What should a volunteer role description say?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: the same position, with no difference in principle — the same employment statutes apply. Northern Ireland: the same status test in separate legislation, so the same advice on wording holds — but any equality wording should refer to Northern Ireland’s own discrimination law, because the Equality Act 2010 does not apply there.

No rule sets what a volunteer role description contains

No statute, regulator guidance or official template says what a volunteer role description must contain. The Charity Commission, OSCR and CCNI say nothing on it. Nor does employment law in England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. The research behind this guide found none.

This step is for the trustees or manager who recruit volunteers. It assumes you have already decided that the role is a volunteer role, not a job. The description records that decision in the volunteer’s own terms. What most charities produce is a convention borrowed, usually, from job descriptions.

That is worth knowing for two reasons. First, you are free to keep the document short and plain. Second, the borrowing is where the trouble comes from.

A job description is written to set out duties. A volunteer role description should not set out duties at all.

The words are the evidence

The wording matters because of how status is decided. A person is a worker or an employee only if there is a contract, and a tribunal looks at what both sides promised to do. The role description is written evidence of that. How a tribunal tells an employee, a worker and the self-employed apart is set out for paid staff later in this hub.

In the leading case, South East Sheffield CAB v Grayson, the volunteers had a rota and a “usual minimum commitment”. The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that “usual minimum commitment” and “reasonable expectations” were “not the language of contractual obligation”. The opposite vocabulary points the other way.

So write in the left-hand column, not the right:

Wording alone does not create or prevent a contract. A charity that writes “we hope” and then penalises people for missing shifts has a sanction, whatever the document says. But it is one of the first things read, and it is the part you control completely.

What most role descriptions cover

This is convention, not law. A one-page description that answers the questions volunteers ask usually covers:

• what the role involves, in plain terms
• when and where it happens, described as what usually happens
• who the volunteer can go to for support or with a problem
• what training the role needs, framed as preparation for the role
• what expenses are reimbursed and how to claim them — the rules are on setting a volunteer expenses policy
• how either side can step back from the arrangement

Keep out anything that looks like a reward for service. GOV.UK says a person “might be classed as an employee or worker rather than a volunteer if you get any other payment, reward or benefit in kind”, including “any promise of a contract or paid work in the future”. A line such as “a great route into a paid post with us” is the kind of sentence to delete.

Training: two questions that look like one

Training is the honest attraction of many volunteer roles, and describing it the wrong way can cause a problem.

The two questions are different:

1. Whether training creates a contract. It does not. In Grayson, the Tribunal rejected training and experience as payment for services.
2. Whether training can affect the minimum wage position. It can. The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 s.44(3) treats training as a benefit in kind. The exception is training provided for the sole or main purpose of improving the person’s ability to do the work they volunteer for. Broad or transferable training offered as a reward can put the voluntary-worker exemption at risk once a relationship exists.

So describe training as what the role needs, not as what the volunteer gets in return.

Northern Ireland

The status test is the same. Article 3 of the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 defines employee and worker in wording that matches the Great Britain Act word for word. So everything above about wording applies with the same force.

One thing changes. If your role description refers to equality or discrimination, do not cite the Equality Act 2010. It does not extend to Northern Ireland. The relevant law there is a separate set of instruments. They include the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998, and separate instruments on sex, race, disability and age.

Scotland needs no separate treatment: employment law is reserved, and the same Acts apply.

Write one per role, and file it with the status decision

Write a separate description for each distinct role, not one for “volunteers” as a group. Whether the charity also needs a volunteer policy covering every role is a separate question, answered on adopt a volunteer policy. A driver, a session helper and a trustee-appointed treasurer’s assistant are different arrangements.

Then file each one with the written status decision made before the role was advertised. Together they show what the charity intended from the start. The next step turns them into a volunteer agreement, and after that into recruitment and induction.

Common mistake: writing the role in the language of obligation

Role descriptions are usually adapted from job descriptions, so “must attend”, “required to” and “minimum hours” arrive by default. The wording is evidence if status is ever tested, and Grayson turned partly on the difference between expectation and obligation.

Common mistake: offering training or experience as the reward for the role

It seems harmless to write down. It does not create a contract, but it can affect the minimum wage position under s.44(3) once a relationship exists. Two different questions, easy to conflate.

Worked example

Tollgate Youth CIO drafts a role description for a Friday-evening session helper. Its first draft is adapted from its one employee’s job description, and says “you must attend every Friday” and “minimum commitment: one term”.

The rewrite changes the language, not the role. “We hope you can make most Fridays.” “It helps us plan if you can let us know when you can’t come.” It describes the support the helper will get and the expenses Tollgate reimburses. The line offering “valuable experience towards a youth-work career” goes, because that reads as a reward.

The finished page is filed with Tollgate’s Step 1 decision for the role, as evidence of what was intended.