Up until 1975, employers could take almost anything into consideration when recruiting staff. But the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act – passed by the Whitlam Government – started a legislative trend towards protecting a variety of people from employment discrimination. And that means there are now some things you just can’t discuss when you’re making a decision about who to hire.
Kerry Shields is the National Volunteer Manager at Starlight Children’s Foundation, a not-for-profit that seeks to improve the lives of children and teens who are seriously ill or in hospital. Kerry’s team is responsible for attracting, recruiting, engaging and retaining more than 3,000 volunteers, whose contribution of more than 55,000 hours equated to over $1.6 million in value to the organisation in 2015.
Ahead of her presentation at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, we spoke to Kerry about the value of approaching volunteer recruitment in the same way as paid staff.
So you’ve advertised a job, shortlisted candidates and done your interviews. Now which candidate should you hire?
How do you differentiate between good candidates who might have different skillsets, experience and personalities?
It’s difficult to talk about power. Mentioning power can conjure up memories of encounters with parents, teachers, bosses, the law, family or partners who have exercised power over over us in negative ways.
But power relationships are woven throughout our lives, and throughout our workplaces. And being clear about who holds power – particularly the power to make decisions – in your organisation, as well as ensuring that structure reflects your organisation’s shared values – will mean that staff and volunteers understand how and why power works as it does. And that can mean the difference between an empowered staff member, and a disempowered, disengaged one.
Ahead of her talk about high-performing teams at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, the Climate Council’s Chief Operating Officer Katrina Porteus has given us a sneak peek of how the independent climate change organisation built a team that delivers real impact despite its small size.
Giving tough feedback to your team members is an inevitable part of managing staff or volunteers in any NFP, but can be incredibly challenging for a manager. But according to Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman of US-based leadership development consultancy Zenger/Folkman, these conversations are often harder than they need to be.
In the lead-up to her presentation at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference in November, we talk to Bravehearts’ Director of People and Culture Pamela Weatherill about ‘radical self-care’, including why it’s so necessary in the not-for-profit sector.
We have known for many years that humans are driven by an innate desire to find or foster meaning in what we do, even under the most extreme of conditions. Given how central work is to most people’s lives, it is a key place to seek meaningfulness. Recent research with 135 people in a wide range of jobs set out to discover what they considered meaningful work, how work can be made meaningful, and how this sense of meaningfulness can be erased or destroyed.
In the lead-up to his presentation at the 2016 Not-For-Profit People Conference, Monash Business School professor and servant leadership expert Dr Sen Sendjaya shares his insights on servant leadership, including why it’s a particularly powerful approach for NFP organisations.
Did you know that your staff’s ability to focus, solve problems and make decisions could be being compromised by your office itself?
That’s according to a recent study out of the US, which found that even modest improvements to air quality in the average office could noticeably boost the performance of workers.