How We are Failing the Nonprofit Workplace
After 30 years of experience as an employee, manager, and now executive coach to the nonprofit sector, I can safely make this key observation: our style of management is no longer working.
All too often, nonprofit leaders and managers struggle with what is the right type of management in the workplace. They have burning questions like:
What style of management works best for staff?
How can you successfully engage staff to feel motivated to work?
How can you support staff to grow their careers?
How can we support the younger generation who are looking for more senior roles and opportunities sooner?
How do you deal with someone who isn’t performing?
How can you address someone’s weaknesses?
As someone who coaches the nonprofit sector, I can assure you that even the most senior executives in the workforce struggle with these very questions.
To create a high-performing, engaged, productive, and fulfilled workforce, we will need to make some fundamental changes to how we engage staff and grow our leaders. But to do that we need to take a step back.
A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT KIND OF WORKFORCE
To start, the we’re not the same workforce than we were even 10 years ago.
We are more racially, culturally and gender diverse.
We are far more inter-generational representing more workers with completely different needs and wants.
We have a more remote workforce (even before COVID).
And yet, we continue to practice the same rules and ideas about what is ‘good management’ – ideas that may have worked back then but don’t for today’s workforce.
How is that workforce faring? Not too well.
A DISENGAGED WORKFORCE
Today, a staggering 84 percent of the global workforce is not fully engaged in their job according to the ADP Global Study of Engagement. That means only 16 percent of workers are fully engaged when they go to work.
Engagement matters greatly because it is known to be the primary driver for an active and productive workforce who shows up and delivers quality work. Plus, they are far more likely to stay in their job.
For the nonprofit sector, we care deeply about impact. A dis-engaged workforce will mean less impact on critical issues like homelessness, justice, poverty, environmental problems, diversity, and so many critical issues of global importance.
Engagement isn’t just important to the employer. It’s the top priority for the employee.
WHAT IS A GOOD JOB anyway?
The Gallup corporation who has been studying the American and global workforce for decades reports that the global workforce has one key priority: to have a good job. This replaces the old American dream which for the past 80 years was to have a family, own a home, and live in peace. A good job was still a priority for the past 80 years but less important than other factors.
Today, having a good job is the top priority.
So what is a good job? It starts with a living wage and for at least 30 hours a week. But it doesn’t stop there.
The research (strongly confirmed by my clients) is that a good job is one where someone is engaged on the job. In short, someone is in a good job when they are engaged in meaningful and fulfilling work and experiencing real individual growth and development.
Engagement is what we want to measure
Engagement is what young people are looking for when they leave college and enter the workforce. But for the most part engagement isn’t what we are offering in the nonprofit sector. Most employee engagement programs and strategies do not work. It is time to completely revisit what it means to engage employees. In fact, the data we gather to measure employee engagement is fundamentally flawed.
Too often, the nonprofit sector believes that its valuable mission and compelling work will check the ‘fulfilling work’ box. But, in fact, that is far from enough.
Again and again, I see evidence of how nonprofit organizations have failed the workforce. I’ve experienced it and I’ve made the crucial mistake as a manager not to ensure it for my own staff.
myths that do not work
It’s time to pay more attention to creating meaningful and fulfilling roles for our very unique and different staff. I continue to see evidence of managers and HR systems subscribing to myths that simply do not work. Here are a few of those myths:
“If I help my staff fix their weaknesses, then they will be more successful on the job.”
“My job is to help everyone to become well-rounded.”
“If I can just help my staff find work-life balance, everything will be better.”
“Performance evaluations and annual goal-setting are key tools to help engage my staff.”
These are myths. The myth is that that these beliefs will create more engagement on teams. In fact, these myths actually perpetuate a dis-engaged workforce. This is how our style of management has failed.
At its core, that failure is a failure in maximizing human potential. There is a a lot of research to back this up and a good read to dive in would be It’s The Manager by the Gallup Corporation. Unless we make significant changes in how we lead and develop people and teams, we’ll stay stuck.
What is the first step for a nonprofit?
The very first step for a nonprofit organization – or any organization for that matter – to get on track is to focus on the engagement of its staff starting with supporting them to put their strengths to work. That one measure would be a game changer for nonprofits and therefore a game changer to the critical work they do which benefits us all.
If you want to take a deeper step you can also check out this book, “First, Break All the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham.
Contact me danielle@droitsch.com if you want to do a deeper dive on how to build engagement for your team or organization.
