Employer of choice
One year on from the Lehman bankruptcy, the world is not in freefall, and UK economic growth 'has resumed'...
...at least according to the Bank of England and the Retail Prices Index has poked its nose out from -1.3 per cent to 1.4 per cent. But before we get any ideas about green shoots, unemployment needs to stop rising first – it stood at 2.47m at the time of writing.
The charity sector has played a crucial part in encouraging people to enter and return to the job market and it has taken a recession of this magnitude to underline the overall job satisfaction it offers. In particular, the interface of volunteering and paid employment is unique to the sector and some individuals who have taken volunteering positions have found that a foot in the door leads to paid work. At worse it will have provided valuable work experience.
No more was this in evidence than at the charity and public sector recruitment exhibition held in London’s Business Design Centre on 10 and 11 September, which pulled in over 11,000 visitors and over 100 exhibitors. NCVO’s Q3 charity forecast indicates charity leaders are much less likely to cut staff than they were three months ago and nearly a third are planning increases of them.
There is much the sector can do to position itself as an employer of choice irrespective of whatever is going on in the economy. Participation in the government’s graduate talent pool programme is a good start, but importing specialist skills for hard-to-fill vacancies requires a competitive reward strategy. Merely being
a ‘nice place to work’ isn’t always enough. As the sector is driven more and more to a commissioning environment and takes on local authority work, it is in danger of being left with a reduced ability to recruit key staff who may have been persuaded to move from the public sector. And even when charities have managed to attract good people away from other sectors, they will not want to lose them if the economy picks up. Unlike local authorities, most charities have closed their final salary pension schemes and their pay scales are lower.
Perhaps we need a new way of measuring economic health that recognises the sector’s contribution. Angel Gurria, OECD general secretary observed days before the G20 summit: ‘Economic resources are not all that matter in people’s lives…we need better measures of people’s expectations and levels of satisfaction, of how they spend their time, of their relations with other people in the community.’
So here’s an idea: how about a Happiness Index (HI)…?
Author: Clarissa Dann
Clarissa Dann was the editor of Caritas as well as an HR and management online service,he People Bulletin until July 2011.
She is now the editor of the specialist trade finance magazine, Trade and Forfaiting Review which can be viewed at www.tfreview.com but does write on charity finance and investment from time to time.
Clarissa has a background in legal and professional publishing, as well as business journalism and holds an MBA from
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