I was introduced to the volunteering context through my involvement in a community engagement project at an NPO in the health care environment, a context which subsequently placed me on this research path. While attending various meetings with the NPO for the purposes of the project, I became acutely aware of how different the environment was from a traditional (for-profit) organisation. As an IO psychologist I am aware of the mutual impact the two stakeholders in the psychological contract, the organisation and the employee have on each other. One of my first impressions was
how few resources this NPO had. I also noticed how few permanent staff it had to manage its daily operations and how it thereafter relied solely on volunteers to deliver these services. This made me realise how important volunteers are. What attracted me even more to this context was the realisation that volunteers have a different psychological contract to that of a traditional employee, as volunteers are unpaid but nevertheless still come to work. This dynamic fascinated me because although volunteers are considered to be employees, volunteering is essentially a personal sacrifice. However, I consider volunteering to be a job and a work context and thus it stands to reason that volunteers will also be exposed to the stresses and obstacles of everyday life. In light of this, I firmly believe that volunteers should be given the same attention as that dedicated to paid staff.
Drawing on the individual (employee) perspective of my profession, I then thought about the actual work that the volunteers at this NPO do. The volunteers provide emotional, spiritual and physical support to patients and their families in hospital. This once again brought me back to the importance of these volunteers and how vital their services are to the hospitals, the patients and their families. However, the work that these volunteers do places them in a context filled with constant trauma. Being exposed to this context myself made me recognise how challenging it must be to have to witness illness, desperate patients and the loss of loved ones. In addition to this challenging context, I became aware of how the volunteers also face adverse conditions and difficult circumstances themselves, contending with circumstances such as unemployment, poor living conditions and lack of access to basic resources. What intrigued me about this was how, despite these adverse conditions and difficult circumstances, the volunteers continue their participation even when one would expect the opposite.
These reflections compounded my interest in the volunteering context and as a result I started to read more on the topic. The literature on volunteering led me to recognise the importance of NPOs in general and subsequently volunteers and the significance of their work to society in particular. Furthermore, the prospect of being exposed to a work context that is underpinned by a dramatically different employer–employee perspective excited me.
My curiosity about the concept of well-being came about as a result of a colleague’s study, which explored well-being among pastors and from which I drew inspiration (see Rudolph, 2019). Her study led me to reflect on the importance of well-being for volunteers – a profession where the primary concern is for the well-being of others. The fact of their challenging personal and work contexts, piqued my interest in their well-being even further. Malcolm Gladwell’s (2013) work titled David and Goliath:
Underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling giants and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (in
Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) account of World War II also influenced my psychological frame of reference. Malcolm Gladwell writes about the years leading up to World War II and how the British government was concerned about the effects of German air raids on London and the people living there. Death, panic and helplessness were predicted. Psychiatric wards were built outside London to deal with the psychological casualties. The air raids eventually happened and bombing took place over a period of eight months, resulting in injury and death. However, the effect of the bombing on the people was quite the opposite of what the government had predicted. The people of London adapted, there was no panic and the psychiatric hospitals built outside of London were empty and eventually used by the military (Gladwell, 2013, pp. 128–133). This is a powerful account of human resilience and a personal realisation that human strength is real and can be harnessed regardless of the context. It is this account that really affected my frame of reference from being focused on negative and dysfunctional behaviour to wanting to understand positive behaviour – how people stay well, remain resilient and flourish despite challenging circumstances. It is safe to assume that amidst the devastation of war, the people of London were in distress. However, their behaviour proved otherwise. It is therefore possible to live a purposeful, credible and respectful life no matter the context or circumstance.
I therefore started to believe that at the heart of volunteering is well-being. I maintain that the importance of well-being in this context lies in its reciprocity – for others, the community and society and for the individual volunteer. As an IO psychologist, my profession strives to ensure the wellness of individuals in their work context. Volunteering is a work context – an unpaid albeit extremely important one. Neysmith and Reitsma-Street (2000) and Huynh, Metzer, and Winefield (2012) indicate that
studies on unpaid work are scant compared to those conducted on paid employment. This context therefore allowed me to venture into a work domain that is relatively unexplored by IO psychologists. From an organisational perspective, my interest in this research stemmed from the NPO’s reliance on volunteers.
Although well-being is an elusive and highly subjective concept, I felt that its presence contributes to individuals, specifically volunteers, and subsequently indirectly to
organisations. As referred to previously, I mention two ‘stakeholders’ as my
designation is made up of two words, namely, industrial – referring to the workplace – and the psychologist – which makes reference to the individual. I am often torn between where my priority lies, knowing very well that in reality both stakeholders will not gain the same type of benefit. However, I felt that an exploration of volunteer well- being could prove to be valuable – to both stakeholder roles. Owing to the unique nature and context of this workforce I therefore focused on the individual well-being of volunteers. In addition, through this study, I intended to add value to volunteering management by focusing on the South African context.
I consider the preceding and the subsequent section as almost an extension of one another. As my interest in volunteering and well-being evolved, so too did my thinking on how I could go about conducting the research. This led to an increasingly strong desire to conduct the research from a qualitative approach.