Employees Volunteering at work

SW · August 2004

I have been asked by a local church if it is ok for their hourly employees to "volunteer" for the church outside of their normal work day. My initial answer was that it should be ok if they were performing different duties than their normal position entails. However, after more thought, that gets tricky when we all have the "all other duties" line in our job descriptions. Has anyone had any experience with this?

rad · August 2004

I just want to clarify ...who is doing the volunteering, your employees or the church's employees?

SW · August 2004

The church employees are volunteering.

Dasher · August 2004

Well, if a church member (who also is employed by the church) wants to participate in a voluntary assignment (say they want to clear away bushes or snow) that would be okay.

If the employed janitor, who is also a member of the church, is asked to stay two extra hours and clean the grounds or remove the snow on a "voluntary" basis, that would not be acceptable. Pay the two hours overtime.

I understand the shade of difference but that's the way I see it.

marc · August 2004

We went through similar angst at our shop. As a human services, non-profit agency, we have the requirement to raise money through donations and community fund raisers just to keep the doors open. Many of these events require lots of "sweat equity" to be successful and we had always utilized volunteers to make this happen. When I took over HR, I became concerned that we were exposed in this area and called our state employment office and asked them your question. The basic answer was that it was OK with some restrictions. If it was normal duties and just more of them for free, that was a no-no. We developed a form that basically said the employee understood that this was volunteer work and that no pay would be forthcoming for the work and that further, the employee was freely volunteering (no coercion).

That seemed to do it.

Employees Volunteering at work

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