Volunteer management - VM - G - 2.25 - governance - PRAGMATIC metrics
I want to recommend, to all of you, the book "PRAGMATIC Security Metrics" written by Brotby and Hinson. Yes, this does talk about security metrics but more importantly, "PRAGMATIC" is not just a description of the type of metrics that you want but is, in fact, an acronym describing, in detail, characteristics of the metrics that will, in fact, be useful to you. This is an excellent book and should be on every manager's shelf regardless of what they manage.
Predictive
PRAGMATIC is, as I say, an acronym. The P stands for predictive. This is important in choosing different types of metrics for any management situation. You don't just want numbers; you want numbers that will help you to predict what actions and functions will look like in the future. How much will be performed? How many different activities will be performed in the future, based on the data that you are collecting now?
Relevant
Relevant is probably somewhat self-evident and it also does go along with meaningful, accurate, and genuine but it is important to note and to concentrate on making sure that your metrics are relevant to management issues, to the operations, and sometimes even to the motivation for your volunteers.
Actionable
Actionable means that you need to collect data upon which you can take action. For example it doesn't do any good to collect your volunteers' opinions on foreign economic policy. There is absolutely nothing you can do about foreign economic policy. You don't have the authority and, let's face it, you probably don't have an awful lot of expertise in that particular area. Stick to what you know you can effect in some way.
Genuine
Meaningful
Accurate
As I say, genuine, meaningful, and accurate are probably fairly similar and are in fact similar to relevant; however do look at the subtle differences. Make sure that you are collecting genuine information.
For example in one particular volunteer situation one of the volunteers was noting that, because of policy requirements, he consistently had to take longer to complete a shift than other workers. The manager in that case rather airily dismissed his concerns and told him to just put down an extra half an hour on his shift. That, of course, wasn't the point. Saying that he worked an extra half an hour wasn't really accurate in that situation and so it wasn't genuine either. Nor did it address his concerns and so it wasn't meaningful.
Timely
Timely statistics means that you collect them, record them, and process them on a timely basis so that your reports indicate what is happening relatively currently rather than last year. Now, of course, when you are just looking at Total Volunteer Hours for the purposes of writing up a funding request, yes, last year's hours are timely for that purpose. Know what it is you are collecting this data for and why. If you are collecting safety information, for example, the information should be processed and examined fairly quickly after it's recorded. Otherwise certain operational procedures may change over time and you may be looking at safety reports that say everything is fine when in fact the work is now being conducted in an unsafe manner.
Independent
The independence of the data that you are collecting is an interesting concept. Sometimes we are collecting data, and statistics about seemingly disparate events, and not realising that they actually relate to the same basic cause. For example if you note in one place that a certain piece of equipment is not available and so shifts do not go out and the volunteers' hours are not increasing, this may relate to the fact that another report, somewhere else, is noting that there is a problem with the process of charging the batteries for that particular piece of equipment.
Cheap
The cost of collecting the data should be considered. How much volunteer time is dedicated simply to collecting data and statistics as opposed to the ongoing objectives of the organisation? Make sure that you know the cost of the data that you are collecting. Make sure also that you know the cost of taking action on whatever indication that data gives you.
Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents
