Much conversation and debate in the nonprofit and philanthropic communities these days revolves around how to determine which organizations are the “best”. Fortunately, there seems to be a consensus away from basing such determinations on measures such as overhead ratio and administrative expenses and towards evaluation of impact — but that’s a topic for another day and post.
Employee opinions offer another perspective on a nonprofit’s quality.
Another perspective on a nonprofit’s quality can be found in the opinions of the organization’s employees. A recent study by the NonProfit Times and Best Companies Group used such opinions as the primary basis for identifying the “50 best nonprofits to work for in 2010″.
In the study, employee’s responses to a written survey accounted for 75% of each organization’s score. The remaining 25% was based on assessment of the organization’s benefit offerings and other practices, using a proprietary methodology.
The survey asked employees to rate their employer on 70 statements, grouped into eight categories. The following table summarizes the percentage of employees among the “50 best” who responded favorably in each category compared to employees of all participating nonprofits.
Clearly, employees were generally favorable across all of the categories, most notably with regard to their physical work environment, overall sense of engagement, supervisory relationship, and satisfaction with their current role.
Culture and communications the biggest differentiator?
What I find most interesting about the results are those areas where the biggest difference exists between employees of the “best” organizations and all study participants. In particular, for culture and communications, there is a seven percentage point difference, suggesting that this area may be the single biggest differentiator of the best nonprofit employers. The items in this category include:
- Frequency and detail of organizational communications
- Degree of trust that employees have in those communications
- Understanding of the organization’s financial situation
- Fair and individual treatment
- Recognition for work well done
- Adequate staffing levels
- The priority placed on quality and safety
- Spirit of cooperation among and like of coworkers
- Communication of changes before they are implemented
There are gaps of six percentage points between the top organizations and all nonprofits in the areas of leadership and planning, pay and benefits, and training and development, suggesting that these are also key differentiators.
Room for improvement in training and development?
The area of training and development also stands out because the ratings in this area, while still favorable, are significantly lower than any of the other areas. Among both the top nonprofits and all participants, there is a gap of ten percentage points between training and development and the next lowest rated category (pay and benefits). The items in this category include:
- Amount of initial and ongoing training received
- Adequacy of information, equipment, and resources to do job well
- Room for advancement, and clear understanding of and trust in expectations for advancement
- Training or experiences to explore other opportunities within the organization
- Trust in the relationship between doing good work, pay increases, and being considered for promotion
The results suggest that these aspects of training and development may hold the greatest potential for improvement among all nonprofit employers.
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All nonprofit employers should consider their current effectiveness in each of these areas, and perhaps undertake an employee survey or other formal organizational assessment, to ensure they are in a position to attract and retain the most qualified, highest performing staff.
How does your organization shape up? What do you think it takes to be a great nonprofit employer?
photo credit: ~Brenda-Starr~
Joe, Thanks for the pointer on Twitter. I wonder if you can establish any causal relationships between organizational practices and employee satisfaction. As an economics PhD candidate at MIT, I’m actually very interested in taking a look at the data and hopefully providing some useful analysis. Is that possible?
Thanks,
Pian
Hi Pian. Thanks for your comment. I don’t actually have the data – my post is based on the published results. Best Companies Group, mentioned in the post, would be the source. I don’t know if they would be willing to release the data. They must have a considerable amount of it, because their entire business is doing these types of surveys across different industries. They do collect information on organizational practices (you can see the actual questions they ask — you can view the actual questionnaire by following links above), but they combine it with the satisfaction data using a “proprietary methodology”.
There is a significant body of work around employee satisfaction and engagement, but my impression is that while most people working in the field might be willing to suggest correlation between certain practices, satisfaction, and engagement, few would be able to prove causality.
Please let me know if I can provide any more information or assistance. If you’d like, I can look through my bookmarks and provide some links around engagement and satisfaction. In any event, please let me know if you obtain more information and proceed with your analysis.
Thanks again for your comment and for reading. I appreciate it!
Joe
Joe,
Thank you so much for your detailed response. There is a rich body of economic literature on the causal relations between employee satisfaction and organizational practices in traditional for-profit businesses. I suspect some of the results may apply to nonprofits, a much less studied area, which is why I’m very curious to learn about the potential similarities and differences. I will keep looking around and keep you updated if I find anything interesting.
Best,
Pian
I wonder if the results in the Training and Development category reflect the size of some non-profits. In ours there are only the service providers the section manager and then the general manager. There is little chance of ‘advancement’ though there are opportunities for those in the service delivery to become ‘experts’ in areas of interest to them. Maybe these questions need to be tailored to reflect how non-profits operate rather than use those that suit larger organisations. It is also difficult to pay workers more when it is increasingly difficult to raise or attract funds. We try to provide other non-cash benefits such as flexible work hours to help with caring for children.