The Swiss Federal Statistical Office (L'OFS) regularly provides data on non-paid work, such as work at home and in the family, organised voluntary work as well as informal voluntary work. What are the characteristics of voluntary work? What are the issues? And what questions does it raise? The answers on this topic are provided by a number of diverse sources.

Work at home and in the family

Work at home and in the family is the largest field of non-paid work. The Swiss Federal Statistical Office (l’OFS) states that the volume of weekly work can fluctuate in this sector between 12 and 54 hours per week depending on the family situation and gender (figures from 2007). However, we will not go into further detail on this aspect of non-paid work within this article.

Formal and informal voluntary work:

“In Switzerland, 1.5 million people (a quarter of the population) undertake at least one voluntary activity within organisations or institutions. In this organised (formal) voluntary work, men are more involved than women (28% compared to 20%). Voluntary work carried out for the benefit of organisations and associations varies a lot from one region to the next. For example, the percentage of volunteers is higher in German-speaking Switzerland than in the French-speaking and Italian-speaking regions. The percentage of volunteers is higher in rural communes and in communes with less than 1000 residents than in urban regions and relatively large communes.

In addition to organised voluntary work, there is also an informal type of volunteering which covers helping the neighbourhood, child-minding and providing services and assistance to family members or acquaintances who do not live in the same household. Here too, voluntary commitment is significant: 21% of the population aged 15 years and above - around 1.3 million people - provide such voluntary services to third parties. Women are more involved in these activities than men (26% compared to 15%).
The socio-demographic characteristics of the volunteering population are well-known. The organised sector mainly includes people carrying out voluntary work who are aged between 40 and 54, have a university degree, live with their partner and have children, are employed or are housewives/househusbands. Thus, those who are most dedicated are not the people with the most free time, but rather those who, due to their age, education and training or their professional or family situation, have the desired skills and are well integrated in society.

Informal volunteers are predominantly people who are in early retirement (up to the age of 74), housewives/househusbands and people raising children. The level of education and training does not seem to have a determining influence on the participation rate in this type of voluntary work. Employed people, job-seekers and students/trainees, as well as foreigners, are noticeably less engaged in informal voluntary activities.” (Swiss Federal Statistical Office - L'OFS, March 2011).

The Association AVEC (Support centre for community outreach in Lausanne) states that “the total population devotes an average of 3.5 hours a month to non-paid activities for associations (formal voluntary work) and provides almost as much personal time to help neighbours and others” (informal voluntary work).

Main fields of voluntary activity

The main fields of voluntary activities are similar, with a few minor exceptions, to those found in Western European countries: firstly, there are the activities within sport, cultural, tourist and leisure associations; secondly, there is a strong presence in social, health and humanitarian activities, and in providing support to socially disadvantaged groups; and finally in education, religion, and defending human rights and the enhancement of natural and societal heritage. The number of various societies and associations in the humble villages and small towns is often very high. Similarly, the constant growth in the immigrant population (currently 22% of the resident population) and the major diversity of its origins have contributed to the birth and development of Swiss/immigrant intercultural volunteering and to sustainably promoting voluntary work within the different foreign communities with the help of the church, trade unions, cultural associations and religious organisations, sometimes at the risk of creating a certain communitarianism.

Issues and questions

Through helping, communicating, compensating for a lack of resources, as well as promoting and maintaining social integration, voluntary work has been around for ages and has continually fed the social fabric and relationships of the family, the neighbourhood and the village/town. Today, it has taken new forms and creates activities that are sometimes essential for an ever-increasing group of the population (poorly paid workers, single mothers, retired persons with few resources, immigrants, etc.) in several fields of everyday life. Voluntary work has become institutionalised and organised in the sector that comes under informal support and sharing; a number of organisations are active within the field of informal voluntary work; various training programmes are now offered to people interested in volunteering, the latter having his/her own “employment office” and offering non-paid employment with help from the media.

A trend has been witnessed for the past few years in a number of countries: this trend aims to put organisations and volunteers in charge of tasks previously and generally taken on by public institutions, mainly in the health sector, as well as in charge of supervising seniors and helping immigrants with integration, etc. The restrictions for hiring civil servants and not replacing those who leave for retirement contribute to accelerating this substitution process that has hardly been mentioned within the current European Year of Volunteering.