National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill

The UK government is considering a ban on unpaid internships. But could their plans impact on volunteering?

Recently Alec Shelbrooke, Conservative MP for Elmet and Rothwell, introduced a Private Members Bill into Parliament titled the National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill. Mr Shelbrooke rightly sought to bring an end to exploitative internships where young people work for private sector companies for extended periods on no pay in order to gain experience and, hopefully, employment.

As with many Private Members Bills, Mr Shelbrooke’s proposed legislation has stalled in parliament, on this occasion being filibustered out at it’s second reading. Why? It seems the government is undertaking an independent review of modern working practices and may well seek to bring it’s own legislation to outlaw exploitative internships.

Until we see any such proposals from government, analysis of what Mr Shelbrooke was proposing is both interesting and could indicate any potential affect on volunteering.

Mr Shelbrooke’s Bill was short and to the point. It would have affected the whole of the UK and the core content sat in three sections.

Section one

For the purpose of this Act, a workplace internship is an employment practice in which a person (“the intern”)—
(a) undertakes regular work or provides regular services in the United
Kingdom for—
(i) another person; (ii) a company; (iii) a limited liability partnership; or
(iv) a public authority; and
(b) the purpose of the employment practice is—
(i) that the intern meets learning objectives or gains experience of
working for the employer listed in section 1(a); and (ii) to provide practical experience in an occupation or profession.

Section two

An intern who enters into a workplace internship shall be remunerated by his employer in respect of his work at a rate which is not less than the national minimum wage calculated in accordance with the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 for the appropriate age of the individual.
Subject to subsection ¹ an employer is not liable for Employers’ National Insurance contributions for an intern undertaking a workplace internship of less than 12 months.

Section three

For the purposes of this Act, section 2 shall not apply if the person is—
(a) a student at a higher or further education institution based in the UK
who is required to undertake an internship or equivalent work
placement as part of his or her course;
(b) of compulsory school age;
(c) undertaking an approved English apprenticeship as set out in the
Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009;

So, to summarise, an intern would be clearly defined and would have to be paid at least the national minimum wage. So far so good. However, problems would have come from interpreting and applying the bill.

First, the bill states that it only applies to companies. Whilst the intent is clearly private sector businesses, many registered charities are also registered as limited companies. Campaign groups like Intern Aware have been vocal that unpaid internships in charities are as bad as those in private companies. The Bill as worded would therefore allow registered charities to be targeted by the appropriate authorities.

Once charities become a focus of this legislation the question of volunteering is bound to come up. When I have written previously on unpaid internships I have received comments from social media trolls claiming all unpaid work should be outlawed, including volunteering. So where would Mr Shelbrooke’s Bill have left us?

For some insights let's turn to the House of Commons debate on the Bill. When asked about the implications on volunteering Mr Shelbrooke remarked:

That looks promising until you also read the following comments from Mr Shelbrooke during the debate:

So volunteers won’t fall under the legislation if they just turn up but if a group or organisation seeks to deliberately advertise for volunteers then “that makes a mockery of things”. Also, if an organisation has a large turnover and engages people on an unpaid basis then that is exploiting a “volunteer” loophole.

That is considerably less encouraging, opening up new loopholes that could in theory allow the authorities to decide that any volunteers who are actively recruited to charities and / or who have money to pay people would be entitled to National Minimum Wage! And we haven’t even looked at volunteering in the public sector, or those roles that are really volunteering but the volunteer calls them internships to make them sound more attractive to a potential employer.

Of course, Mr Shelbrooke’s well intentioned Bill seems to be going nowhere now, but it gives an insight into how the government might seek to legislate on the exploitation of unpaid internships. What I hope I have done in this article is show that if and when legislation is introduced into Parliament on the matter it needs much further thought and refinement if it is to achieve its aim without damaging the UK’s long and proud history of volunteering.

What do you think? Add your thoughts to the debate in the comments section below.

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1. An employer may meet Employers’ National Insurance contributions for an intern undertaking a workplace internship of less than 12 months. ↩︎

What's in a word? Revisited

In November 2013 I wrote a blog post entitled “What’s in a word?” looking at the language we use regarding volunteering. I specifically picked out issues concerning microvolunteering and internships, the latter being especially critical.

As I said at the time:

First, by colluding with the idea that internship sounds more professional than volunteering we collude with the devaluing of volunteering, subordinating it to a lower class status below real work (i.e. paid) and internships. Second, we open up a can of worms such as that created by the recent debates on unpaid internships which - and let’s not ignore this at all - risk fundamentally undermining the concepts of volunteering many of us hold so dear.

This blog post built upon some writing I’d done earlier that year.

In June 2013, Jo Swinson MP commented in a parliamentary debate on interns that:

“…basically, if someone is offering their time of their own free will and they can come and go as they please, they are a volunteer, but if they are required to perform specific tasks and can be disciplined if duties are not performed as agreed, they are a worker.”

As I said in my blog for Third Sector a couple of months later:

“So a volunteer shouldn’t do specific tasks or be held to account if they don’t do a good job? Really? Is that actually how we want to think about volunteers: people doing meaningless work that makes no contribution of any value to society whatsoever? So much for volunteers making a difference.”

Why this brief history lesson? Because the issue of the language we use to describe volunteering has arisen once more and this time through a term that many leaders and managers of volunteers seem to have been happy to adopt: ‘skilled volunteering’.

The term ‘skilled volunteering’ has been around for a short while now and generally refers to people using their professional skills to help a good cause[1]. It is in effect what many people have usually referred to as pro bono:

“Professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. Unlike traditional volunteerism, it is service that uses the specific skills of professionals to provide services to those who are unable to afford them”. (Source - Wikipedia).

I’ve always had an issue with using language that omits the word volunteer to describe volunteering that requires particular skills or competence. Why draw a distinction between employees using their professional skills pro bono and someone who may be a retired professional from the same field using exactly the same skills who is only seen as a volunteer?

On the face of it then ‘skilled volunteering’ is not a bad term because at it least recognises that the people who use their considerable skills and expertise to further a good cause are indeed volunteers.

Yet for that step forwards, the term ‘skilled volunteering’ creates a huge jump backwards.

You see, as it becomes more common to refer to employee volunteers using professional skills as skilled volunteers, so we increasingly imply that all other volunteers are unskilled - nice-to-have, non-essential contributors who don’t do anything of real value in the organisation. It’s bad enough that so many people already hold this erroneous and misleading view of volunteers without introducing new terminology that perpetuates that belief further.

So, leaders and managers of volunteers please unite against the term ‘skilled volunteering’ as a means of distinguishing between different forms of giving time. All volunteering requires some skill and competence, all volunteering is ‘skilled volunteering’ in some way.

If you feel you have to use the word skilled at all when describing volunteering, then consider the compromise term of ‘skills-based volunteering’ which Corey Diamond of Realized Worth helpfully explains on their website:

skills·based·vol·un·teer·ing /skilz/bāst/välənˈtir·ēng/ verb

Any time someone uses their abilities, talents, networks and resources to get a volunteering commitment completed.

This may or may not include pro bono volunteering, which takes a skill that is used every day in your job and applies it to work to address a complex social or environmental cause.

Points of Light suggests that skills-based volunteering comes in all shapes and sizes, including[2]:

• Individual volunteers, corporate paid/unpaid volunteers, loaned executives, interns
• Projects completed in a day; short, medium or longterm projects
• Activities performed during working hours or on individual time
• Planned in advance or spontaneous projects such as disaster response
• Application of all types of skills and talents from professional experience to hobbies
• Content from nonprofit infrastructure efficiency effort to direct “in the field” projects
• Local impact to national and international

Language is important. Let’s not use it carelessly and devalue volunteering, but with thought and clarity to shine a light on the contribution of all those who give their time to good causes.

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1. Both Reach and Career Volunteer have helpful definitions of skilled volunteering on their websites.  ↩

2. Note that whilst Realized Worth do specialise in CSR and employee volunteering they do make clear that skills-based volunteering is not limited to this area of work.  ↩

The smokescreen of charity CEO pay

What charities pay their Chief Executives continues to be a topic grabbing headlines in sector and mainstream media alike here in the UK.

I have to admit, I remain slightly perplexed about the issue. 

Perhaps it’s because my career has been spent mainly dealing with the vast majority of the charity ‘workforce’, the volunteers who get paid nothing; without whom most charities, large and small, would be nothing; and without whom almost nobody who draws a salary in a charity - CEOs included - would have a job. 

Perhaps its because those who do the complex and challenging role of leading and managing volunteers get paid so poorly compared to their peers in, say, fundraising. In fact many are volunteers themselves and their work is essential to the delivery of important services to people across the country.

Either way the charity CEO pay debate rumbles on. And on. And on.

I was struck recently by a piece in Civil Society which reported the shadow charities minister, Lisa Nandy MP, “has warned that charity leadership needs to tackle the problem of unfair pay ratios in charities”.

Once I got over the shock of an MP preaching about pay to a group of charities I read on to discover that this warning was issued in the context of a debate about the future of charities. 

Is this really the most important strategic issue facing the charity world at the moment? I’m not saying it may not be important at all but I can think of many other issues much more worth of attention.

Nandy also apparently criticised charities for taking on an increasing number of unpaid interns, sometimes “with connections to established staff”. Another issue MPs are uniquely qualified to lecture charities on because, as we know, involving unpaid interns, sometimes people with connections to the MP themselves, NEVER happens does it? 

Regardless, if this is happening in the charity sector (and nobody is producing evidence to prove it), then it warrants a better debate that unpaid = bad, paid = good, as I have blogged before.

The debate then seems to have moved into discussion of the ratio between what a charity CEO is paid and what frontline workers are paid. Again, no recognition that the vast majority of frontline workers in charities get no pay at all and so such ratios are totally meaningless! 

But let’s just go with it and assume that frontline workers in charities are all paid.

Cath Bavage, CEO of Volunteer Centre Tower Hamlets, is quoted by Civil Society as saying:

“NCVO sounds pleased with itself that its own ratio of senior executive to lowest-paid staff member is 8:1. Is its chief executive really worth eight times more than an administrator? Does he work hard? Yes, probably. Does he work eight times harder, or does he have eight times more impact? I very much doubt it.”

"Why isn’t NCVO arguing for flatter pay structures and a more even distribution of wages in the voluntary sector? Surely a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 would be a far better thing in charities with limited funds? It would help reassure donors that their money is being spent prudently and would better reward frontline staff who often work in emotionally demanding jobs. "

To which I would respond:

No, the CEO of NCVO probably doesn’t work eight times harder or have eight times more impact. No CEO does. But pay is not a measure of how hard someone works or how much impact they have. On that basis the volunteer lifeboat crew member would be paid a small fortune for each life they save and we’d have every Samaritan in the country in the top tax bracket. 

[Interestingly, research seems to suggest its not what we pay people but how we pay people that makes a difference.]

Surely what would reassure donors that their money is being spent prudently is whether the organisation makes best use of all the resources at its disposal and, in that broader context, whether salaries are being paid for the right kind of roles and then (finally) at the right kind of levels.

Assume for a minute that we have two organisations doing similar work with similar budgets. As a donor, I would be wanting to ask questions if organisation A was paying someone £20,000 to do a role that Organisation B fulfilled just as well through volunteers. That suggests that rather than exploring all the options for fulfilling its mission, organisation A just paid someone whereas organisation B created a volunteer programme to achieve that goal and used £18,000 (because volunteering may be freely given but it is not cost free) for something else, perhaps paying for someone to do a role that organisation A can’t do because it doesn’t have enough money.

Maybe the reason I feel perplexed about the charity CEO debate is that it appears to be a smokescreen for any kind of real debate about far more important issues. Issues like whether charities are really doing the best with what they have available for the most vulnerable in society, or whether all this talk of charities actually ignores the majority of charities in favour of the minority who receive the biggest slice of charitable income. Surely they are far more important topics to consider when thinking about the future of the sector than government, the sector’s infrastructure bodies and CEOs remaining inwardly focused on what they earn and whether they should earn it?

For some intelligent and informed exploration of the charity CEO pay debate, check out these two pieces from nfpSynergy:

A Chief Concern; shedding some light on charity CEO salaries

An executive decision; three things the charity CEO salary maelstrom taught us and what to do about it

What's in a word?

I've recently finished reading The Institute for Volunteer Research's (IVR) excellent new report on microvolunteering. Yes, that's right, something about microvolunteering that I am enthusiastic about.

As I have said in other blogs, microvolunteering is often portrayed as the knight in shining armour come to save the damsel in distress that is volunteering. It is claimed to be the magical solution that will engage people who are otherwise put off volunteering and start them down a long and happy road of lifelong service. It is evangelistically portrayed as the best thing ever to happen to volunteering without a single shred of meaningful evidence to back those assertions.

In their accessible and readable report, IVR take a more measured look at microvolunteering. They cut through the hype and hoopla to explore the realities of the concept, identifying opportunities and challenges for volunteer involving organisations and seeking out evidence to back up the claims the microvolunteering evangelists make. Its a great report and well worth a read.

We're also promised practical guidance on microvolunteering, drawn from a number of case study organisations IVR worked with in their research. Thsi is due late November and will add to the existing resources of organisations like Help From Home so that leaders and managers of volunteer can judge for themselves whether microvolunteering is for them and their volunteers.

One aspect that IVR touch on is the re-branding by organisations of some existing shorter term volunteering opportunities as microvolunteering. This is could be a consequence of organisations "sexing up" what they already offer by playing on new and trendy language.

One one level there is nothing wrong with giving something a new name to fit with in-vogue terminology. It is certainly nothing new, whether to volunteerism or any other walk of life. But I think we need to be really aware of the potential consequences.

Here are some examples.

A few years ago when the then government started developing more ideas about mandatory volunteering as part of citizenship or welfare requirements, the position many in the volunteering movement took was "so long as government don't call it volunteering it's ok". That was intended to protect the values of volunteering (and act of free will being key) from corruption by government. To an extent it worked but there have been two significant consequences.

First, government now feels they can get away with any such scheme so long as they don't call it volunteering. This has led to more of these initiatives which they defend accordingly. Except the public don't necessarily make the same distinctions we might. They see people working unpaid and being forced to do it and they make associations with volunteering anyway, in part because the media might still use this language even if ministers do not. So instead of facing up to a real debate, the volunteering movement could be accused of ducking the issue whilst the protection of volunteering they thought they were establishing hasn't been as effective as they thought.

Second, by saying "so long as you don't call it volunteering were not bothered", the volunteering movement has marginalised itself from having any relevant voice into policy circles that decide on such initiatives. After all, so long as they don't call it volunteering, why should ministers seek to engage with volunteering bodies over their ideas. As a result we get new schemes dreamt up with no real though given to the execution or resourcing of these by volunteer involving organisations.

Another example is around the more recent debates about internships.

In large part these debates have become higher profile because use of the word intern, especially in an unpaid context, has become more prevalent in recent years. From what I can see this seems to be for two reasons: individuals describe their volunteering as an internship because that term carries more weight with potential employers than the v-word does; organisations re-badge their volunteering opportunities as internships to attract more people as a result.

The consequence? First, by colluding with the idea that internship sounds more professional than volunteering we collude with the devaluing of volunteering, subordinating it to a lower class status below real work (i.e. paid) and internships. Second, we open up a can of worms such as that created by the recent debates on unpaid internships which - and let's not ignore this at all - risk fundamentally undermining the concepts of volunteering many of us hold so dear.

So back to microvolunteering.

As I said earlier, I really like the IVR report. There is much in there that I comment to anyone interested in the topic. But I want to add a real note of caution around the emerging trend for organisations to take what they alreday do and call it microvolunteering in order to attract people by using this sexy new word. Because if what organisation are doing is renaming something but still delivering the same unrewarding opportunity, doing little or nothing to change their actual practice in volunteer enagagement, then just as in the examples above, we risk real and potentially serious consequences. We risk deceiving people into volunteering with us, getting them all excited about our volunteer opportunities and then they get past the hype and sexy new words and find the same old things being done that never attracted them to volunteering before. That risks not only turning people of volunteering with your agency but with any orgaisation.

What's in a word? Potentially everything. Let's think really carefully about the words we use and the bandwagons we jump on. They may take us to places we don't want to go.