recognition for volunteers as they create benefits for those who win (Frey & Gallus, 2017).

510 WALK ET AL.