Unfortunately, employee turnover has always been an issue for the nonprofit sector. According to Exact Hire, the voluntary annual turnover rate for nonprofits is 19% – far outpacing the all-industry average of 12%. A 2021 study conducted by Nonprofit HR found that alarmingly, 45% of nonprofit employees will seek new jobs by 2025. What does this mean? Well, turnover is a high cost to nonprofit organizations, and it may be more than you think when you include hidden costs like recruitment and training of new employees. The Nonprofit Leadership Alliance created a cost-of-turnover calculator to determine these costs to provide more in-depth insight.
Here at Andar Software, we frequently hear from our customers about the challenges when losing an employee with Andar/360 expertise. Below are some best practices to help your organization navigate employee turnover while utilizing a nonprofit CRM like Andar/360.
Employee Turnover: What to do right away
Manage the vacancy period
When turnover occurs, it can be stressful and overwhelming. Along with losing an employee is their knowledge that they have accumulated over potentially years of mastering software, systems, and processes in your organization. If there isn't someone immediately ready to fill the departed employee's gap, it can relieve a ton of stress by turning to Andar Customer Care.
Andar Customer Care can help you focus on your most critical work while becoming an extension of your team and managing your data systems. We can fill the turnover gap by building e-Pledge sites, creating custom templates, running donor choice payouts and much more while you search for the next hire. Is this something that you’d like to learn more about? We are happy to help! Send us an email today.
Plan to hire right
Identify the skills and qualities your organization needs, and plan to hire for a combination of skill and organizational fit. Employees who feel connected to the nonprofit's mission and vision are more likely to stay with the organization long-term.
When conducting the job interviews, make sure the interviewees are aware of your mission, agree with it, and are motivated by it. Here are some sample questions that you can use when hiring:
- What community service are you or have you been involved in?
- What would be the main rewards you feel that you would get from this role?
- What do you love about this organization?
- Do you donate to causes? Tell me about your experience as a donor.
If you lost your Andar/360 power user, you should hire someone who enjoys using technology, interpreting data, is a self-starter and is results oriented. Data is at the heart of everything in Andar, so hiring someone that understands the importance of data integrity is critical. Do you need help with a job description? You can reach out to a power user in the Andar Software Users Slack Community and ask for theirs as a good starting point.
Employee Turnover: What to do going forward
Prioritize Knowledge Sharing
If an employee leaves, will other team members be able to fill the gap quickly? If not, you should prioritize knowledge sharing within your organization. Making knowledge sharing a priority means clearly stating that training others takes precedence over other tasks. For example, you could schedule a weekly Teach Me Something meeting with all Andar/360 users in your organization. A team member could select a different topic each week to share their knowledge. Tip: be sure to record these Teach Me Something sessions! Before long, you will have a valuable repository of internal training videos on various topics and areas of the software.
Document Your Processes
Documentation serves as knowledge transfer, and when onboarding a new hire, documentation can help them understand critical background information regarding your processes. For example, each organization will have their own data standards and data integrity guidelines; these should be clear and easy to follow so that a new employee can continue to implement them. If valuable knowledge is not transferred into proper documentation, it can easily be lost.
Create a Succession Plan
Succession planning is a strategy for identifying and developing future leaders for significant roles in your organization at all levels. It helps you prepare for contingency, and you can begin by answering these questions:
- What's the day-to-day impact if our Andar/360 power user left our organization?
- If we were to hire an Andar/360 power user internally, who would be the strongest candidate? Would they need training? If so, what type?
After identifying someone within your organization as an upcoming Andar/360 power user, let them know. If they need training, make sure you invest in it ahead of time by creating a professional development plan for them. If there's no one within your organization to fill in if your power user leaves, think about how you can bring knowledge sharing and documentation as a practice into your organization today.
Invest in Ongoing Learning Opportunities
By ensuring that all your team members who use Andar/360 participate in learning opportunities, the wealth of knowledge will grow. There are e-classes, the Andar Software User Group Community, and the upcoming Andar Software Users Group Online Conference. With the Users Group Conference this year, you also get full access to the on-demand recording library of the sessions and keynotes. We encourage you to share these with all users in your organization.
The Andar Software Users Group Conference is April 14-15, 2021. Register now for the EARLY BIRD price of $450 that includes access to the online event and session recordings for all employees of your organization.