# Transforming Volunteer Recruitment for Citizens Advice > Source: https://layers.studio/work/Citizens-Advice Creating a new volunteering platform designed to simplify processes, making it easier for volunteers to connect with opportunities **Year:** 2024 **Client:** Citizen's Advice **Industry:** Charity **What We Delivered:** UX ## Introduction Citizens Advice is a trusted national charity offering free, confidential, and impartial advice to people across the UK. With volunteers playing a vital role in delivering these services, it’s essential that recruitment is simple, inclusive, and aligned with the realities of local office operations. Recognising challenges faced by both staff and volunteers, Citizens Advice saw an urgent need to rethink how recruitment and volunteer management were handled across the organisation. Citizens Advice approached our development partner, Land Digital, who then brought us in to explore and improve the volunteer recruitment process, from initial awareness to onboarding. Our goal was to uncover how things worked on the ground, identify barriers for both staff and volunteers, and lay the foundation for a more consistent, accessible, and user-centred recruitment platform. ## Challenge Despite the existence of a national platform, each Citizens Advice office recruits and manages volunteers independently. This autonomy, while valuable, had led to fragmented processes and inconsistent experiences. Through stakeholder workshops and discovery sessions, we identified five key challenges: - **Manual, inconsistent workflows **often managed via email chains and spreadsheets. - **Lack of personalisation and clarity** on the national site, which discouraged potential volunteers. - **Limited accessibility for diverse audiences**, including those from underrepresented communities. - **Inadequate reporting and insights** to support strategic decision-making at the national level. - **Frustrations with training and onboarding**, described by volunteers as slow and disconnected. It all came down to one key question:**
How can we design a volunteer recruitment system that meets the unique needs of local offices, while delivering a consistent and inclusive experience nationwide?** ## UX Research We took a user-centred, mixed-methods approach to map the full recruitment experience across Citizens Advice. The process began with initial stakeholder discovery sessions to align on goals, challenges, and organisational context. These sessions helped shape our research design and ensured that our methods were grounded in real-world operational needs. ## Initial Stakeholder Discovery Sessions Before designing any research tools, we conducted structured discovery sessions with national stakeholders from the Volunteering, Digital, Data Governance, and Accessibility teams. These sessions helped to: - Clarify organisational goals and success metrics - Map current systems, pain points, and interdependencies - Understand technical, strategic, and compliance constraints (e.g. GDPR, SSO, EDI objectives) - Inform recruitment of relevant user groups for primary research These sessions laid the groundwork for the broader research activities, helping ensure the work remained aligned with strategic and operational needs. ## Workshops We conducted 10 workshops, 6 with local office staff (49 participants) and 4 with volunteers and trustees (20 participants), to capture detailed, qualitative insights into the recruitment process. These sessions explored every stage of the volunteer journey from initial interest to onboarding and revealed both best practices and significant challenges. ## Stakeholder Interviews 8 semi-structured interviews with 13 national stakeholders (including the National Volunteer Management Team, trustees, IT/Digital teams, and data governance experts) provided strategic insights on system integration and constraints, data security, accessibility requirements, and EDI targets. ## Surveys Online surveys were distributed among: - 123 potential volunteers who expressed interest but didn’t convert - 34 Local office staff unable to attend workshops - 137 Members of the public to explore motivations and barriers to volunteering The surveys validated qualitative themes and delivered quantitative data on demographics, training experiences, and recruitment conversion rates. ## Data Analysis and Reporting We employed a mixed-methods analysis to map volunteer journeys and identify key drop-off points within the recruitment funnel. - Thematic coding of qualitative findings - Quantitative breakdown of demographics (including EDI factors) - Final synthesis of platform requirements, prioritised into functional, non-functional, and strategic tiers This holistic view allowed us to formulate targeted recommendations that address both immediate issues and long-term needs. ## Result We delivered a detailed framework and recommendations document, outlining the user, functional, and technical requirements for a future volunteer recruitment platform. This output serves as a strategic blueprint — giving both Citizens Advice and Land Digital a confident starting point for the next phase of design and development. What made this work effective was our commitment to user-centricity. The framework didn’t just list features — it reflected real workflows, priorities, and values. It offered practical guidance for building a system that: - Supports local flexibility without sacrificing national consistency - Encourages a more diverse and inclusive volunteer base - Streamlines the user journey from application to onboarding - Enables smarter reporting and continuous improvement ## Why It Matters This project reflects how we help mission-driven organisations use design thinking and research to solve complex problems. By combining technical understanding with a genuine focus on people, we helped Citizens Advice take the first step toward a recruitment experience that works — for everyone. > “We partnered with Layers on a discovery project for an end client and had a great experience. They led workshops, conducted user research, and collaborated closely with both our team and the client. Layers brought real expertise, flexibility, and professionalism to the project, and helped us deliver strong outcomes. We’d be very happy to partner with them again in the future.” Jon Leighton, Director, Land Digital