By Michael Tovine, Fire and Emergency New Zealand

Volunteers play a vital role in New Zealand’s emergency services sector and make up around 80 percent of Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s overall personnel. Involving volunteer perspectives in decision-making is one of Fire and Emergency’s volunteerism principles and a key enabler of creating a safe, positive, and inclusive organisational culture. However, involving the voice of nearly 12,000 volunteers in an inclusive, transparent, and meaningful way has proven to be an ongoing challenge.

The Volunteer Voice Project commenced in late 2023 with the aim of setting the foundations for a more meaningful, consistent, and sustainable representation of the volunteer voice in projects and decision-making processes across Fire and Emergency.

The project has produced guidance on best practice volunteer engagement for teams across Fire and Emergency and workshopped how to incorporate volunteer perspectives into their ongoing mahi (work). 

Alongside this a ‘Volunteer Voice Network’ is being established to connect individual volunteers to teams across the organisation who are seeking volunteer involvement to inform their mahi. The network is an initiative developed in partnership with an all-volunteer working group, who designed the key components of the network – including the sign-up process, how to ensure diverse volunteer voices are represented, and how the skills and experience of volunteers outside of Fire and Emergency are captured and considered when identifying potential volunteer subject matter experts. The Volunteer Voice Network is to be launched in early 2025.

This presentation will share the journey of the Volunteer Voice Project from conceptualisation to implementation and the examples of collaboration between volunteers and Fire and Emergency.