If volunteering is, as the Federation of Volunteer Centers of Quebec says, “a powerful source of collective wealth”, we must not forget that certain trends, such as tele-volunteering, can also dry up this source to the point of sink some volunteers into exhaustion and discouragement. This is one of the findings that emerged from National Volunteer Week, a good time to reflect on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and multiple lockdowns on our volunteer efforts.
Since the onset of the pandemic and multiple suspensions of workplace gatherings, many companies and organizations have embraced remote working as their primary mode of operation. The idea behind this change is that teleworking would allow an organization to be more flexible, more efficient and more “resilient”. For workers, teleworking would avoid the stress of commuting to their offices and allow for a better balance between work and private life, among other things. But all is not rosy: the sedentary lifestyle, the lack of interaction and the limits of remote collaboration are decried by certain work teams.
These concerns are heightened in the context of tele-volunteering. Indeed, a whole scientific literature, in which we participate with our “Bénévolat en mouvement” project, presents volunteering as a gift of oneself which above all allows us to socialize and develop relationships. If we have criticized this idealized vision in the past, the fact remains that it clearly indicates that volunteers do not get involved for the same reasons as workers.
In their commitment, volunteers often seek an intensification of their emotional life or their social ties. It’s about being able to touch others, but also about feeling touched in return.
However, the organizations that had to decree the end of face-to-face volunteering during the multiple pandemic waves have faced the frustrations and sometimes the despair of volunteers, suddenly distraught by these new configurations. In his text entitled The confinement of a volunteer, a small logbook, Pierre Reboul writes in particular that “this confinement makes this other of flesh and blood, this living gaze, pass to the status of an imaginary and absent being. How to live without the one who, fully embodied, makes me his equal at all times? “.
Of course, our point here is not to point out that organizations have played their cards wrong, the transition to online volunteering has allowed essential services to continue. The question is rather one of continuity: as we gradually return to normal, should we preserve this online presence in the name of flexibility and efficiency? In the case of volunteering, everything indicates that this path is wrong.
Not only does online volunteering remove a presence and warmth that is the “vitalizing fuel” of many volunteers, but it can also accentuate the digital divide and have a deleterious effect on the well-being and health of senior volunteers.
While more and more organizations are wondering how to better retain their volunteers, it seems essential to us to include these reflections in the societal changes of the last three years. If, as National Volunteer Week presents, “volunteering changes lives”, it is above all because this solidarity action is situated in a dense network of social relations, particularly family and community, which make volunteering particularly significant. It must be said: excessive digitization will never be able to preserve the depth and thickness of these relationships.