June 2010
June 2010 Newsletter - What’s Inside
• Smart Staffing for Small Organizations
• Align Services
• Passion for the Purpose
• Nonprofit Leadership Institute
Smart Staffing for Small Organizations
Next to having enough money to carry out its purpose, the most constant concern of the small organization is appropriate staffing.
There are ways to mitigate the concern. It takes diligence and three straightforward steps performed routinely – at least once a year.
- 1. Review your organization’s job descriptions. Just by reading them, you may recognize that changes in the organization have changed the job duties that are written down.
- 2. Perform a week-long desk audit. We like a week that crosses over from the end of the month to the beginning of the next month. In a desk audit, the employee writes down briefly what s/he does in a day. Using the end-of-the-month/beginning-of-the-month week ensures that tasks performed only at those times are accounted for without having to conduct the audit for more than one week.
- 3. Compare the audit information to the job description and update the job description as appropriate.
As part of the desk audit process, ask each employee to contemplate and record the amount of time on average each week that is spent on each task. If a task takes an hour once each month, then the average is 15 minutes per week. The goal of this additional detail is to determine if the employee is routinely working more than 40 hours each week. If so, then it’s time to find the funds to hire more staff – or risk burning out the existing staff and having to hire and train new employees.
It’s also possible that the audit will reveal that entirely new tasks, not contemplated in any of your job descriptions, have been added to your organization’s wheel house. If those tasks are related to one another but are happening on more than one desk, it is time to write one new job description and consider whose job it is to do all those related tasks. Keeping them separated and conducting them piecemeal ensures that something will fall through the cracks in the “hand off.” In addition, it’s always more efficient to hire one expert than to hope that multiple people can pick up on the various pieces and do them well and consistently.
If your organization has only one employee, these steps still work – and are more critical for the long-term health and sustainability of the organization.
If your organization is powered entirely by volunteers, then the above steps must be done immediately and probably more than once a year, because volunteer help typically experiences high turnover.
Of course, there’s more than aligning people with job functions that goes into keeping employees satisfied so that the work is done efficiently and effectively. However, making sure the work is done correctly and consistently by performing an annual HR audit as described above will help you reach success.
Align Services
Did you know that Align offers curriculum development and training services? We’ve helped organizations with customer service training, leadership development materials, and other customized curriculum. Contact a consultant today to find out how Align can help your organization improve knowledge and performance through our development and implementation of training.
Passion for the Purpose
No matter what type of organization you work in, the highest priority is for the organization to know why it exists – its purpose.
If you are a for profit business, it may simply be to earn profits for the owners – but we don’t think so. There are many ways to make money. Why does your firm go about it in the ways you do? “Increasing shareholder wealth by __________” – fill in the blank. That is your purpose.
If you are a nonprofit or government entity, you exist to make people’s lives better – to enhance public welfare. Specifically how does your organization or agency go about that? That is your purpose.
Today’s workforce stays at jobs that provide camaraderie and a good reason to do the work. That is, people work best when they enjoy their colleagues and embrace the organization’s mission. In order to embrace the mission, they have to both fully understand it and see that the organization’s leaders are enthusiastic in finding ways to fulfill that mission.
To make sure your organization’s passion for its purpose is evident to all:
- Review your mission statement annually with key stakeholders. This includes the organization’s board, its on-staff leaders and the entire workforce. Align recommends that three different review sessions, each about two hours, are conducted for each of those groups in that order.
- Use your mission statement on all internal documents. Correspondence to the board, board meeting minutes, and memos to the staff are examples of correspondence that can be used to reinforce the purpose of the organization.
- Post your mission statement in key locations inside the organization. The lobby where guests are greeted, the employee break room and the boardroom are the first places to make sure you have the mission statement displayed.
- Use the language of your mission statement in verbal communication with stakeholders. Whether you are sharing a financial report or talking about a new client or describing internal changes, reference how the information is colored by the mission.
- Use your mission statement to gage the “oughtness” of pending actions. Whatever step you are contemplating, ask yourself, “Does this advance our purpose? If so, how? If not, why are we doing it?”
Too many organizations roll their collective eyes at the idea of an annual review of and constant discussion about its purpose. Align has learned through experience that constant reference to the mission statement helps smooth the road through change. Leaders must demonstrate a passion for the purpose or risk that other members of the organizations will stop following.
Nonprofit Leadership Institute
Align’s Nonprofit Leadership Institute features a curriculum designed to build on your knowledge and take you to the next level of leadership. Our Institute is designed to build leadership and management skills for current and future generations of nonprofit leaders.
Now is the time to sign up for the June sessions that will cover Reporting and Managing Finances and Human Resource Management for Small Organizations. Reporting and Managing Finances will take place in Cheyenne on June 11, 2010 and in Casper on June 25, 2010. Human Resource Management for Small Organizations will take place in Casper on June 11, 2010 and in Cheyenne on June 25, 2010.
July will be the last session for this round of the Nonprofit Leadership Institute. The next round of 7 classes will begin in October.
A 3-day Intensive Training will be held in Jackson, Wyoming September 30 through October 2. Participants will receive all seven classes in three days.