Resilience, Retention & Recruitment: The three Rs that are keeping you up at night

by Danielle Rocheleau

The sun is shining and it’s clear that people are looking forward to some downtime this summer. Ready to recharge. Keen to reflect. And looking to plan the path ahead. Or perhaps this is just me, since I am so immersed in Laridae’s own strategic planning process! 

Our priorities are directly linked to your priorities. I thought I would share a little of what we have learned keeps you up at night.

It has become clear that among other organizational pressures, the following three are top of mind:

  • Recruiting and retaining great people
  • Prioritizing diversity, integrating equity, and ensuring inclusivity in everything we do
  • Rebuilding a healthy workplace culture

How do we know?

Over the last year, Laridae has been fortunate enough to partner with clients in developing over 30 strategic plans through changing landscapes and has trained and coached over 300 people in the non-profit across a variety of sectors, including:

  • Children’s Treatment
  • Developmental Services
  • Children, Youth and Adult Mental Health
  • Indigenous Family Wellbeing
  • Child Welfare
  • Long-Term Care
  • Housing
  • Community Health Centres
  • Arts & Culture

In the process, leaders bring forward all the complex scenarios affecting non-profits today. We help them work through problems and plan for better outcomes.

Not to mention, as part of our own strategic planning process, we undertook stakeholder engagement sessions with clients past and present, staff, and members of our professional community. (Thank you to everyone who offered us their time and great insight, it is greatly appreciated.)

In this way, we’ve been gathering qualitative data that we will use to shape our strategic direction and to design our current work and offerings.

And if the anecdotal evidence from the communities we serve wasn’t enough, quantitative data is now emerging to underscore the themes we’ve seen emerge in the past year.

For example, the Ontario Nonprofit Network recently shared Statistics Canada data showing that the top obstacles for non-profits across Canada include:

  • recruiting skilled employees (37.6%),
  • retaining skilled employees (33.5%),
  • labour force shortage (32.6%).

Recruitment & Retention

The environment the non-profit sector is working within has changed significantly. One main area that has evolved is the labour market.

Employees are looking for flexibility, prioritizing their time seeking work for organizations that value healthy workplace cultures and boundaries, and are purpose driven. Fortunately, the latter bodes well for the non-profit sector. 

Many non-profits did not receive the funding required to effectively manage the impact of the pandemic on their operations and subsequently lost talent. Others got more funding than they could spend due to the inability to fill open roles.

Non-profits have higher demand for their services than ever before at a time when existing employees are burnt out – and some of that pandemic funding is coming to an end.

We’re seeing low candidate pools, and the sector competing for great people. As if finding and landing candidates wasn’t hard enough, keeping them is an added worry for most organizations today.

A 2020 US study from Nonprofit HR revealed 45% of responding non-profit employees planned to seek new or different employment in the next five years. Of that group, 23% said that non-profits would not be among the types of organizations they intend to pursue.

Losing talent is expensive and can slow an organization’s progress toward goals for months, if not years. Organizations are struggling to keep employees in place – to keep them happy, fulfilled, challenged – but not exhausted by challenge.

With some sectors navigating a fee-for-service landscape, we are seeing employees leap into entrepreneurship. With the increased complexity of the people being served across the social service and community-based health sectors, other employees are transitioning into roles in completely different areas of service.

One way to improve retention (other than a hearty onboarding program and values-supported culture) is a competitive compensation package. We’re seeing a range of creative approaches to enhancing competitive compensation.

Of course, it’s important to note, this doesn’t only mean salary. Employees in the non-profit sector are typically driven by purpose, autonomy, and the opportunity to grow professionally (may sound familiar for our MTP alum). They are seeking places that invest in their team dynamic, their own development pathways, and offer enhanced flexibility to honour work-life balance.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Integrating equity in all we do as service providers is integral to delivering accessible service. We are hearing about fantastic work being accomplished on DEI policies within some organizations, whereas others don’t quite know where to begin. In many cases, we know that trust needs to be rebuilt across diverse communities. Overall, we have seen organizations recognize the need to move from simply discussing DEI to truly moving it into action.

This means reflecting on our internal policies, systems, and approaches, while actively engaging people requiring our services who may not have felt safe engaging with us in the past. It is time to do better. To offer equitable, culturally responsive service in a genuine and empathetic way.

We also know that organizational change is hard. Non-profit leaders are expressing that some team members are taking longer to embrace broader DEI imperatives than others.

New concerns around dealing with racist attitudes or ensuring a safe, inclusive environment are emerging – often compounded by remote work.

Tensions in the workplace are creating tough interpersonal challenges. Managers are balancing difficult but necessary conversations with a need to keep teams intact to meet demand for services.

Workplace Culture

The pandemic has called to question everything we knew about workplaces, and the value of the in-person experience in shaping organizational culture. 

Many new employees were hired onto fully remote teams and are two or nearly three years into their roles – now established members of a team that has quite possibly never met in person. Does it matter?

Back in 2021, non-profit recruitment expert Suzanne Clarke told us that many workplace cultures disappeared when we all went home to work in early 2020. And now, with the demand for flexibility and hybrid working environments, whatever your organization’s culture was, or whatever you thought it was then, it’s time to reimagine it in the current context.

That’s not a skill we could have predicted needing – and many of us just don’t have the toolkit to proceed. How do we build camaraderie without pizza parties, birthday balloons, or team building afternoons?

In service agencies, people are the greatest asset. For multiple reasons, including employee health, wellness, and safety, ultimately resulting in retention and great service delivery, culture needs to run deeper than it once did. It needs to have greater meaning and be applied and reinforced at a different scale.

Clarke suggested ensuring new hires see alignment between stated values and demonstrated behaviours. “Be sure they see and understand what keeps the group together and what keeps you working toward common goals.”

Laridae often works with organizations to help teams lean into their values for guidance and think critically to define what kind of culture they want moving forward.

Where to from here?

Over the past year, we have heard much about the “Great Resignation”. In recent months, we have been hearing about the “Great Resistance”, referring to uncharacteristic levels of resistance to change showing up in work environments, to considering flexibility, and to focusing on equity.

We know how tired everyone is. And as we have been reminded consistently since 2020, change is inevitable.

But what if we paused and reflected on the opportunities being presented to every workplace? Perhaps that old culture wasn’t working so well even pre-COVID.

It’s a time to explore organizational resilience. Focus on retaining our great teams. Build our healthy workplace cultures to best recruit new talent.

Although our strategic plan is not yet finished, I can share what I do know:

  • The above areas are critical to the strength of the non-profit sector and Laridae is leaning into, learning about, and developing our capacity to continue supporting your needs.
  • We are also reshaping our Community Learning Events for the Fall, connecting you with key professionals, leveraging Laridae’s core strengths in group dynamics, and helping you with practical tools, workshops, and strategies to help you soar. Exact dates and titles are coming soon, but topics will include:
    • Evolution of Workplace Culture Through Change – September
    • Diversity 101: Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression – September
    • Non-profit Governance Essentials – October
    • Attracting and Retaining Great People – October
    • Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace – November

If you would like to talk through your situation and the benefits that Laridae’s strategic planning or training expertise can bring to your organization, please reach out. You can book a call with me at your convenience by using my Calendly link, here, or reach out using the form below.