The Rights of NonProfit Staff?

We have been working with around 350 Non-Profit organisations through various activities – training, monitoring and evaluation, strategic planning, due diligence, fundraising etc - in the past four years. In all my years in the Non-Profit field I have always fiercely believed that the organisations exists for the purpose of rendering services to the focus client group that their vision and mission advocates. I believe that the needs of the clients come first and that staffing complement is an important resource that enables the organisation to deliver on their purpose.

However, there are various principles, legislation and other guidelines that prescribes our interaction and interventions with other interest groups such as staff, funders and others. In short – even though the rights of our clients comes first, it does not undercut the rights of others – such as our underpaid and loyal staff.

In the past few months, in various interactions I have been taken aback on more than one occasion (fortunately not the majority)- on how Leaders of organisations undermine, trample on and blatantly ignore the rights of their staff – in particular with regards to labour law regulations and requirements of professional bodies that staff belong to. In many of these instances the disregard for employment rights was not due to lack of knowledge or skills on the part of the leader or the organisation – but just plainly a case of “We think we can get away with it” -The Rights of NonProfit Staff?

We have organisations that year after year appoint staff on contract – their excuse is that they do not know if they have funding for the next year (even though their TPA’ s with DSD indicates a three-year funding period.). So instead of stepping up as a leader, and managing their organisations and their staff to ensure performance and continued funding – they plan for failure and leave their staff in limbo. There are established and legal procedures to terminate employment of staff if funding or operational requirement change – why not use them. Many of these organisations complain that they cannot get Social/Auxiliary workers to work or stay in their organisations: Getting paid peanuts for a professional service is one thing – not being sure that you are going to even get your peanuts next year goes to a whole new level. It is also interesting that even though many organisations with elevated Leader titles do not get funding for the leader positions – however these leaders are appointed as permanent.

Many Organisations say they use the contract position as a probation period. However, a probation period is usually 3 months. Once again- if the organisation is up to standard – they have HR policies and procedures to manage performance or non-performance. Once again – because of the unwillingness of the organisational management to manage one of their own Key Performance areas (staff and organisational performance), they select the coward’s route.

There are organisations whose Leaders (who are not registered with the SACSSP) reserve the right to “inspect” the files of their social/auxiliary workers and comment with regards to their perception of the social/auxiliary worker’s performance. They prescribe to the staff how many times they can see the client – based on the targets that they are supposed to reach as opposed to the need of the client. I am a strong proponent of cost effective services – a term that still tend to be a no-no in the Social Service Field. However, if you are the leader of the organisation- should you not have the commitment and skills to balance the target requirements of for example a funder such as DSD, with the need of your clients and the purpose of your organisation.

If you are trampling on the rights of your staff, ignoring the needs of your client system, disregarding the vision, mission and objectives of your organisation –what is left?

The unethical, and sometimes illegal, manner in which some organisations implement disciplinary and grievance procedures also requires consideration. Many organisations pay huge amounts of money to have Labour consultants come and fight their dirty battles. For example – due to various reasons many Non-Profits have had to go through retrenchment procedures – this is unfortunately a reality of our field. However why do retrenchment procedures most often come as a to-be-implemented-immediately shock. This, when labour law clearly states that when an employer even considers possible retrenchments, he/she must immediately enter into consultations with the representatives of staff. Staff are to be involved in the process of agreeing on minimising impact of retrenchments, who is to retrenched, timing of retrenchment etc.

In addition to a retrenchment-shocks, we can also ask how staff are expected to render service to clients and perform (and reach the magic target numbers) if they are regularly and suddenly faced with cut off telephone lines, no money for fuel, no email and continuous late payment of salaries. Why is the operations (finances, cash flow etc) of many a Non-Profit such a secret – to be kept from staff at all costs.

Why is transparency towards staff such a foreign concept in many Non-Profits (excluding confidential staff matters). Management are not the “parents” of “children” from who all bad news should be withheld. They are adults and should be treated as such. Maybe if staff had more knowledge and information of aspects that directly affect their work they will understand better – they might not” like” the knowledge gained, but with better understanding comes better buy-in. Various things happen when a leader becomes transparent – relationships grow, trust in leader is promoted, better and faster (and pro-active) solutions, employee commitment etc.

As Non-Profits we have to realise that we work in a unique field only so far as to what happens with our “profits” and our respective client systems. For anything else we should be held accountable and function according to the ethics and guidelines of any other company. This means we should extend our staff the same rights that they would have in any other company – job security, transparency, democratic decision-making, acknowledgement of professional qualifications and ethical standards etc.

The field we as Non-Profits are working in is filled with uncertainties – we should not be contributing to it with the misapplication of for example contracts, or only providing staff with information when time for finding solutions has run out.