Top HR Challenges for Nonprofit Organisations

Staff members of non-profit organisations are some of the most caring, compassionate people you’ll ever meet, which makes it even more important that they understand the challenges within their organisations. Whether you’re an HR leader, a volunteer coordinator or working in an administrative role with the HR team, this article will help you to gain insight into what role HR plays, what they do each day and the pain points these departments face.

Recruiting

It’s no secret that non-profit organisations face recruitment challenges. Non-profits can’t offer some of the perks of public sector companies, which makes it harder to attract talent. Plus, people attracted to non-profits often have a passion for helping others, so they might not be motivated by base pay. But while higher wages aren’t an option for most organisations, there are steps you can take to keep your organisation competitive in terms of recruitment.

Employee Performance

Not all employees are created equal. Some may need more training than others or require coaching in certain areas to help them better meet organisational goals. It’s important to understand when and how you should step in and offer guidance. Not doing so, could lead to bigger problems, such as staff churn or performance & KPI’s not matching up to management’s expectations. Regular catch-ups with employees, also allow for your employees to have a voice and air anything they might want to chat about in their work environment. You must understand when and how to manage employee performance in a way that is most beneficial for your business and its overall success.

Reducing Costs

Nonprofits have to be incredibly careful with how much money is being spent, especially regarding human resources. However, it can be hard for organisations to cut costs in a way that doesn’t adversely affect morale or lead to higher employee turnover. If you want to preserve what you already have and keep your employees engaged and happy, you mustn’t cut costs in ways that impact productivity. One of the most effective things you can do is look at areas where process improvement will decrease cost without leading to a degradation of quality.

Managing and Identifying Volunteers

In several ways, running a non-profit is akin to operating a business. One big difference, however, is that you’re going to need help from volunteers who are willing to pitch in and do a lot of work for no monetary gain. Your HR team needs to be able to quickly identify individuals who want to pitch in for little or no money—and keep them in the organisation where they are bringing a lot of value. These people are the lifeblood of most nonprofits and managing them can sometimes be a time-consuming process for HR.

Managing Your Offsite Employees

One of the largest pains we hear from our nonprofit clients is managing employees who don’t work in one location or your main office or headquarters. Software that allows your team to clock in remotely via phone or tablet helps companies manage their offsite employees efficiently. All of the data collated gets saved into a centralised HR system such as HRLocker and allows for easy management of timesheets (which are a mandatory requirement) time management (such as different shift patterns) and holiday management. All this information is easily exported and made ready for payroll. When everything is managed in one place, it makes the end-of-year reporting a breeze.

Click here to find out how HRLocker can help you manage your offsite employees!

Vetting and Clearances

Let’s face it, we’ve all been there, managing and storing employee vetting and clearance certificates can often be a laborious full-time job that nobody enjoys. Garda vetting, clearance forms, certificates and expiry dates are so important when it comes to your full-time employees and volunteers. This is a pain point felt by many in this sector and a challenge to keep up to date. Automating this time-consuming task is often at the top of many HR professionals in the nonprofit sector.

Have a ‘Single Source of Truth’

Single source of truth (SSOT) is a concept used to ensure that everyone in an organisation bases business decisions on the same data. Creating a single source of truth is straightforward. To put an SSOT in place, an organisation must provide relevant personnel with one source that stores the data points they need.

Most nonprofits rely on a ‘single source of truth’ that helps manage all of their important information in one place. Whether it’s recruitment, certification management, HR documents, timesheets, or holiday management – it all comes under the remit of the HR team. It is so important to be able to pull all that information together quickly to create reports that can help support grant applications. Finding a solution that can help you manage that process should be at the top of your list to help overcome these challenges.