Happy New Year! As we’ve ticked over into 2018, your organisation has likely done some strategic planning around your people and culture goals for the year ahead – and how you plan to achieve them.
But have you considered how the changing external world will impact on these goals, and the future of people in your organisation?
NFPs have one significant advantage over organisations when it comes to staff and volunteer satisfaction: intrinsic meaning and purpose in their work.
But that doesn’t always make pinpointing or meeting the other needs of staff much easier.
That’s where Dr Ramon Wenzel can help.
Who’s involved in setting your organisation’s strategy?
Traditionally, HR wasn’t a part of the strategic planning process in most organisations. People considerations were more of an afterthought or a response to the strategy that was already set by senior management.
But in the rapidly changing Australian NFP sector, can organisations afford to leave HR expertise and perspective out of their strategic planning processes?
There are thousands of reasons to invest time and energy in fostering greater wellbeing in your workplace. And whatever role you play in your NFP, there are many things you can do to encourage greater wellbeing amongst staff and volunteers. Here are six, totally cost-free ideas to get you started.
If your NFP doesn’t already use remote workers, chances are good that you will in future.
That’s because – and this will be news to no-one – the landscape of Australia’s workforce is changing. Influenced by high-speed broadband and the ubiquity of virtual tools, organisations are increasingly using remote workers to maximise flexibility for both staff and the organisation as a whole.
In fact, many roles across to the not-for-profit sector can be performed remotely, from managers to graphic designers to counsellors – and beyond.
So how does your recruitment process need to change to take remote workers into account?
Dr Clare Allen is on a mission.
As CEO of VisAbility – Guide Dogs Ltd in Western Australia, she knows that work-life balance can be challenging for many people working in the NFP sector – particularly those in more senior roles, and for those in frontline services juggling high client work-loads with admin and/or management responsibilities.
That’s why she wants to spread the word about how organisations can move past a focus on “work-life balance” towards a vision of a much more flexible “work-life harmony” that empowers staff to achieve more powerful and healthier results.
Keeping staff for the long-term is difficult for any organisation, but high turnover is a pain that many not-for-profit organisations know better than others.
The negative effects of high turnover are numerous and well-documented: lower productivity, declining morale and significantly higher costs to train newcomers. Organisations also miss out on the huge benefit of institutional knowledge when key people leave.
So what can your organisation learn from one company that has a 95% staff retention rate?
NFPs aren’t doing enough to protect whistleblowers.
That’s according to the largest survey ever into the topic, examining policies and procedures around whistleblowing at over 700 organisations in Australia and New Zealand.
Protecting whistleblowers is crucial for stamping out fraud or wrongdoing. This post explains exactly where the problems are, and key areas your organisation should focus on to improve.
Do you know what your staff are thinking?
As part of our annual survey of the EthicalJobs.com.au community, last year we asked jobseekers who are currently 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?”
Almost 1,000 people responded to the question – anonymously of course – and the results provide a fascinating insight into the state of NFP organisations through the eyes of their staff.
Most people would not consciously decide to hire candidates based on whether they remind them of themselves. But one unconscious bias – affinity bias – may lead people to favour candidates who are like themselves, research shows.
If senior managers and NFP boards are made up of mostly men who unconsciously engage in such bias, it stands to reason that more men than women will continue to be hired and promoted – particularly men who share the same background with current managers. This only serves to perpetuate the cycle of men outnumbering women in leadership positions.
So what can be done?