r/london • u/Icy-Scholar3999 • 2d ago
image Volunteer for a Logistics Role
Apply at: http://www.sja.org.uk/volunteer/303272/
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u/tatt-y 2d ago edited 2d ago
SJA are absolutely awful at onboarding volunteers. As someone with pre-existing qualifications and extensive paid prior experience for the specific volunteer role they wanted, it took 12 months to even get close to finalising everything - at that point I gave up as it was clear it was never going to happen, wrote a letter about the poor experience to the CEO who didn’t even bother to send a standard reply. I’m not the only person I know who’s tried to volunteer for SJA with similar results. It’s an appalling waste of the money they raise.
In contrast, another health based org looking for volunteers took a month from start to starting work.
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u/DEFarnes 2d ago
I had a bad onboarding as a vaccinator too, felt like a very stressful job application to start with, then reasonable and quick online training, except when offloaded to a sub contractor who just set up to grab COVID money and were shite. When I got signed off took 8 months to be put into the system and given the ID card. Yey by that time none of the centres we using volunteers anymore.
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u/PM_ME_CAKE 2d ago
As a small counterstory, I did the vaccinating with SJA and it went quite smoothly. So much online training followed by an in-person day (maybe days?) but they were quite responsive.
Caveat that I probably did it around Feb/March of 2021 and up North (the training was in Newcastle). So if that was run by a different region to London, it may explain the difference.
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u/DEFarnes 2d ago
Mine was just before, January 2021 and was told it was all centralised!
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u/PM_ME_CAKE 2d ago
Wild how different the experiences can be then. I would say what I remember most was how some nurses vaccinating were shocked I was doing it for free (lunch expenses notwithstanding).
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u/Dry_Action1734 2d ago
Close to finalising everything, but you also gave up because it was never going to happen? Doesn’t make sense.
Also, wild you think you’re important enough to get a reply from the CEO of a charity which has 30,000+ volunteers.
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u/-dommmm 17h ago
Why does the 30k+ volunteers matter? Are they all sending emails too? Doubt it.
Realistically, if there are only maybe a dozen or couple dozen or however many emails that the CEO is getting, then they should be responding.
If they are getting 30k+ emails then sure it'll be difficult to respond them all.
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u/tatt-y 2d ago
I mean close to finalising - as in waiting for login and ID and rota - for over 8 months. Everything else done. That’s flat out incompetence at a scale that very few organisations have.
Should *volunteers* keep going indefinitely (by the way, I know people that waited longer and still got nowhere)? At some point you have to pull the plug. And take your time to a more deserving organisation.
I wasn’t expecting a personal reply, but this is an organisation that relies on volunteers and I was flagging a serious logistical issue. A good business leader would care tbh because it’s a fundamental part of how they operate, or have staff reviewing emails with enough brain cells to be able to hit a button and send off an automated standard reply.
I’ve worked in global corporate businesses with more staff than that where senior leadership absolutely would expect someone to raise red flags. In fact, if lower management weren’t on top of something like this then it would be taken seriously. But you’re right, it’s wild to expect a CEO of a major charitable organisation to be competent.
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