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Many not-for-profit organisations benefit from taking on volunteers, eg to serve on committees, raise funds, create websites or databases, and deliver mailshots. Other businesses may offer work experience or secondment opportunities to help build links with local communities or within their industry or to help attract potential recruits.

Business benefits of using volunteers

Volunteers can offer several advantages to businesses, including:

• Saving money and resources.
• Engaging with a more diverse range of skills, experience, and knowledge.
• Raising awareness of your brand and what your business does.
• Building relationships within your local community. Providing volunteering opportunities provides opportunities for social inclusion, skills development, and potential routes to employment.
• Giving you a different perspective on challenges or opportunities for your business as volunteers express their opinions or ideas.
• Building stronger teams and improving staff morale.

Taking on volunteers - business considerations

Before taking on a volunteer you should consider:

• Whether your organisation has a suitable vacancy for a volunteer.
• The need for inductions and, possibly, task-specific training. See preparing for an induction.
• What workspace the volunteer will need. Try to minimise disruption and demands on paid staff.
• In the absence of pay/benefits, the need to make them feel recognised, involved, and appreciated.
• Their need to work flexibly. Think about the needs of paid staff and whether you can adopt across-the-board flexibility.
• The fact that, as an employer, you have a similar duty of care on health and safety issues to volunteers as to employees - see volunteers and health and safety.

Volunteers will need managing. Therefore, you could give a paid member of staff responsibility for co-ordinating volunteers and their training and supervision. This will help avoid friction between volunteers and paid workers.

You should consult volunteers on the level of involvement they would like, eg in meetings or discussion groups.

AccessNI checks

You do not have to get an AccessNI check for volunteers unless they are working with children or vulnerable adults in a 'regulated' or care position such as a care home or a school, or in an occupation/position covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Exceptions) Order (NI) 1979 and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Exceptions) (Amendment) Order (Northern Ireland) 2019.

For more information, see AccessNI criminal records checks.

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Individuals who are genuinely volunteers have no employment rights but may still be able to claim state benefits and/or allowances.

Volunteer agreements

There have been cases where volunteers have succeeded in claiming to be a worker or even an employee. It is important to be aware of this because workers benefit from certain statutory employment rights, eg the right to receive the national minimum wage, while employees benefit from the full range of such rights including unlawful discrimination.

Therefore, when you take on a volunteer, any agreement you have with them must be worded so that the volunteer is clear that it is not a contract of employment, eg the agreement must not suggest that you and the volunteer have any obligations towards each other or that it is a contract for services.

Instead, you should:

• Give the individual a volunteer agreement and role description in writing.
• Not promise anything in return for the volunteer's work.

Volunteer expenses

However, as part of the agreement, you may:

• Give a volunteer relevant training.
• Give relevant supervision.
• Reimburse actual expenses a volunteer incurs when volunteering, eg travel, food, drink, or any equipment needed. You may also consider covering out-of-pocket expenses eg phone calls, stationery, or postage necessary for a volunteer to work.

Note that you should never give a volunteer a gift or reward other than in an isolated case.

There are that can be paid if you have used your own car for volunteering and/or carrying passengers. Provided there is no profit element (ie no excess is paid), they are not subject to tax or National Insurance Contributions.

See .

Volunteers and the National Minimum Wage (NMW)

For the purposes of the NMW legislation, volunteers are not workers and are therefore not entitled to be paid the NMW.

However, you must ensure that the individual is genuinely a volunteer, ie that it's not possible for them to claim they are - in fact - a worker.

Voluntary workers are a category of worker specifically exempt from being entitled to the NMW. See who should be paid the minimum wage.

State benefits and allowances available to volunteers

Volunteers may continue to be eligible for benefits and allowances such as Universal Credit or Personal Independence Payment (PIP). See .

Those receiving Universal Credit will need to attend meetings at their Jobs and Benefits office, and your organisation will need to accommodate these visits.

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You have no duty to inform the benefits office who is volunteering - this is for the individual volunteer to decide.

Organisations staffed entirely by volunteers aren't required to carry out a risk assessment. It is good practice to treat volunteers with the same consideration for health and safety as you would treat paid staff.

You legal requirements

The legal obligations for the health and safety of volunteers are:

• a general duty of care to avoid causing injury
• a duty to ensure that people not in your employment, and who may be affected by your operations, are not exposed to health and safety risks

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It's common for businesses to use young volunteers for part-time volunteering or for volunteering during school holidays.

There are no specific restrictions on volunteering by young people in not-for-profit organisations. However, you should follow the working-time rules that apply to regular employees.

You should ensure that young people are afforded protection. See .

Volunteers and voluntary workers are not entitled to the National Minimum Wage - see who should be paid the minimum wage.

Insurance for young people

If you use volunteers who are under 16 years old, you must ensure that your employer's liability and public liability insurance policies cover young workers and volunteers under 16 years old.

You may ask for an exemption from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) not to report expenses or benefits that are not taxable - this would include expenses paid to volunteers for carrying out volunteering for your business.

You do not have to report certain business expenses and benefits like:

• business travel
• phone bills
• business entertainment expenses
• uniform and tools for work

You do not need to apply for an exemption if you鈥檙e paying HMRC鈥檚 benchmark rates for allowable expenses.

The exemption also means that the expenses or benefits do not count as earnings for NIC purposes.

For further details see .