People-centrism: Alive and well
Charities have kept up their training investment despite the recession as they prepare for greater demands on their services
A recent online poll conducted by Caritas magazine suggested that charities are taking their human capital nurturing seriously – the majority of the respondents have either not adjusted their training provision despite the recession or have continued with pre-recession plans. Only 8 per cent had actually made cuts. The other hugely encouraging finding was that over half of the respondents were influenced by the appropriateness of the course offering when choosing a training provider, rather than cost– or even recommendation.
Profile of respondents
The survey ran during May 2010, yielding 39 completed questionnaires. Although there were a handful of large charities with over 100 employees, 78 per cent of those replying were spread exactly across the 1 to 10, 20 to 50 and 51 to 100 bands. Interestingly 72 per cent confirmed they had 10 or more trustees with 18 respondents confirming 15 or more on their boards.
‘On the ground’ volunteer presence was weighted more towards the smaller charities (mainly 1 to 10 employees and all under 100 employees) with 13 of the charities confirming 20 or fewer volunteers on their books.
HR provision
Although 17 respondents had at least one full time HR professional, the majority (20) relied on their line managers to take basic employment law and health and safety responsibility, buying in external HR consultancy when needed. A few of the very small charities with only one or two employees made it abundantly clear that HR provision and indeed training was a luxury that just wasn’t possible and one small international medical charity pointed out that this function was combined with a marketing/ fundraising/administration function and only got about 2 per cent of the respondent’s time.
One hospice charity explained the cost/ benefit of just having an administrative HR resource underpinned with a subscription to employment and health and safety law consultants, Peninsular. Although this charity had not as yet been taken to an industrial tribunal, it did confirm that there had been ‘incidents’ regarding individuals where the consultant’s advice was called upon. Their CEO confirmed: ‘They give you draft letters and helped us draft a new staff handbook. The fee depends on how many staff you have when you engage Peninsula. We have a five-year contract figure based upon the 120 staff we joined, and is the same even though we now have 146 paid stuff. If you employed a fully-fledged MCIPD-qualified HR professional, you are staring at a minimum salary of £35,000, but our administrator (who is on a professional development programme), combined with our Peninsula subscription, costs less.’
Training and development systems in place
Most respondents confirmed they had a system of annual appraisals (23) with support fairly evenly spread across additional items such as:
- Personal development plans.
- Management development frameworks.
- Support for professional qualifications study.
- Learning resource centres.
- E-learning courses.
Mark Jackson, CEO of St Richards’ Hospice in Worcester told Caritas: ‘Like many hospices, we have our own training and education centre. Our accreditation with the University of Worcester enables our own staff and other local healthcare professionals to do their postgraduate diploma in palliative care from the university at St Richards. The other thing about having the education centre is that you can market it to other people – which is a useful income source. There is a basic philosophy of hospice movement to evangelise and the centre was set up in 1993. We are training registrars, housemen, student doctors from the University of Birmingham, student nurses from the University of Worcester, as well as ordinands as part of their chaplaincy programme and social workers.
’He went on to explain that his own CEO development included doing a Masters in Hospice Leadership; a new degree started three years ago at Lancaster University Management School sponsored by Help the Hospices.
This is essentially an MBA for CEOs of hospices and he is in the process of completing his dissertation.The charity has a general individual performance review system where the annual appraisals are done every January and each line manager identifies what continuing professional development CPD is needed. There is a philosophy of personal development leading to promotion so people do feel their career has some direction. The training is tied into the budget planning with around £150 per person per annum set aside. ‘We have nine individuals working on bachelor or masters degrees and an important source of funding is from Help the Hospices, who grant up to 50 per cent support for relevant courses. For example we had an accounts administrator gain her CIMA qualification – the funding is not just for clinical work’, says Mark.
By far the most common form of training was compliance training, which is sometimes included in general business advice services in the form of seminars. This includes briefings on employment law, data protection, and health and safety. However, respondents also invested in the following types of training:
- marketing, fundraising and legacy management;
- finance;
- IT (particularly when a new system was being installed);
- teambulding;
- board development; and
- volunteer development.
Figure 1 sets out some of the comments received and highlights how the different causal areas impact on the training and development required. It is no surprise that the two care homes have a different set of needs than that of the conservation charity.
Conference attendance
This appeared to be a particularly popular form of development with nearly all the respondents confirming delegates had attended some sort of conference event over the last two years, see figure 2. Provider selectionWhen it came to choosing a training provider, it was clear that most respondents conducted an audit of what was needed before deciding on what type of training to invest in. Although only one respondent admitted cost was the most influential factor, several others said that cost was ‘one of a number’ of factors. ‘Value for money, relevance to our charity and location’ was how a small Lincolnshire hospital put it.
Return on investment
Nearly all the respondents spent at least £200 or more on training and development and those that spent nothing at all were very small charities with only one or two employees.The effectiveness of the spend was measured by looking at:
- improved staff retention;
- better performance (for example more effective fundraising campaigns);
- better decision-making; and
- better delivery of service to beneficiaries.Impact of the recession.
It does appear that the recession has not curtailed training activity in this group of respondents as much as one would expect. Part of this may be down to the particular causal areas the respondents operate in – for example care home workers will always need to be trained and demand for places is hardly likely to diminish, but part of it may be down to the need to operate more efficiently – and that often requires external advice. Figure 3 sets out the main findings.
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