Report

Improving communication with volunteers for more personal contact

An advice on how EF Canada can personalise the communication

with their volunteers for a higher student recommendation.

Executive summary

EF Foundation

EF was founded in 1965 in Lund, Sweden and stands for “Education First”. However, in China the name “English First” is also used. EF was founded by Bertil Hult and is now the world’s largest private educational company, with 15 programmes focused on language learning, educational travel, cultural exchange and academic programmes.

EF Foundation is the production side to the High School Year (HSY) programme. HSY is about sending students abroad, where they attend a local high school and live with a local family. EF Foundation is in charge of the placement process and supporting the students and consists of the Sales Office (SO), which in turn consists of the Country Manager (CM), Regional Manager (RM) and the volunteers, the so-called IEC’s and RC’s.

Problem statement

The aim of this report is to find out what lessons EF Foundation Canada can learn from the communication strategy of EF Foundation New Zealand towards its volunteers, the IEC’s and RC’s. It is the objective to increase the percentage of student recommendations for EF Foundation Canada up to a total of 75% within two years, for the fall of 2013, coming from 66% in 2010.

Results

The Canadian and New Zealand SO’s do not seem to stick to all their ‘plans’ on how to communicate with their volunteers. However, both offices seem to be good at managing their volunteers. The results of the interviews show that the volunteers are happy with the support the Sales Office gives them and they feel involved with the student’s life. Even though this is a voluntary job and sometimes frustrating, they keep going.

The main thing that stood out is that the SO in Auckland seems to be close to both RC’s and IEC’s whereas the IEC’s in Canada rely more on their RC’s and hardly speak to the SO in...