If community growth is one of your objectives, have you thought about the staffing structure you'll need to support this growth? Two recent posts of mine focused on scaling: Help my community's too big, and how to manage a community around the clock. This post focuses on the staffing structure.
It's no secret businesses want their online communities to attract more members, often without addressing the issue of resources until it's too late. It's very difficult to retroactively change the dynamics of your community. So if you find yourself in this position you may want to consider your options.
Some businesses have top heavy models and employ large teams of moderators or community managers (eg. Sony Playstation Europe who have 14 multi-lingual mods working in tshifts of two), whilst some like the community I work with have a bottom-heavy structure where the 30/33 forum staff are volunteers.
The success of our community is by and large attributable to our large team of volunteer Moderators, many of whom have been around since the dawn of the community some 9 years ago. (They can certainly regale a tale or two from bygone eras!)
In my experience, in terms of community staffing there doesn't appear to be a best practice. Correct me if I'm wrong!
So I have written this blog to address what I see as the Pros & Cons of having a team of volunteers. Hat tips to Patrick O'Keefe (@ifroggy) and Ben (@BenJoM) for their input listed below.
Disclaimer: a lot of these have been derived from colleagues and are not necessarily reflective of my wonderful Mod team (*hello*).
PROS OF VOLUNTEER MODERATORS
- Free (although I suggest a rewards program)
- Status/respect in community
- Passionate
"Love of site, they have contributed within the guidelines, good feel for the community, not driven
by money. I don't think that paying people leads to better people. In some ways..." @ifroggy
- Advocates - Better advocates for the community as they are members foremost
- Stability - low turnover (in my experience) means they're great for knowledge continuity. There are so
many nuances of communities and experience that is almost impossible to document in a formal staff
handover process
- Credibility - vibe that forums are run by the members
- Less red tape? No performance management documentation, less HR red tape etc.(Perhaps more, depending on your co.)
- Remote workforce (lower overheads, can work in time zones that suit your needs).
CONS OF VOLUNTEER MODERATORS
- Priorities - "Professional" relationship can be harder to maintain when volunteers are not employees,ergo more time consuming to maintain a personal/professional relationship. Life (fairly) will come first.
- Rostering - can be difficult if you require someone on 24/7. (Paid software such as SmartShift can help, as used by Habbo)
"Can only place limited time requirements on them, have to be extremely flexible, re: vacations, life
takes priority" @ifroggy
- Dismissal - hard to fire a volunteer (thankfully I haven't had to!)
- Expectations - Will have varied opinions about what they expect in return for their labour.
- Communication - Hard to communicate directives if you can't gather them online at once, disseminating 2nd hand info can lead to misunderstandings
- Objectivity - May be harder to be objective when they are ensconced in community
- Shared vision - May not be interested in or agree with fundamental business objectives / too protective of community?
- Remote workforce - minimal/0 face to face interaction
- Unpredictable - and can be difficult to control (@BenJoM)
(If you source your staff from the community it will bridge some of these points. Sourcing volunteers from your community is another post for another day!)
Can you identify any pros and cons of working with a volunteer team?
