While the very smallest nonprofit organizations may not find it necessary, any organization with more than one or two employees should consider creating a written handbook outlining non-contractual employment terms and work conditions.
“Where are they going to go?” “They’re lucky to have a job.” These are, unfortunately, actual statements I’ve heard in the past year from nonprofit managers offered as rationales for not taking steps to advance human resources practices within their organizations. While there is no question both the economic downturn and its effect on labor [...]
In part 1, I outlined a model of human resources maturity among nonprofit organizations based on the clear delineation of position, person and performance. I also examined the first two phases of this maturity including their implications for the design and the effectiveness of key human resources processes. These processes include recruitment and selection, compensation, performance management, professional development and career/succession planning.
During my years working as a consultant to nonprofits, I have observed three basic phases of organizations’ human resources maturity. This maturity can be defined in terms of how much delineation exists between position, person and performance. Each phase has implications for the design and effectiveness of key human resources processes including recruitment and selection, [...]
In my previous post, I made a case for the use of salary ranges as the foundation of a formal compensation program for nonprofit organizations. Particularly for organizations experiencing or have experienced significant growth, the use of salary ranges can go a long way toward ensuring salaries are equitable and competitive while, at the same [...]
In a recent post, compensation consultant Ann Bares questions whether salary ranges, long a staple of compensation programs among America’s companies and organizations, are still a useful tool given the relatively slow pace of salary annual growth during the past two decades. There is no question that administering salaries — and, in particular, differentiating rewards according [...]
“Why?” “Because I said so.” This exchange, perhaps a staple of parent/child relationships, has no place in management. In fact, communicating to employees the why of their work — the context, value and relevance of their work — is vital to both training efforts and to effective coaching. Further, recent research, including a study conducted [...]
Managers are commonly ill-equipped to understand the dynamics of their compensation costs, never mind monitor and control them.” I was struck by this statement by Chuck Csizmar in a recent post on the Compensation Cafe blog. Chuck was making a case for companies to focus on the return on investment (ROI) for employee compensation, and he went on to discuss the reasons for and consequences of managers making poor compensation decisions.
I have to agree with Chuck about managers’ abilities in this area as this phenomenon is at the heart of a challenge I have repeatedly faced when working with nonprofit organizations to overhaul and improve their compensation practices. But, rather than ruing the fact that managers lack these skills and looking for ways improve them, I suggest that there is no real need for the vast majority of managers to develop them in the first place.
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