How your organisation should treat volunteers

Some volunteers have a contract to personally do work for you and receive more than just their out-of-pocket expenses in exchange.

If this applies to your volunteers, then they may be protected as if they are employed by you, and you should read the Equality and Human Rights Commission guide to what equality law means for employers. Information at the front of this guide tells you how you can get hold of this.

If this does not apply to your volunteers, then it is possible that, when you are providing a volunteering opportunity for someone, this counts as providing them with a service.

This means that the rest of this guide applies to your volunteers just as much as it does to your service users or clients. You should avoid unlawful discrimination in how you treat volunteers.

Whatever their legal status, it is likely that a volunteer delivering your service would be acting on your behalf if they unlawfully discriminated against a client or service user. If so, you could be held legally responsible for what they did.

This is true, even if you are not aware of the conduct and you did not approve it.