LA28: Olympic Volunteers, A Unique Breed
About 360,000 people have already applied to volunteer for LA28, and the official portal for the Games hasn’t even opened yet. What corporate leaders can learn from the Olympics about building culture.
Peri Hansen remembers it vividly. It was 1984, and she was a high-school student volunteering for the Olympics in LA—a volleyball sideline girl who’d wipe down the court after a player took a dive or fall. “I remember being so happy to wipe up sweat from these world-class athletes,” says Hansen, leader of the Consumer Products and Marketing Officers practices in North America at Korn Ferry (and a former volleyball player herself). “It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
In the decades since, Hansen has maintained contact with some of her fellow Olympics volunteers. Online communities and unofficial networks for past Games are still active on social-media platforms, and some groups even hold reunions. It’s a level of engagement that most leaders would envy. But assembling volunteers for the Games is an enormous undertaking, one with lessons for corporate leaders about identifying talent, onboarding, and establishing culture. “Community building is at the root of successful teams and organizations,” says Hansen, “but work ecosystems have become very transactional and individualized.”
Already, about 360,000 people have volunteered for LA28, and the organizers haven’t even begun accepting applications for the actual Games. LA28 organizers began recruiting and training volunteers and staging events last year. Their efforts are part of a broader Olympics strategy that will continue after the Games are gone with the goal of leaving a positive impact on host cities. LA28 volunteers have already participated in 25 community-based events that have nothing to do with the Games themselves, such as beach-restoration projects and food drives. “We started organizing our volunteer community earlier than any other Olympics,” says Tami Majer, Chief People Officer for LA28.
When the portal for volunteers at the Games themselves opens on July 14, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to apply. Over the next 12 to 18 months, those applications will be evaluated, along with the applications of the 360,000 candidates who have already registered. Following an in-person volunteer experience, offers will be extended to 60,000 people—the largest volunteer crew ever assembled for an Olympics. By comparison, the Paris Olympics in 2024 had a crew of 45,000 volunteers, which was itself more than three times as many as the World Cup’s. “It’s an enormous build over a short amount of time that is tremendously hard to manage when you are getting tens of thousands of applicants for every role,” says Jeanne MacDonald, CEO of recruitment process outsourcing at Korn Ferry.
Gathering volunteers for the Olympics is very different from assembling a corporate team to participate in a 5K charity run or a new training program. About one in five employees participate in firm-sponsored volunteer events on average, and less than 40% in employer-provided leadership and management training programs. More broadly, employees are more dissatisfied than ever, with 62% saying they are disengaged at work. Peter McDermott, head of the Corporate Affairs practice at Korn Ferry, says the data reflects a combination of AI backlash, culture-building challenges, and the substantial number of people who feel stuck in their jobs. “It’s getting harder for leaders to get people excited about spending time together,” says McDermott.
Getting people excited has never been a problem for the Olympics. But Majer suggests that corporate firms can ignite their employee bases by tapping into their missions and values the same way the Olympics does. “People want to contribute to something bigger than themselves, especially today,” she says. As she sees it, firms’ emphasis on efficiency and flatter structures is taking a toll on engagement. “Tapping into individual motivation is what drives trust and engagement, and that happens at the team level, not the enterprise level,” she says.
To be sure, LA28 organizers are very much aware of the ongoing local concerns of host cities’ residents, which often come to the fore during the lead-up and aftermath of the Games. Recent Olympic campaigns have focused on areas like wildfire recovery, hunger relief, and youth health and support in order “to deliver a broader value proposition for LA communities,” says Emilie Petrone, vice chairman of the Human Resources practice at Korn Ferry.
It’s not like the volunteer program is a cakewalk, either. Roles range from ushering fans to their seats to assisting athletes before and after events to specialist positions like providing translation and medical care. Regardless of position, every volunteer will have to participate in both on-site and self-directed training in such areas as dealing with conflict, showing up with the right values, and more. And every volunteer will have to commit to a minimum of 10 shifts during either the Olympics or Paralympics.
For her part, Hansen, who marched in the opening and closing ceremonies in 1984, hopes to be chosen to volunteer again. “I still have my old uniform,” she says.
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