A box of chocolates from a grateful supplier, a bottle of wine at Christmas, a thank-you lunch from a client – gifts at work can seem like small gestures, but in NFPs especially, even the most well-meaning gift can create complexities.
So how can you be sure that exchanging a gift won’t land you in a compromising situation? We asked employment and workplace relations lawyer Warwick Ryan to explain where the line sits, and how to stay on the right side of it.
35.7 weeks. That’s the average length of time an employee will miss while recovering from a work-related psychological injury – nearly five times longer than for any other type of workplace injury.
To help address this challenge, a new toolkit has just been released with tools designed to help employers better support staff recovering from psychological injury. Take a look.
Your organisation might already have a great mental health policy in place, but it’s probably a “one-size-fits-all” document. Have you ever considered implementing an action plan tailored to each employee’s individual wellbeing needs?
UK mental health charity Mind has created a tool to achieve just that.
Mostly, discrimination is something people want to avoid – because it’s unfair, and can be incredibly harmful. But what about situations in which discrimination might actually be helpful – either for candidates or for your organisation?
In some circumstances, particularly for NFPs, the law does provide carefully defined exemptions to state- and federal-based anti-discrimination laws.
But this is a complex area, with different rules in different states and territories, so it can be difficult to work out what exactly the laws and exemptions are, and how they apply to your organisation.
You’ve identified a great candidate and emailed them the next steps in your recruitment process, but you get no response. A few days later you wonder whether they’ve even seen the message.
With top applicants increasingly receiving messages from employers across several platforms at once – emails, texts, voicemails, social media – it’s becoming more common for messages to get lost in the noise, or even mistaken for a scam.
So what do hiring managers need to consider to ensure their communications are seen and responded to by the best candidates?
A sudden resignation and the weeks that follow can be a disruptive time for any organisation, especially close-knit not-for-profits. Here are some key lessons to guide NFP organisations through this turbulent time, and the transition period that follows.
We asked jobseekers working in the NFP sector to tell us what advice they’d give their current employer to “help improve the workplace, processes and practices in your organisation?” And guess what came top of the list?
Better communication!
If you want to be a good leader then it’s essential to also be a good communicator. The words you say to your team, no matter how minor you think they might be, can have an impact on job satisfaction and productivity. That makes good communication a core part of every leader’s job.
Generative AI has quickly made its way into almost every organisational workflow, and left the door open for a range of ethical grey areas to become potentially serious issues. From privacy breaches and the misuse of sensitive data, to biased outputs, misinformation and reputational risks – the risks that AI use pose to NFPs are new, varied, and often invisible until something goes wrong.
(And if you think your organisation’s employees aren’t really using AI, then think again – as many as a quarter (21-27%) of all employees are using AI tools secretly at work.)
So where should you start when it comes to writing an effective AI policy for your organisation, and what elements should one include?
Stepping into a new role can be exciting and stressful. Even more stressful if you’re needing to do work that you have little experience doing beforehand: managing people. When you step into a management role, it can be tempting to want to deliver results straight away to make a great first impression, get some ‘runs on the board’ and reward the trust of the person who employed or promoted you.
Instead, here are the three things that experts say new managers should focus on first up, to succeed in the long term.
If Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates aren’t applying for your roles, the barrier may not be a lack of interest – it may be your recruitment process. Even when NFP employers are working to build a more inclusive workforce, the way roles are designed and advertised can unintentionally exclude First Nations applicants.
The good news is that NFPs can make small changes to create genuinely welcoming, culturally safe hiring processes – and increase engagement from First Nations candidates.
We asked Australia’s only 100% Aboriginal-owned executive recruitment firm specialising in Indigenous appointments how to craft a recruitment process that encourages First Nations people to apply for a role.