The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Why High-Capacity Volunteers Sometimes Make Terrible Staff
Turning your best volunteers into staff members can either be a dream come true or create significant challenges when expectations don't align. This transition often fails because the intrinsic motivation of volunteering gets replaced by the obligations of employment, creating an identity crisis for the previously celebrated volunteer.
• High-capacity volunteers don't always make great staff members
• The transition from volunteering to employment changes relationship dynamics dramatically
• Volunteers often don't see "how the sausage is made" until they join staff
• Culture fit doesn't automatically equal staff fit
• The identity shift from serving out of joy to serving out of obligation creates tension
• Three critical questions to ask: Will they thrive under authority? Can they handle evaluation? Are they joining staff out of calling or obligation?
• Clear expectations on both sides are essential for a successful transition
If you're considering hiring an internal candidate and want an outside perspective, reach out to me at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com.
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All right, you finally hired the high-capacity volunteer who's been crushing it for years. Dream come true, right? Not always, in fact. That dream can quickly turn into a mess of reality, full of unmet expectations, emotional whiplash and some really awkward staff dynamics. Today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, we're going to explore why some of your best volunteers actually can struggle when they join the paid staff and how to avoid the most common traps. So if you're thinking about hiring somebody that is an all-star volunteer, or if you've done it and it's not going well, this episode is specifically for you. If not, hang on. I think you're going to get something out of today's episode as well.
Speaker 1:Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and your host right here every weekday on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We talk about it often in our work at Chemistry Staffing, but sometimes internal hires and a volunteer that's really invested in your church and really hitting out. They're just a top-notch volunteer. Sometimes they're a great staff member. But what happens if your best volunteer comes on your staff and becomes your biggest staffing headache? Sometimes that happens too. They led like a rock star. They showed up every week. They that happens too. They led like a rock star. They showed up every week. They loved your church, they owned their lane, so hiring them just felt like the obvious move. But now, maybe three months, six months, 18 months later, things just feel off and what had great potential just isn't working. So today we're going to dive into what that transition, why that transition so often fails and what church leaders need to know before they make the same mistakes.
Speaker 1:State of the end. I'm going to give you three questions every church leader should ask before turning a volunteer into staff. And let me say this as we begin Sometimes all-star volunteers make absolutely great staff members. There's a lot to love there, right? They already love your church, they're already in your town and in your community. They're already invested in not only your church but your community and your schools and they're just hitting it out of the park. It seems like a logical next step and sometimes it works out really well. But sometimes it doesn't, and that's what we're going to talk about today the how you get from wow, this is going to be great to oh no, what happened? It starts like a fairy tale. A volunteer does everything, everything. You don't even have to ask them. They're like intuitive and you think to yourself man, if I only had five more just like them, I would be all set.
Speaker 1:But when that person becomes a member of your staff, there are some subtle shifts that happen. And there's some natural shifts that happen. First of all, they're not volunteering anymore, they're clocking in and the intrinsic joy that drove them as a volunteer well, sometimes that paycheck actually makes a certain part of that kind of die under the weight of expectations, because now you treat staff different than you do volunteers. So you go from above and beyond to why aren't you keeping up? Why isn't it like it was before you were on staff? Not because they've changed, but because the rules of the relationship have changed.
Speaker 1:And this is probably the biggest thing you need to consider when you're making an internal hire. Those unspoken expectations sometimes can crash really hard. You've been in ministry long enough to know it's not what people say that gets them in trouble, it's what they assume and that will get you here. Sometimes, when you hire a volunteer, both sides both you, the person that's hiring, and the volunteer, the one that's coming on staff both sides often carry some really unspoken expectations. For example, the volunteer assumes that they're going to keep their freedom and their influence, but the church assumes all right now they're going to play by staff rules and when those two come together and they collide, you can cue the tension and the disillusionment and even sometimes just a really bad resignation. So here's the rule that I always like to tell people when they're considering hiring an all-star volunteer is that culture fit does not always equal staff fit. So just remember that culture fit does not always equal staff fit. So just remember that culture fit does not always equal staff fit. Just because somebody loves your church doesn't mean that they're ready for your staff culture.
Speaker 1:Some really high capacity volunteers succeed because they know the boundaries. They're not a part of the tough meetings, they're not part of the budget talks, they're not part of the awkward evaluations. Matter of fact, the way I like to put it is a lot of times they don't see how the sausage is being made, but once they're on the inside, once they're in the mix, they feel blindsided and it's just a lot different than what they anticipated or what they experienced as a volunteer. So sometimes they're just not ready for that wait. Or maybe, even worse, they try to change the culture because they just they're just not ready for that wait. Or maybe even worse, they try to change the culture because they just they're like I didn't sign up for this. So it's a little bit of whiplash identity whiplash when you're going from a volunteer to staff, that often creates this kind of mini identity crisis.
Speaker 1:They used to serve out of joy because, just because they'd love to do it, they absolutely loved it. Now they serve because they've got a job description. They used to be celebrated and now, maybe more than being celebrated, maybe they're critiqued. They used to say yes out of passion, but now they have to say yes out of obligation. Quite frankly, now it's their job and sometimes they don't even realize why they're so unhappy. Sometimes they don't even realize why they're so unhappy. They just know that for some reason it just doesn't feel the same.
Speaker 1:So I promised you at the beginning of the podcast I'm going to give you some honest questions that churches must ask. So before you offer that job to your MVP volunteer, I want you to ask these three questions. Okay, number one will this person thrive under authority or did they love the freedom of volunteering just too much? Okay, will they thrive under authority or did they? Is part of who they are that they love the freedom of being able to volunteer. That's question number one. Question number two how do they do with evaluation? Can they handle being evaluated Not just appreciated, but evaluated? Because once you make the leap from volunteer to staff, hopefully you'll still be appreciated, but there is a job description and you will be evaluated and measured against that job description. So that's question number two. And then question number three are they joining the staff because they feel called or because they feel obligated?
Speaker 1:Even for an MVP volunteer, taking a job on the church staff because they'd like the money and the money would be nice is not a reason to take the job. You need to make sure, just as if you were hiring a full-time staff member outside of your church, you want to ask the same type of questions to the insiders. Are you called? Do you feel like God is really calling you to do this? If you answer those three questions honestly, you and the person that you're considering hiring you could save both of you just a whole lot of pain. All right, so here's the bottom line today Hiring your best volunteer can absolutely work, but it only works if you go in with clear expectations and a shared understanding of the role and the expectations and how things will be different.
Speaker 1:I hope that's been helpful for you. I'd love to hear your experience. Maybe you were hired as an internal candidate and it either went really well or it went horribly. I would love to hear your story. Maybe you're considering hiring an internal candidate and you just want an outside set of eyes and ears to bounce some ideas or to actually tell you whether or not you're smoking coconut there, right, whether you're making a good decision or a bad decision. I would love for you to reach out to me. I'd love to see if there's any way that I can help you or my team here at Chemistry Staffing can help you Reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom.
Speaker 1:All right, that's it for today. I hope that's been helpful, especially if you're in hiring mode and you're looking at some internal hires and some MVP volunteers and I do want to say that a lot of times, if you do take these questions and be very careful, volunteers can make excellent staff members. You just have to know what you're getting into and they need to know what they're getting into before you actually make that hire. All right, that's it for today. Thanks for joining me. I will be back here again tomorrow, right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope you'll join me.
