How to Create A Volunteer Form Employees Will Actually Complete

You work hard to track and manage your bank or credit union’s employee volunteer hours. You plan events, promote them throughout your institution, manage registrations, and oversee the entire process. Now it’s time to count up those volunteer hours and report them to your management team. 

You have submission forms ready to go, but these forms just aren’t cutting it. Maybe they’re too long. Maybe they’re confusing. Maybe you forgot to hit “send” on that email with the link (oops). Whatever the case, you aren’t seeing many submissions come through. 

And when employees don’t submit their volunteer hours, you can’t track those hours and report to your team. You’ll never know the full scale of your institution’s community involvement efforts. Whether employees volunteered during an official institution event or on their own time, you need them to submit that form in order to get the full picture. 

So what can you do?

There are lots of ways to encourage employees to submit their volunteer hours. One of the simplest ways is making your submission form easy to use and painless to submit. The easier your form is to submit, the more hours employees are likely to report.

Here are some principles for creating a submission form employees will actually fill out. (Cue the heavenly music) 

Keep it simple

Form burn out is a real thing. If an employee clicks the link and sees a never-ending list of questions, they aren’t going to complete it. And if they do complete it, they won’t be very happy. 

There’s no question, complicated forms equals fewer submissions. Why would someone go through all that trouble to report their volunteer hours when they have to answer 50 questions, upload 3 documents, and film an interpretive dance video? Especially if they don’t get anything out of it (besides the joy of dancing at their desk). 

Yep, simple is definitely the way to go. 

And by simple, I mean don’t ask a billion questions you don’t need the answers to! Do you really need to know their date of birth? Isn’t that already in your system somewhere? 

The fewer questions you ask, the more likely employees are to finish your form. A volunteer form should take 5 minutes max to complete. No unnecessary info, no repetitive questions, and no interpretive dance requests. Start with the most important question first and work your way down from there. Believe me, your employees will be much happier. 

Want to really up your game? Use a tracking system that allows form logic. Employees fill out a question or two and, depending on their answers, are taken to different questions that apply to their situation. This makes sure you get the right answers the first time around and don’t have to follow up for clarifying info. If your tracking system doesn’t have form logic, take a look at Kadince…we think it’s pretty great.

Make it easy to access and submit

Have you ever been asked to submit a form and had to jump through a bunch of hoops to do so? You click one link and that takes you to another. And then you have to log in to another system, where you have to find the form and finally open it. Only to be met with a bunch of questions you don’t even know the answers to. You’re busy! You don’t have time for this!

This might be how your employees feel if the volunteer hours form is hard to access or submit. 

The easier this form is to find and complete, the less time it will take to do so and the happier employees will be. And happy employees is never a bad thing! 

But how to make your form easy to submit? This starts with how employees access the form. Don’t hide it behind locked doors with three-headed guard dogs keeping watch. Don’t make opening it as difficult as catching an elusive golden snitch. (Can you tell what movie I watched recently?) 

Instead, make your form easy to find and open. Ideally, that means having one link that takes them directly to the form with no strings attached. And that link should be found in several places, including:

• In an email sent after the event

• On your intranet in an easy-to-access page

• Bookmarked in each employee’s browser 

• Anywhere an employee views event information 

You could even be really cool like Navigant Credit Union and create an “app” (shortcut) employees can put on their phone. This shortcut is just a direct link to their employee volunteer form, so employees can access it at any time and don’t even have to be at work to report their hours (just another super sweet Kadince feature). 

And once your form is easy to access, make it easy to submit (i.e. no dance requests;). There shouldn’t be a billion questions, the “submit” button should be obvious, and they should receive confirmation that the form went through. No backbreaking labor required. 

See? Making your employee volunteer form easy to access and submit doesn’t have to be difficult. And the rewards far outweigh the cost. Speaking of rewards…

Reward employees

One reason you may not be receiving many volunteer form submissions is because SUBMITTING FORMS IS BORING. Nobody wants to spend time clicking buttons and answering questions (even though yours are nice and easy to fill out now, right?). 

In other words, they could all use a little incentive. 

Many financial institutions incentivize employees with a rewards program. The more volunteer hours they submit, the higher their chances of earning rewards. Rewarding employees for their volunteer work is a great way to get them to fill out the volunteer form. No reported hours, no rewards. 

Rewarding employees may sound complicated. You have to track volunteer hours, find who has the most hours, distribute rewards, etc. And yes, running a volunteer rewards program can be time-consuming, but depending on your institution’s goals, it may be worth it. 

Start small. Announce that the employee with the most volunteer hours each quarter will receive a gift card. Just know that not all employees will be interested in just a gift card. To get the full effect, you’ve got to offer something irresistible. Maybe you let the employee choose their own prize. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to running a successful employee volunteer program. Figure out what works best for your institution and go from there. 

But if you really want to incentivize people, create a volunteer leaderboard they can all see. Bart at the top of the list will want to keep that spot, and everyone else will want to usurp him. And those who’ve never submitted a single volunteer hour? Well, a little bit of FOMO never hurt anyone. 

Use Kadince

Whatever system you use to collect form submissions shouldn’t only be easy for employees to access and submit. It should also be easy for you to manage. 

Managing volunteer hours and tracking submissions is a whole beast in itself, and sometimes this feels less important than giving your employees a good experience so they submit their hours. But you deserve an easy process too! 

Tracking volunteer hours through email or spreadsheets doesn’t cut it. “But I love my spreadsheets!” you might say. “The hundreds of tabs I have are amazing. I can find everything I need right away and I never get lost. Spreadsheets are my friends!” 

(Oh please, I know you’ll never say that.)

Spreadsheets suck. It’s just a fact. But another fact is that hundreds of financial institutions use spreadsheets to track and manage community involvement data, including events and employee volunteer hours. If this is you, there’s a much better way…

Kadince software makes it easy to create employee volunteer forms, track hours, plan events, and more. Goodbye spreadsheets and hello easy-to-use software that keeps all your data in one place. In fact, I’d say Kadince is the absolute best way you could ever possibly track your community involvement data (although I’ll admit I’m a little biased). 

These Kadince features will help you track employee volunteer hours:

• Custom fields so you get the exact data you need the first time around.

• Smart logic that takes employees to the correct questions based on previous answers.

• Workflows so nothing falls through the cracks and you never have to remind Bob to complete his tasks again.

• Events that are easy to share and update once employees have volunteered.

With Kadince, you can create forms that are easy to access and submit, collect the data you actually need, and keep employees happy. It really is that easy. 

Schedule a demo to learn more. Or, you know, just keep waiting for those employees volunteer hours to roll in…and waiting…and waiting… 

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None of Kadince, Inc., its affiliates, or its respective employees, directors, officers, and agents (collectively, “Kadince”) are responsible or liable for any content or information incorporated herein. Read full disclosure.