The employees or Human Resources (HR) within the NPO, Oxfam GB were identified as an important contributing factor to its overall sustainability. At a deeper level, many variables contributed to the HR dynamics within the organisation, namely:
Sustainability of Oxfam
Human Resources
Partnerships
Credibility
Competition with other
NPOs Funding and
Co-financing arrangements The North-
South Dilemma
Attempts to remain apolitical
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Attractiveness of the work Environment: which refers to how potential employees perceive the favorability of working in the organisation based on its “ability to recruit and retain competent, experienced development workers, policy advisors, etc…thus creating a key enabling environment.” (Int. 1)
Worker Commitment: pertains to the extent to which the employees “actually love what they do” (Int. 4) and their commitment to the issues which the organisation represents as expressed in the following quote:
“…so a lot of people that work with this NGO are also quite commited to the issues, so they kind of give more than they should be giving because they also care about the issues…” (Int. 2)
Quality of Work Output: produced by the employees was cited as a variable
“…that would stand out above a lot of the others…producing good quality work will make a difference…it is also picked up by donors and the reputation of the organisation spreads as often this stuff is by word of mouth in this area of work.” (Int. 2)
Salaries: refers to the amount of money employees receive for the services they render, which is dependent on the Funding available for Salaries which can, if insufficient, affect project delivery and implementation as stated here:
“…we may not be able to assign appropriate number of staff to work in such projects as we may not have sufficient funding to cover such expenses.” (Int. 5)
Attrition: refers to a gradual reduction in the number of employees in an organisation due to them resigning, retiring and/or sometimes due to death. This results in the loss of qualified and skilled workers who cannot be easily replaced.
“NPOs lose very skilled people every day because these people look for better paying conditions, better working conditions, and also due to the fact that there is an assumption that there will be security elsewhere…” (Int. 3)
Therefore, it is a significant issue in NPO sustainability as “it is very difficult for a non-profit to retain talent…particularly against government. We can’t compete with governmental salaries.”
(Int. 6)
128 In addition, the Oxfam Southern Africa Regional Funding Strategy cites internal staff capacity as a significant organisational challenge affecting work output in the form of inadequate or inefficient project/programme delivery and implementation, and especially hindering the production of quality proposals for donors and funding:
“The inadequate capacity of staff coupled with prolonged vacant posts remaining unfilled due to difficulties in finding qualified people with the right skills is still one of the biggest challenges the country and regional teams have been facing.
Consequently, with such a limited staff capacity and not finding the right skills, it sometimes has become a challenge to the teams to deliver on the agreed programmes as well as to develop quality proposals that have a high rate of success.”
(Kim, 2014, p. 12) According to this strategy document, staff turnover and attrition rates are considerably high, particularly with regards to the Funding teams in the organisation,
“…with almost half of them recruited in the last six months.”
(Kim, 2014, p. 12) In addition, low partner capacity was identified as a significant factor impairing the efficacy with which projects are implemented, thus contributing to consistent underspends:
“…we had underspends of approximately forty percent in the last fiscal year. Some of the causes of underspends are: (1) Low partner capacity which affects the pace at which projects are implemented…”
(Kim, 2014, p. 9) The most significant result of this has been a decline in the timing and development of donor proposals and reports, two important aspects of accruing funding and donations. Donor proposals of good quality will facilitate funding, while reports of good quality will ensure the continuation of such funding. Therefore, both have a significant influence on the funding received by the organisation, and the sustainability of such funding sources. Donors/funders rely
129 on the NPO for regular reports about how the funding is being utilised and it is the obligation of the NPO to not only provide reports, but to ensure that such reports are of high quality as well.
High quality reports that are submitted on time tells donors that the organisation is committed to using their donations or funding in an accountable and transparent manner and speaks to the level of efficiency of the organisation (Quality of work output). However, the Southern African regional affiliates of Oxfam manage to submit just sixty one percent of all donor reports on time as depicted in the following table obtained from the Southern Africa Regional Funding Strategy (2013, pg.13).
Table 4-1: Number and percentage of donor reports submitted on time and not submitted on time (Southern Africa Regional Funding Strategy, 2013, p.13)
On Time Submission Overdue Submission Total Reports Submission(#) Reports (#) Percentage(%) Reports (#) Percentage(%)
Angola 3 38% 5 63% 8
Malawi 36 78% 10 22% 46
Mozambique 0 0% 4 100% 4
South Africa 0 0% 8 100% 8
Zambia 8 67% 4 33% 12
Zimbabwe 55 65% 29 35% 84
DRC 0 0% 5 100% 5
Total 102 61% 65 39% 167
As the quality of work output drops, for instance through the late submission of donor reports, donors are likely to contribute less funding, or to not donate at all, being dissatisfied with the organisation’s level of inefficiency. This eventually contributes to a smaller portion of funding that is allowed to be channeled into the human resource component of the affiliate or programme. This interferes with Oxfam’s endeavours to offer a:
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“…total remuneration package that is relevant to the local market but includes broadly similar offerings across the countries where Oxfam operates.”
(Pinho et al., 2014, p. 32) From the above, we can deduce that the following are some of the variables operative in the HR dynamics within the organisation:
Table 4-2: Variables influencing HR dynamics in the organisation
Salaries
Attractiveness of work environment Worker commitment
Quality of work output Funding available for salaries Attrition
Qualified workers
We shall discuss the feedback structure created by these variables in the following chapter.