Getting charity employees to work better
The basis of any relationship, whether it be a life partner, a boss or the charity which you work for, has to involve a strong foundation of trust. However, trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback!
Trust in employees should not be anchored to outdated standards. We shouldn’t anymore measure the hours people work or their inputs. The focus should be on outcomes. People can organise their own hours, with just a few simple rules of thumb to guide them – what they do should not:
- Be to the detriment of another colleague meeting their objectives.
- In any way negatively impact upon delivering excellent service to clients.
Thus, outside of the above, charity workers should have the freedom and autonomy to balance their personal commitments and their work responsibilities. This can work successfully, with performance metrics being seen to improve, as has happened during the pandemic. Also, this approach is based on a well-researched theory, as I will explain.
Purposing, mastery and autonomy are also crucial – these are the three key ingredients of increased employee motivation according to best-selling business and management author Dan Pink in his seminal book, Drive. The findings in Pink’s research give charities a head start in harnessing the discretionary effort of employees as it’s much easier to engage people in your purpose than it is if you are in many other sectors.
That said, a virtue can also be a vice. There is a risk that this intrinsic motivation is taken as a given and not enough attention is paid to the wider important aspects of leading, supporting and developing your people in order that they can bring the best version of themselves into the workplace every day. I imagine some employees in the charity sector might well be able to point to where that has been the case.
The importance of purpose
So why is purpose so important for charity employees’ performance? Someone once described it to me as the duvet flip. What is the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning with a spring rather than pulling the duvet back over and hitting the snooze button. We know that if you feel a strong sense of purpose in what you do and importantly, can connect in your mind your role to the furtherment of that purpose, then people are more energised and engaged in their work.
Pink also makes a powerful case that being in a role which enables you to deploy a set of skills you want to master is a powerful motivator. We spend too much time focusing on the things our people can’t do, rather than helping them maximise their strengths. David Beckham spent hours honing the skill he had in his right foot so that it could cut open defences and score freekicks. The fact his left foot wasn’t great did not diminish his impact on a game.
Having some agency over decision making in your role is also essential. Take the case of a large Housing Association which has a Think Yes policy. Decision making is devolved to the front-line staff and their role is to Think Yes when working with a tenant to support their needs.
They accept that they won’t get every decision right. But over time they have proven that this approach is much better for the housing association, the tenant and the housing officers as rent arrears and admin costs have dropped dramatically since they implemented this approach. The money they have saved is now being reinvested in improving the quality of their housing stock.
Right culture and management
None of the above, though is possible without the right culture and management. Did you know we have 2.4m accidental managers in the UK. What does that mean? People who are promoted into management positions without having been trained for the role. Would we let someone work in a cancer advice call centre without training; would we let someone undertake a home visit to an elderly MS patient without training? No, of course not.
But the prevailing wisdom seems to be that managing people is something anyone can just pick up. It’s not true! Managing people, particularly in our current context, is one of the hardest jobs anyone can do. The management capability in the UK ranks as one of the lowest in the developed world, and that includes charities.
It also has a big impact on employee wellbeing. A GP once told me that 80% of the people who come into their surgery with a mental health issue is work related and most of their stress and anxiety is down to their relationship with their line manager. Instead of writing a prescription for anti-depressants or putting someone on a waiting list for counselling, he said he wished he could write them a prescription for a better boss.
I am not having a go at managers here, quite the opposite, this is a rallying call to charities to train your managers, particularly first line managers better and you will reap huge dividends in employee wellbeing and productivity. As the saying goes “you can’t out yoga a bad boss”. When I am asked by any organisation, where should I prioritise my training budget, I always say start with your first line managers. They can’t look after your people if you don’t look after them.
Helping achieve productivity
Training of staff in general does not get enough investment in the UK either. Again, we sit near the bottom of the league table for how much we invest in our people’s training in the UK. There is a structural deficit in the labour market and more people are leaving it than entering it. It leaves us no alternative but to help our people be more productive.
When you look at the government’s Employer Skills Survey which identifies the skills gaps and shortage in the market, little has improved in 20 years. I first read the report in 2002 and when I saw the last version just before the pandemic, you could pretty much swap the covers over as they almost said the same thing.
There is no silver bullet here. Employers across the charity sector are going to need to invest heavily in their employee’s development if they want to retain staff and improve the charity’s performance.
Given we live in such a complex and uncertain world, how and what we train people is of vital importance. As we know from evolutionary biology, it’s not the big or strongest that survive; it’s the most adaptable. So that means your training needs to be focused on what gives your employees the skills to thrive no matter how chaotic the work around them might be.
