Young people, good practice and the law

Young people can have an enormous amount to offer an organisation. They can bring new ideas, vibrancy, energy, increased capacity and even marketing opportunities through raising awareness and championing the work your organisation does. Many forward-thinking organisations look to involve young people in volunteer roles of some description, to bring benefits to the employer and to enable the young person to enhance and develop their skills and employability. But to ensure that both your organisation and any young people involved benefit from the volunteering experience, it is important to remember a few key points.

Consider drafting and implementing a volunteering policy if you regularly use volunteers (of any age), setting out how volunteering is managed in your organisation, and ensuring both volunteers and employed staff understand their responsibilities in this area and can identify what they can expect from others.

Do not be tempted to use young (or indeed any) volunteers as a substitute for paid roles

Young people will contribute more and will benefit more from their volunteering experience if they have a defined role, ideally one which matches their interests, and if they can understand and identify the contribution they are making. So do not just throw whatever work you need doing at them at any given time. Give them tasks and responsibilities which they can clearly see make a difference and enable them to feel some ownership over their role. Make sure they feel part of the organisation, and understand where they fit in. Give them some sort of induction, ensure they have someone who is their key person to go to with queries or problems and provide training where appropriate. Remember your health and safety responsibilities extend to volunteers, so make sure your young people understand health and safety practices and receive the appropriate training and supervision.

You must also ensure their safety from a child protection point of view. You will need a child protection policy confirming your commitment to protecting children from harm in your organisation. You will also need to ensure that relevant other policies contain procedures to ensure this commitment is adhered to and all employees understand their responsibilities.

Do not be tempted to use young (or indeed any) volunteers as a substitute for paid roles. This can be exploitative, could place your organisation in a position of some legal vulnerability and is likely to result in poor retention of volunteers, poor morale and challenges in future volunteer recruitment. Volunteers should enhance your organisation’s contribution and not be used to plug gaps that should be filled by paid workers.

Sometimes you may have a role which would not be appropriate for a volunteer, or are recruiting for an employed vacancy and have young people applying. Although many of the principles above apply to young people whether they are paid employees or volunteers, there are a number of additional legal considerations if you are engaging young people in paid work. There are stringent restrictions on the employment of children under 16, but in most cases organisations will be looking at employing 'young people', who for the purposes of legislation are defined as those aged 16 and 17. Restrictions for young people are fewer, and are mainly confined to working hours and rest breaks, but it is easy to get tripped up if you do not familiarise yourself with the differences in requirements for your young workers. Young people cannot work longer than eight hours on any day, or more than 40 hours in a week. Unlike for adult workers, young people are not able to opt out of these restrictions, or to consider average hours over a number of weeks – the restrictions apply to any given week. Young people must have two rest days a week, 12 hours rest between shifts, 30 minutes break if they work longer than four and a half hours and cannot (with a few exceptions) work at night. You should also carry out specific risk assessments in relation to their employment, taking their age and increased vulnerability into account.

While volunteering roles are less likely to come close to the number of hours which would trigger concern, you should keep an eye on the activities and time commitment of volunteers with these restrictions in mind. 

Whether they are volunteers or employees, be open-minded about the role young people can play. With the right structures and support in place they can make a significant, inspiring and invigorating contribution to your organisation.

Eleanor Deem is Managing Director of face2faceHR.
www.face2facehr.com