Paid Volunteers

It sounds demagogic, but there is a basic truth in it: To function at their best, people need to be so motivated to do their work, that they would have done it for free. At least they should think they would have done it for free. But it is not always a good idea to test if they would really do it. Specifically, it is not a good idea for the education establishment to test whether the teachers would actually do their work for free, though it seems like some sort of such experiment is going on in many countries.

Many democracies are happy to pay teachers almost as if they were volunteers - too little. This is unwise, and it misses an important distinction: The education system is a non-profit organization, but the individual teachers aren't. Teachers should indeed be treated as volunteers, but not in terms of pay.

Teachers should be treated as volunteers in the sense that they must be constantly motivated to do their work as well as possible, regardless of the effort, and without having to look over their shoulder to check if someone is taking advantage of them. While this is true for just about every profession, especially knowledge-work, it is particularly true for teachers. With them, such motivation is supposed to be easy, because it's clear to see the impact a teacher can have on the whole lives on many children. Yet, it is not very common to meet teachers who feel they are following their divine calling by being teachers... Or principals... Or administrators... Or education ministry officials. On the other hand, if you talk to just about anyone in The Salvation Army, The Sierra Club, etc. - they have a very clear sense of the importance of their work, and they are happy to do it, regardless of the effort. How come some organizations maintain this sense of "calling" and others don't?

Some answers can probably found in Management. Which in this case, mostly translates as: Definition of the system, Administration and Consistent Leadership. Each of these sub-issues is worthy of its own discussion.

The very title of this post - "Paid Volunteers" - is an oxymoron, and at the same time, it is in line with the view that all people should be as motivated as volunteers. Humanity doesn't have a clear idea how to reconcile these seemingly contradicting characteristics of modern work. Unpaid volunteers often do a great job, and feel great about it. Paid employees... I don't have any statistics, but I suspect they are less flattering than for volunteers. Both in the "great job" department and in the "feel great" department. Still, paid employees get money and they can buy a flat screen TV, so they are probably happy. Then again, most volunteers have a paying job, so they try to combine doing good and doing well. Since the paying job is usually quite different than the volunteer job, there is a distinction between the two, and each can serve its own purpose.

But what if the same job has a voluntary aspect, and a making-a-living aspect? There is an unintuitive clash here: Sometimes, when one has two different incentives for the same desired action, the total motivation is clearly lower than with just one of the two incentives. Specifically, offering money sometimes reduces people's overall willingness to "do the right thing". This fact was demonstrated by Bruno Frey and Felix Oberholzer-Gee when they researched the willingness of Swiss citizens to allow a socially necessary but undesirable use of their land. When asked about the possibility of building a nuclear waste disposal site in their area, over 50% were willing. But when they were offered some money to agree to have the site in their area - less than 25% were willing. Somehow, considering the money crowded out the sense of social responsibility. A similar claim was made by Richard Titmuss regarding blood donations: Offering money reduces the tendency to give (see Blood and altruism - Richard M. Titmuss' criticism on the commercialization of blood).

What may follow from this apparent destructive effect that payment has on altruism is very strange to the modern western mind: If we really value the job of teachers, we mustn't pay them too much. Not only is this strange-sounding, it may be false, too. I am told that in the USSR, teachers were well-paid, and the best and the brightest sought teaching jobs. It needs more research.

No solutions today. Just one last thought:

In the book The essential Drucker, Peter Drucker asks volunteers: Why they do this? "Far too many give the same answer: In my paying job there isn't much challenge, not enough opportunity for achievement, not enough responsibility; and there is no mission, there is only expediency." If we ask teachers about their paying (not much) job, would they give a more enthusiastic account?