Case Study: New Zealand National Fieldays Society

The NZ National Fieldays Society has played a leading role in the development of agriculture and New Zealand's economy since its inception in 1968. The Society owns the National Agricultural Fieldays (Fieldays) event and the Mystery Creek Events Centre, a 114-hectare Waikato property that serves as the home of Fieldays, the Society's head office, and one of the nation's most versatile event venues.

To help manage and deliver their flagship event, Fieldays, the Society relies heavily on volunteers to power "the biggest agricultural trade show in the southern hemisphere". 

As the volunteer program has continued to scale over the years, the Society enlisted the help of Rosterfy in 2022 to not only better manage and engage their volunteers but to help introduce important training processes to minimise risk and ensure compliance.

Minimising risk and ensuring compliance

Having previously used spreadsheets to manage their volunteers, Rosterfy was implemented to help create a single source of truth for volunteers and staff and in turn, improve compliance processes. 

To begin with, the Society implemented Rosterfy for their staff, empowering their team to access and update personal information held on their behalf and undertake specific eLearning opportunities. Making the use of Rosterfy’s Reward and Recognition functionality, the Society also awarded their monthly staff Copper Award, with e-badges being used to help engage and recognise staff.

With the foundations in place for their staff, the Society extended the workforce management software to their volunteer program, enabling them to create a central record for each of their volunteers. Onboarding processes also saw an update, with the Society embedding policy approvals (via a tick box on Rosterfy) and the introduction of role specific training (facilitated by Rosterfy). Looking to the future, the Society is planning to introduce digital handbooks for both volunteers and staff to dramatically improve both the volunteer and staff onboarding experiences. 

Beth Jobin, People and Culture Executive for the Society said, “For us, Rosterfy has been a game changer, especially from a risk and compliance perspective. To be able to create training for specific roles ensures that volunteers not only receive the information they need to perform that role to its full potential but it also means that the Society as an organisation is doing its due diligence from a risk and compliance point of view.” 

The introduction of e-badges to engage, reward and recognise volunteers and staff

With the majority of the Society’s volunteers only engaged for the Fieldays event, which takes place over four days in June, the team were looking for a way in which to acknowledge and engage their volunteers beyond this short period of time.

Having used physical badges to reward and recognise their volunteers in the past, the Society decided to take this one step further using Rosterfy by creating and allocating e-badges for certain milestones achieved. These e-badges are being applied retrospectively for the past 10 years to ensure that each and every volunteer and staff member is rewarded for their time and effort.

Badges include:

• Service Badges - recognising the number of years of service for NZ National Fieldays Society in either a volunteer or staff capacity

• Volunteer Badges
  • NZ National Fieldays Society Member Badge - once a member has completed two Fieldays events they are invited to become a member of the Society, which gives them voting rights at the annual general meeting
  • NZ National Fieldays Society Volunteer Recognition - awarded if you volunteer with the organisation outside of the Fieldays event
  • Predator Free Mystery Creek Badge - awarded to volunteers who help specifically with this project
  • John Kneebone Volunteer of the Year Award - awarded to the most deserving volunteer, which sees 10 worthy nominees being voted for by Society members
  • Fieldays Volunteer Badge - awarded to any volunteer who volunteers at Fieldays
  • Life Membership Badge - is awarded by the Society Board to a member who has rendered eminent services to the Society

• Staff Award Badges
  • Rookie of the Year Award
  • Employee Choice Award
  • Most Valued Team Member Award

• Copper Award Badges (staff)
  • Monthly Nominee 
  • Monthly Recipient
  • Quarterly Star Badge

Example volunteer account with badges displayed

Pictured: Sandra Wrigley, Recipient of the John Kneebone Volunteer of the Year Award

Using Rosterfy’s Reward and Recognition functionality, NZNFS have been able to allocate badges specific to the volunteer to create a personalised experience that really emphasis the gratitude the organisation has towards their volunteers. 

The long term goal in time is to make this process automated with Rosterfy’s reporting functionality making it simple to identify which volunteers are deserving of which badge.

“Volunteers are so incredibly important to us so having a system in place that enables us to show our recognition has been a great addition to our program and something that really sets us apart. The feedback from volunteers has been great. They love seeing their contributions displayed and actively want to do more, to add to the collection.” Continued Beth. 

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