Volunteering plays an important role in society. However, especially in economically difficult times, which are often associated with cost-cutting measures by the public sector, a tight labour market and a higher demand for social services, the demand for increased voluntary engagement also harbours dangers.

At the individual level, these are insufficient social security for volunteers. At the organisational level, the need to save money can lead to increased pressure on volunteers and staff, resulting in poor working conditions or even the substitution of volunteers for staff. Although a direct exchange between volunteers and paid staff is not easy due to the different forms it takes (amount of hours, creation of commitment) as well as legal regulations (especially labour law, Volunteer Act), research and practice show that there are some areas where concerns in this regard are particularly strong.

Substitution often does not occur on a one-to-one basis but through the shifting of activities within a specific task area. Even though there is very little empirical research on this topic, some studies point to an actual displacement effect of paid workers by volunteers, while other studies could not prove such effects (Brudney/Gazley 2002). This displacement is often justified by cost savings or budgetary requirements.

The aim of this study was to identify potential displacement effects between full-time volunteers and volunteers and to find possible explanations. For this purpose, existing quantitative data was analysed on the one hand, and qualitative surveys were conducted in organisations in selected areas on the other.

The quantitative study showed that volunteering does play an important role in Austrian nonprofit organisations with paid staff. Thus, 57% of the organisations surveyed for 2014 stated that they also used volunteers. If the sample is reduced to nonprofit organisations, the value increases to 60%. However, it also shows that the organisations are very heterogeneous and the importance of volunteering must be classified differently between the individual organisations. The volume of volunteer work in the organisations shows that the potential for displacement exists in principle, but at the same time should not be overestimated.

From the examination of the longitudinal data, a relatively constant picture can be seen in the use of volunteering. Between 2006 and 2014, relatively little changed in the organisations in this regard. This does not indicate that volunteer work is being displaced over time due to the need for professionalisation, nor that paid work is being replaced by volunteers due to the need to save money. At the same time, however, it must be added here that it is not clear whether the observed period is long enough to find such considerations empirically.

In the multivariate investigation, the result from Bittschi et al. (2015) could be confirmed with the extended data set. In organisations that are under competitive pressure, the rate of staff departures is higher when volunteers are also active. This is not the case in organisations without competitive pressure. The ratio of volunteers to paid staff also shows a significant positive influence on the rate of staff turnover.

This result can be interpreted as a substitution effect for different reasons. For organisations under competitive pressure, the use of volunteers can be a way to maintain a desired qualitative or quantitative level of service. While the statistical relationship between the use of volunteers and staff attrition rates emerges from the estimation model, the exact mechanisms of impact between the use of volunteers and staff turnover remain unclear.

In coordination with the available secondary data, three areas of activity were selected to examine the background of potential substitution effects:

1.  Areas for which a very large demand for services is expected in the future: Long-term care

2.  Social sectors that tend to struggle financially: asylum/refugee sector and homeless sector

3.  Areas where volunteers and full-time staff cover the same or similar tasks: paramedics, guardians, probation services, legal counselling

 

The qualitative analysis shows that voluntary work and gainful employment are very different phenomena; they can certainly be described as opposites. While gainful employment can create commitment and thus also quality assurance in the provision of services, voluntary work often serves to cultivate personal relationships. The essential criterion here is voluntariness and the fact that the activities are unpaid.

During the interviews, this was also put into a time perspective. In recent decades, there has been a strong professionalisation in the social and health sector, which has created jobs. This can be seen as a direct consequence of the development of the social state, which has been the driving force behind these developments by providing financial resources, establishing legal frameworks and defining quality criteria, and voluntary organisations have played an important role in this process. On the one hand, this lies in perceiving social and societal problems, taking them up and developing solutions. NPOs also play(ed) an important role in the development of services and the corresponding quality criteria and in negotiating the financial framework conditions.

The fact that voluntary work also plays an important role in highly professionalised organisations was strongly justified in the interviews in all three areas studied by the fact that a counterbalance to professionalisation is needed in order to build a bridge to society. For the clients, customers, residents, etc. of the organisations, volunteers enable participation in society, which is not possible in this form within the professional relationship with paid workers. For the organisation, engaging with volunteers provides an opportunity to gather feedback. Volunteers, in turn, gain an insight into areas of society with which they would otherwise have few points of contact and are thus important opinion leaders and multipliers.

Volunteering and gainful employment are largely described as complementary activities, but there are also overlaps. In the course of the interviews, some grey areas emerged: individual examples show that volunteering sometimes serves to maintain an existing service offer in the case of reduced or discontinued funding or to cover a higher demand without additional funding. In the case of emergency services, this is clearly part of the concept of covering short-term needs during large-scale operations. To a small extent, the use of volunteers also serves to save personnel costs.

Volunteering offers the organisations a certain degree of flexibility that enables them to respond to changing conditions. Overall, the potential of volunteers was considered low by the interviewees due to the time constraints of volunteers and the resulting organisational effort. The extent to which this room for manoeuvre is used also depends on the respective mission, ideological background and organisational culture. Some organisations are against the use of volunteers or have very clear rules on which areas or in which form volunteers can work.

In conclusion, it can be said that volunteering fulfils important functions for the nonprofit organisations but above all for society. With the support of volunteers, services of a certain quality can be provided. The extent to which these services are financed by the public sector is a question of quality standards that are constantly being negotiated, and nonprofit organisations play an important role in this process. To what extent there are substitution and displacement effects between full-time and voluntary activities is a question of starting point. Due to the described ongoing changes in the framework conditions (changes in the supply and demand of services, professionalisation, etc.), the question ultimately boils down to what are fundable services. Here the strategies and approaches of the individual organisations vary. However, it is clear that the potential of volunteering to replace full-time staff is limited.

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