This blog is part of a series on top HR management practices from the 2014 New York Community Trust Nonprofit Excellence Awards semifinalists. HR Best Practices (Part 1) In the announcement of this year’s 10 semifinalists, we learned that they serve a wide range of constituents, including foster children, homeless individuals, people with mental illness and substance abuse problems, underserved youth, domestic violence survivors, individuals involved in the criminal justice system, and women in their childbearing years. Half of the semifinalists have applied in previous years; the organizations vary in size, two have budgets under $1 million, two have budgets of over $60 million. So what do our semifinalists have in common? We know that they all have great management practices. As the Human Resources professionals on the selection committee, we thought you might find it interesting to hear from four of us about the best practices we’re seeing in this group. All of these organizations have good HR practices in place, fair compensation, strong benefits and significant training and development budgets. So we chose to focus on what the unusual practices are that make them special. Here is a sampling from three semifinalist organizations: Bowery Residents’ Committee, Inc. (BRC) This Manhattan-based organization is a leading provider of housing and services to more than 10,000 of New York City ’s neediest individuals. They have about 650 staff members. BRC credits its success to its employees and invests in them. They are intentional in their hiring practices “striving to recruit and retain staff of the highest quality.” What we consider best practices are evident. They believe in open and clear communications about expectations. They provide rigorous orientation and training. In addition to consistent supervision, they make an effort to help their staff members grow in their jobs and their careers. Within this safe environment, BRC considers it a core value to offer progressive advancement opportunities. In one year, over fifty staff members were promoted. Fully two-thirds of the senior management team has been grown internally. BRC is committed to diversity and respect for the cultural context from which its clients come and it makes an effort to hire from within its own community. Over the past five years, they have hired almost fifty graduates of their workforce development program. Feedback is important in ensuring that HR practices are successful. BRC seeks anonymous staff satisfaction feedback annually and there are regular requests for feedback on how the organization is performing and how it could improve. Finally, once a year they celebrate their staff at an agency-wide dinner event. All of these HR practices, most of which are not costly, lead to a successfully run organization and a thriving staff. Community Access, Inc. Based in downtown Manhattan, this organization expands opportunities for people to recover from trauma, mental illness and discrimination through affordable housing, training, advocacy and healing focused services. Community Access is committed to hiring more than half of its staff from its community and they partner with other organizations that serve the same vulnerable populations and low-income constituents in order to source candidates. They place more emphasis on experience and value alignment than on educational achievement. This is just one more smart inclusive way of breaking down barriers to entry. Community Access creates hiring committees composed of staff from different programs and classification to ensure that the halo-effect is not in the way of the best candidate being hired. There is an emphasis on promoting from within in order to maximize intellectual capital and employee satisfaction. And, when considering promotions, they emphasize experience, both lived and through employment, as criteria for qualification. As a result of staff focus groups some important workplace safety improvements have been made and a full training curriculum has been developed. Of the 260 staff members, over 40% have been at Community Access at least five years and there are 19 15+ year veterans. That’s impressive! Girls Write Now (GWN) Based in Manhattan, this organization provides guidance, support, and opportunities for at-risk and underserved girls from New York City’s public high schools to develop their creative, independent voices, explore careers in professional writing, and learn how to make healthy school, career and life choices. This organization started out in 1998 as an all-volunteer organization. It now has between 150 and 200 volunteers and a fulltime staff of ten. The teenage mentees come from all five boroughs and are over 90% girls of color, with roughly 20% being from immigrant families. In order to mirror the community served, GWN created a centralized outreach database of partners, networks, email and social media connections and websites that is used to recruit staff, volunteers and participants. With a dramatic growth in staff size, GWN has consciously professionalized its HR practices to keep pace. The hiring process is built around a matrix of demonstrated skills and core competencies. Staff evaluations are multi-step and structured around the SMART principles (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time‐based) goals directly linked to program‐related and organizational results. GWN uses its volunteers to provide comprehensive training to all staff. And finally, GWN annually holds a teambuilding retreat, mixing staff with volunteer leaders in a setting designed to review program issues and organizational policies. Many of these excellent practices are replicable in the nonprofit community which we all serve. by Diana Davenport, Chair of the 2014 New York Community Trust Nonprofit Excellence Awards Selection Committee, and VP for Administration at The Commonwealth Fund @DavenportD
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 21:19:34 +0000
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