Nonprofit Staffing Challenges
Nonprofit Employment Practices are top-of-mind with the release of the first annual WorkforNonprofits.org recruitment survey. The survey, which polled more than 115 nonprofits and human resources
professionals, shed a grim light on the year ahead for staffing nonprofit organizations. Among the findings:
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68% of nonprofits will create new full-time positions, but only 20% are increasing formal recruitment budgets;
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22.5% of respondents have annual operating budgets of up to $1 million;
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21% have annual budgets from $5 to $10 million;
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72% have less than $5,000 in the budget to fill positions;
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51% have no budget at all;
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Approximately 32% of respondents have a staff member responsible for hiring, but nearly 35% said their human resources function in managed by someone with shared job responsibilities; and
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Roughly 50% of respondents did not add to staff size in 2006.
CFO Turnover
Shareholders and board members beware: Executive services firm Tatum, LLC is predicting a record rate of turnover among Chief Financial Officers in 2007. This projection is based on a survey of
more than 150 Tatum partners, and it revealed the following findings:
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More than 2,300 CFOs are expected to be driven from their posts due to challenges brought on by compliance issues (2,302 - a record number - departed in 2006);
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93% of respondents believe turnover in 2007 will be as high as it was in 2006, if not higher;
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37% cited compliance and governance issues as the primary driver of turnover;
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30% cited unreasonable expectations from board members and other stakeholders;
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27% said the most effective means of reducing turnover would be to provide additional resources, including specialized staff, to support expanded responsibilities; and
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25% said that deregulation and relaxation of compliance/governance issues would be enough to stunt the trend.
This study impacts corporate communications executives, many of whom have a reporting relationship with their company's CFO (see PR News, 02-19-07).
Recruiting Best Practices
Deep talent pools and steep competition turn the tables on many employers, who must now pull out all the stops to lure the best and the brightest. According to "Achieving Superior Staffing
Performance, a study conducted by Best Practices, LLC, "Top companies employ and manage exacting performance metrics to meet time-to-fill and cost-to-fill target measures." Among the best practices
employed by recruiting managers at such companies as Pfizer, Honeywell, Allstate, Bank of America, Cisco, Lockheed Martin, Novartis and Verizon, are the following:
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Keeping track of passive talent pools - top candidates who are not currently seeking employment - and cultivating them with referrals and networking;
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Balancing requisition metrics; and
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Developing college outreach programs with universities that best position the company's appeal and that provide the biggest impact in relationship development.