Setting objectives has been researched in various disciplines, including management, sport, medicine, and criminal justice. This research has shown a relationship between objective setting and performance, making it generally accepted as an effective tool for maintaining and improving performance.

Objectives can motivate volunteers by providing focus and direction. As part of collaborative initiatives, they also serve as a reason for managers to interact with and influence volunteers. Objectives require persistence by defining the duration of resource allocation. They illuminate the gap between agreed results and achievements, which energises volunteers.

Specific, challenging and appropriate

However, objectives must be specific, challenging, and appropriate for each volunteer. Setting unrealistic objectives can demoralise poor performers. Understanding the underlying reasons for possible poor performance is crucial before setting objectives. Objectives demand that volunteers possess the necessary competencies and behaviours.

When tasks are routine, objectives should be clear, specific, and achievable. Conversely, when tasks are complex, specific objectives may narrow focus unnecessarily.

The CSO manager, often with the Trustees or Board, sets the CSO’s objectives for the coming years. Here are some examples:
• Reduce beneficiaries’ waiting lists from 23% to under 10%.
• Establish regional sites as centres-of-excellence for outdoor pursuits and transfer local services.
• Replace the £2.5m legacies shortfall.
• Ensure 95% of Packs hold summer camps.
Each objective differs from the current CSO position and has specific metrics. Volunteers contribute to these objectives, and their involvement varies.

For instance, improving waiting list numbers may require a recruitment campaign, and a named volunteer could lead it. This shows that not everyone is equally involved in all objectives. Outdoor pursuits specialists would need to participate in the shift to regional centres, which may involve them for a couple of years. The camp objective would only be relevant to Pack volunteers.

Then there are ‘business as usual’ objectives. Maintaining performance often requires significant effort.

From organisational to personal

Objectives are crucial for achieving goals. They can be short-term, such as ensuring training in the coming year, or long-term, like ensuring volunteers have the skills for the future. Training a first aider to be an EMT, for example, might take two years, and likewise development of an EMT to a paramedic may take another two. Every volunteer should have a significant learning and development objective.

Objectives break down into individual region, department, or group objectives, and ultimately, personal objectives. Managers and volunteers collaborate to determine how objectives will be achieved. Recovering £2.5m might require five volunteers, two employees, and a Trustee. If there are only three volunteers, a plan must be developed to recruit two new volunteers in time. This plan may need to include a fundraising activity to generate leads for the new volunteers.

Objectives make strategy real and achievable.

Organisational objectives were described by Kaplan and Norton in 1996 as a ‘balanced scorecard’ for expressing strategy. An example balanced scorecard is shown in the adjacent figure.

The balanced scorecard expands strategic thinking beyond budgets and deliverables to effects, outcomes, impacts, and changes. While these may be too abstract, they can focus on proximal achievements. The example objectives in the figure cover typical CSO dimensions. They’re incomplete and just illustrative ideas.

Objectives link high-level thinking to individual managerial and volunteer achievements. Objectives allow strategy to be broken down to show each manager’s and volunteer’s contribution. Objectives will likely extend to include employees, Trustees, and even suppliers.

The cascade from CSO to volunteer involves all groups or divisions. Objectives can be set at all levels.

Setting volunteer objectives

Interdependent objectives can contribute to overall performance, providing a shared purpose and reason for progress. However, most CSOs work by having volunteers work in cooperative groups rather than highly integrated teams. Volunteers cooperate on personal and group objectives and achieve them together. Interdependent objectives are challenging to set up and manage, easily decimated by normal group processes in CSOs.

So, how do managers set objectives?

There are three challenges.

First, not all volunteer objectives will be achieved. Even if volunteers are competent and motivated, managers might expect only 70% of objectives to be met. Managers should set overlapping objectives to mitigate this risk, but conflicting objectives should be avoided. If all objectives are achieved, the CSO will overachieve, but then no one will be unhappy about that!

Second, managers may set personal growth objectives that may not directly stem from the corporate picture. Only they know their local environment and local volunteer needs. They must have the freedom and power to act somewhat independently when it comes to development.

The corporate balanced scorecard can then be developed to create individual balanced scorecards for each volunteer. While the balanced scorecard structure may seem rigid, it should be used and adapted to local needs. It encourages everyone to develop balanced objectives, considering financial, process, beneficiary, and volunteer perspectives.

Third, and finally, managers should avoid very complex, specific objectives that focus narrowly on a few obvious results and exclude others with higher contributions. For example, an objective focusing on a specific result during a re-launch or re-structure might assume the form of the re-launch or re-structure is known. Instead, an objective focusing on setting out proposals might be more appropriate. Ultimately, managers and volunteers should agree on the most useful objectives.

And how's it done?

There’s a debate in organisational psychology about how objectives should be introduced to volunteers. Should each volunteer propose their own objectives based on their job needs, or should managers set them and ‘tell and sell’ them?

Self-set objectives may lead to commitment, but they require significant management overhead and may not be necessary for all volunteers. Asking volunteers to set their own objectives based on organisational needs is an extreme that may be misguided. Instead, volunteers and managers could collaborate to develop objectives based on a shared strategy.

But research suggests that manager-set objectives are more potent and align better with most managers. If the manager-volunteer relationship is sound, the volunteer will be happy to commit to objectives that meet the manager and CSO’s needs. However, exchange is two-way, and managers must reciprocate that gift of flexibility in due course.