We spend, on average, about 90,000 hours at work.
Given this, most of us want work that’s more than just a source of income. We want work that’s satisfying, significant, valuable. Work, in other words, that is meaningful.
Here are three keys to making work more meaningful for staff at your NFP.
It has long been recognised that all work and no play is likely to lead to less productive, dissatisfied workers.
Besides making working lives more enjoyable, there is strong evidence that fun in the workplace packs a powerful punch in terms of organisational benefits.
Fun in the workplace is highly subjective. So how can NFPs create a suitably pro-fun culture and environment?
Every NFP wants their staff and volunteers to be happy.
Not just because research shows that happy staff are around 12 percent more productive (and those who are unhappy are 10 percent less productive) but because we care about the people we work with and want the best for them.
We can’t create a better world by making people unhappy.
So what’s the best way to tell if your staff are happy? And what should you do if they’re not?
Collaboration isn’t just a buzzword – getting input and buy-in from your people can have huge benefits for a project and for staff too. Yet many organisations still rely exclusively on their HR function to establish their organisational values. Organisational values, by definition, affect every single person in the organisation, so it actually makes little […]
“High standards are contagious. Bring a new person onto a high standards team, and they’ll quickly adapt. The opposite is also true. If low standards prevail, those too will quickly spread. And though exposure works well to teach high standards, I believe you can accelerate that rate of learning by articulating a few core principles of high standards.”
That’s Jeff Bezos – founder and CEO of Amazon, and also the wealthiest person in the world.
While you might wonder about how much a billionaire has to teach leaders in Australia’s NFP sector, the lessons from Bezos’ annual letter to his shareholders are hugely relevant for leaders in any organisation, of any size.
In a sector devoted to making the world a better place, creating a culture where everyone feels happy is an important priority for many NFP managers and leaders.
But could you be being too nice?
If you’re withholding feedback from your team because you’re afraid that being candid with staff would conflict with being nice, respectful and warm, the effect could in fact be that your team doesn’t perform at their best, and they miss out on opportunities to improve themselves and the organisation’s overall impact.
So if you’re keen develop a culture of candour and feedback in your team, here are seven steps you should follow.
If your people are the heart of your NFP, your culture is the blood – invisible from the outside, but the primary mode of nourishment and growth. But if that culture is poor, it can filter down through an entire organisation and cause problems like high staff turnover and reduced productivity.
Just one not-for-profit organisation made it into the BRW list of Best Places to Work in Australia in 2015:
The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME).
Established in 2005, AIME connects thousands of indigenous high school students with mentors – with participants in the program being almost six times more likely to enter university than indigenous students outside the program.
And undoubtedly, these impressive results have had a lot to do with AIME’s substantial investment in, and innovative approach towards, supporting their staff to do their best work.
So how does an organisation, set up just ten years ago by a university student, become one of the best places to work in the country?
Learning is essential for any NFP organisation to be able to adapt to ever changing conditions and survive. Peter Senge is an expert on building a culture of learning, and says ‘learning organisations’ are those organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of […]
NFPs that take the time to work on, and communicate, their unique workplace culture effectively to potential candidates and existing employees can significantly improve their ability to attract and retain staff.