Thursday, November 20, 2008

Live Blogging from ARNOVA - Employee Retention in the Nonprofit Sector

I'm live blogging from ARNOVA -- the main conference for nonprofit researchers and academics. I've presented twice this morning once about the Nonprofit Congress as a new social movement and another time about the results from a study of American Humanics alumni and their career paths and their perceptions of the AH program.

I am attending a change management session right now with three great presenters. One presenter I particularly resonated with Karabi Bezboruah from University of Texas at Dallas provided results from a study about nonprofit retention. Her literature review found that nonprofits have 24 percent turnover (reference), with the highest level of turnover with lower level employees. But the highest turnover of all she explained was with child welfare organizations, they have 200 percent turnover (reference). Yikes!!

In order to address these issues with retention she proposed applying the public service motivation model (PSM) (reference). The psm model works when a leader can fit employees job with an employees intrinsic and intrinsic factors. Some of these factors include staff's position, life interests and satisfaction. This model is a really inward approach to address retention issues within nonprofit organization and in order to work needs a willingness for nonprofit leaders to explore the change management process.

I remember seeing a poster today at lunch that looked at the organizational downsides and costs to loosing employees. So, assessing employees various intrinsic and extrinsic factors sounds simple enough but has the potential to have a profound affect in saving an organization money.

*references to come follow after I receive the paper from this presenter

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Services for the UnderServed (SUS), a NYC nonprofit ranks 25th among the 300 companies recently surveyed by Crain's New York Business as a Best Place to Work. The survey involved 25,000 employees from compnies such as Goldman Sachs, Loews Regency Hotel, and Microsoft who were nominated by their employees. The survey measured whether staff feel valued, whether they trust the leadership, whether they see potential for advancement.

As a human services organization, our work to support people with special needs is very challenging. We are not paid what we deseve to be paid nor do we get perks such as spa days, Disney World trips, tuition reimbursement or stock options. Yet staff feel supported, respected and valued. The individuals who come for services receive the ultimate reward for this organizational work ethic.