Do you treat any volunteers you “employ” the same as you do your paid employees (besides not paying them, that is)? I ask because of two news items I’ve seen in the past few days.

The first (from PM, naturally) was a law report. In X v Mid-Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau the Court of Appeal was forced to decide whether a volunteer has the same employment rights as a contracted, salaried member of staff – in this case, rights under the Disability Discrimination Act.

The court found against the claimant, but PM’s legal adviser urged those employers who use contracts with their volunteers to check that the wording about recruitment and dismissal was clear and free from misinterpretation. The same as you would for an employee.

The second was the report of a survey by the government’s Office of the Third Sector, which wanted to know why volunteers resign. Not surprisingly, personal reasons came top by a long way. But the second-largest reason was concerns about the work itself: stress and fear of liability – again, classic HR territory.

Not long ago my company completed a report for Skills for Health – the sector skills council for the health sector – exploring the workforce implications of the very large numbers of volunteers in the health sector (it will be published soon).

We were curious to think through exactly what is different about “employing” volunteers rather than paid employees, and we concluded that the differences are not as great as many think.

Volunteers need to be recruited, inducted and (commonly) trained. They need to be clear what they contribute; how, when and to what standards. They like a word of encouragement now and then, and some need more active managing. And so on. There’s no need to worry about pay, but the rest is pretty much as it is for paid employees.

There are differences, but they can be over-played. Volunteers typically come with strong values, for example, and don’t take well to being bossed about – but that’s increasingly the case with paid employees, isn’t it?

With public finances tight, and likely to remain so for many years, intelligent use of volunteers will be a big deal for much of the public and charitable sectors. And with so many out of work, there are plenty of people turning to volunteering to enhance their CVs, to keep their hand in, or simply to keep themselves from going round the bend with boredom.

So beyond keeping an eye on legal issues, here’s a great opportunity for HR to help get the most from a valuable and growing workforce – which just happens not to be paid.