Managing Staff
A key to successful leadership in non profit organizations involves managing paid staff. Though not everyone likes the term, this is usually called 'human resources management'. It includes a variety of activities: deciding on your staffing needs, how to fill these positions within budget, recruiting, orienting and training employees, and ensuring they perform well. HR management also includes managing employee benefits and compensation, employee records, legal issues and relations with unions.
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The basic policies needed in the area of human resources management are presented here. Also included are sites that cover what laws one needs to comply with when engaging paid staff.
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Finding and keeping the best people to work for you is critical for success. See these sites for how to do this well.
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Finding good people is a start but they need to be properly trained for their job and their performance needs to be monitored to ensure success.
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Working with unionized staff can be a special challenge for nonprofit organizations with their chronically inadequate, and often unstable, funding sources. But it is possible to avoid destructive adversarial relationships with unions.