Free HR Seminar for Not for Profit Organisations

TPP Not for Profit are holding a free HR breakfast seminar on Thursday 20th Oct at Toynbee Hall, London.  The seminar will be an employment law update, covering several in-depth examples of recent case law, with an emphasis on the practical actions that HR Managers of not for profits, or those responsible for HR in their organisation, will need to take.

Follow the link below for more details or to book your free place>
http://www.tpp.co.uk/hr-seminar-oct-11

5 common traps to avoid when conducting appraisals

Annual performance appraisals can be an essential tool to maintaining success in not for profit organisations, but many employees view the appraisal process as a box-ticking exercise that never leads to real change and is only useful for inspiring Dilbert cartoons.

But if done correctly, appraisals can recognise, reward and promote excellent performance, establish baselines for employment decisions and provide notice to employees who need improvement or development.

Appraisals can only achieve this if done properly and poorly-conducted appraisals can do more damage to an organisation than not holding any at all.  Here are some common mistakes that managers make in the appraisal process and what you can do to avoid them.


1. Over-generous evaluations

Many top companies force managers to force-rank employees during appraisals, so only a set percentage of employees can ever receive the best performance rating.  While this may be too harsh for the not for profit sector, giving employees an over-generous evaluation can lead to a number of problems.  It’s easily done as managers usually want the best for their employees, but it can provide those staff members with a false sense of security and devalues above-average performance by others.  And if an employee is criticised or penalised for performance issues in the future, any discrepancy with their appraisal may give them a basis for legal action.

There are two key ways to avoid this.  When judging an employee’s performance, consider each criteria as average to start off with and then adjust up or down.  It is psychologically much easier to give an employee an accurate evaulation this way than grading down from a perfect score.  The other method is to judge an employee against their peers – is their performance stronger or weaker than average?  This will help make your best (and worst) employees stand out from the average majority.


2. Focussing on most recent performance

When preparing for an appraisal, the last few months will obviously be foremost in your mind.  But an effective annual appraisal must give equal weight to the full 12 months, or employees who have a burst of productivity right before an appraisal will have an unfair advantage over those who have produced consistent results over the year.

Managers should also keep track of their employee’s performance over the year and bring up any variations between time periods.


3. Obsessing about quantifiable data

Managers often feel that in order to deliver objective evaluations, they have to stick to performance data that can be quantified, or counted.  However, objectivity simply means that opinions must be given without personal prejudice, not that opinions should be discounted in favour of figures.  After all, success in many roles is simply not quantifiable.  It’s always best to give solid examples of past performance to back up an evaluation, but they do not necessarily have to consist of countable units.

After all, the most important questions for an employee in an evaluation are things like: How am I doing?  Are you pleased with my work?  Is there a future for me within this organisation?  None of these questions have quantifiable answers.


4. Lack of focus on performance

A good appraisal is about only one thing; how well that employee has achieved their job goals.  Therefore, any discussion about timekeeping, attitude, dress etc should not be included in an appraisal discussion unless it directly affects an employee’s performance.

There is a natural human bias for managers to favour employees who think and act like themselves, which can give some staff an unfair advantage at appraisal time.  It is much more important to concentrate on whether an employee delivered the desired results than whether they followed the same process you would have done.

Sticking purely to results will also help to avoid inadvertent stereotyping, such as penalising employees who may appear less dedicated because they don’t stay late at night.


5. Treating appraisals as negotiations

Many appraisals are prefaced by both the manager and employee completing the same evaluation form.  This can have the unfortunate effect of making the appraisal into a negotiation as managers compromise in order to gain agreement from the employee.

While self evaluation is a useful starting point, ultimately the appraisal is a formal record of your opinion, as the manager, on the quality of the employee’s work.  Employees should be asked for their opinions on any feedback they are given, but the objective of this is to ensure that they understand your perspective, not to ensure that they agree with it.


An effective performance appraisal process can be an extremely valuable tool for any organisation, but in many of them the process has overshadowed the effect.  Simply filling out forms and conducting interviews does not measure employee performance.  Make sure you are not sabotaging the effectiveness of your appraisals.

More advice on conducting appraisals is available from the CIPD.






Note: This article should not be construed as legal advice pertaining to specific factual situations.

Recruiting for hard-to-fill roles

At TPP Not for Profit, we recognise that some roles within the not for profit sector are notoriously hard to fill. These traditionally include charity fundraising or marketing and communications vacancies , as well as roles for qualified healthcare professionals such as specialist nurses. Particularly for smaller organisations, filling these roles with the right calibre of candidate can be extremely difficult. Obviously using a recruitment consultancy with specialist experience of recruiting these candidates will help, but here are some further tips on ways to fill your difficult vacancies.

Why are some roles hard to fill?

There are several reasons why your organisation might be finding it difficult to recruit a suitable new employee.

• The most common reason is that the job requires skills which are in short supply, such as major donor fundraising 
• Your organisation is in a location where there is a shortage of labour and attracting employees to the area is difficult
• The salary you are able to offer is below market average and you are unable to compete with other organisations
• The benefits package offered is not as attractive as those offered by others
• The organisation has recently gone through a well-publicized restructuring or series of layoffs, or received negative publicity, which can put potential candidates off

Define your search criteria

If you are struggling to find candidates that exactly match your person specification, one of the most obvious places to start is by revisiting the qualifications required. Many skills gaps reported by not for profit organisations are related to job specific and technical skills, rather than soft skills such as team working. When it comes to recruiting the perfect new employee, TPP believes that cultural fit is at least as important as qualifications. Hard skills can be taught, but soft skills are generally much harder to learn.

Go through all of the skills and competencies mentioned in your person specification and decide which are easy to find, hard to find, easy to learn and hard to learn. Classifying the qualifications of a role in this way allows you to rank them in order of importance, and judge candidates accordingly. For example, if a candidate lacks skills that are hard to find but easy to learn, you may wish to rank them higher than a candidate who has those skills but lacks other, harder to learn characteristics.

Working with a recruitment partner, such as TPP Not for Profit, will give you an impartial point of view on whether your candidate expectations are realistic.

Widen your pool of candidates

Now you have considered which qualifications are essential, and which you might compromise on, you can look at bringing in different kinds of candidates in different ways.

One of the most obvious ways to give yourself a broader pool of candidates to choose from is to consider employing someone from outside the not for profit sector. As long as the candidate is still passionate about your organisation’s cause and has transferrable skills, a lack of sector experience may not necessarily be a stumbling block. In fact, having fresh blood with no preconceptions may provide your organisation with a valuable new point of view and ensure you have a diverse workforce.  Considering candidates from different industry backgrounds can really open up your options.

If the skills required for the role are relatively easy to learn, you could also consider taking on a less experienced employee at a lower pay rate and training them up on the job. This is a cost effective way of filling your role and although it will take at least a few months for your new employee to get up to speed, you should end up with a highly qualified and motivated member of staff.

Use Interim staff

If you simply haven’t got the time to train up a new member of staff, or you don’t have other employees with those competencies to do the training, consider hiring an interim or contract employee. There are three main ways to use interim staff to recruit for hard to fill roles:

• Use the contract period as an extended job interview, to give you a low-risk way of testing how effective a new employee is in the role
• Use an interim employee to give you breathing space to find your ideal permanent member of staff. This will take the pressure off and make you less likely to have to settle for a less than ideal candidate
• Hire a highly skilled interim with the specific remit of training up new or existing members of staff so that they can take over the role in the future

Change the role

If you are still struggling to find candidates, especially if they are not in a traditionally hard-to-find niche, this may be a clear signal that the role needs to be redesigned.

Often job descriptions are based on the responsibilities undertaken by a previous incumbent, but it may well be that the role evolved over time to suit that particular individual and finding a straight replacement is making your candidate search harder than necessary.

Take apart the job description and consider each set of responsibilities individually. Could certain duties be undertaken by other existing members of staff, leaving the remaining responsibilities as part of a more consistent role? Or should you actually be recruiting for two members of staff instead of one (usually a senior and a junior employee)?


Review your offering

If you are struggling with other organisations for candidates, remember that competing isn’t necessarily about offering more money. You could offer better benefits, work-life balance or simply have a cause that resonates more strongly with the candidate.

Flexible working is one of the prime attractions for candidates working in the not for profit sector, and increasing the opportunities for this will almost always help to attract more or higher quality candidates. Consider whether the position could be suitable for a part-time employee or job share. Ensuring opportunities for working from home are advertised in the job description will also help widen your pool of candidates, particularly for organisations in less central locations.

TPP Not for Profit have great deal of knowledge on salary and benefits benchmarks within your sector, and will be able to advise you on putting together a realistic package that will ensure you get the calibre of candidates you require.

Finally, a word of warning…

When interviewing candidates for hard-to-fill roles, be particularly careful to leave them with a positive view of your organisation, whatever the outcome of the interview. Employees in these niche communities are often closely networked and a negative interview experience could damage your employer brand image.


TPP Not for Profit are experts in the recruitment to the not for profit sector, and are often asked to help fill difficult vacancies. We can manage your interview process to ensure all candidates take away a positive image of your brand.

Getting the Most from your Temporary Staff

According to a recent industry survey, nearly a third of UK organisations are intending to increase the number of temporary workers they employ over the next 12 months.

Temporary and interim staff make up a vital part of the third sector, and it is relatively simple to ensure that your organisation gets full value for money from its temporary employees.

When should you use temporary or interim staff?

There are many occasions on which it is more sensible to use temporary than permanent staff:

The most obvious advantage to using temporary staff is in giving your workforce flexibility.  TPP can supply temps at the last minute to cover eventualities such as holiday, sickness or parental leave.  Letting temporary employees handle the routine functions of your organisation can allow regular staff to concentrate on critical issues and maximise efficiency.

TPP temps and interim employees are highly skilled and experienced, and can help out with projects that require specific knowledge or expertise that your permanent staff members simply don’t have.  Hiring specialist temporary staff also means that they should be able to hit the ground running, without a long induction or training period.

Temporary staff are the ideal solution to cover periods of increased activity, perhaps following a marketing campaign, or seasonal fluctuations.  Using temporary staff at these times relieves stress among permanent staff members, which can help to reduce absenteeism and staff turnover in the long run.

In this period when many organisations are challenged financially, it makes sense to explore the possibilities of using temporary instead of permanent staff to make savings on overheads such as healthcare, taxes, insurance and benefits.

Temporary staff can also be an influx of fresh blood for your organisation, bringing with them new ideas and opinions.  This can be particularly valuable if your organisation has a very low staff turnover, as it keeps activity from going stale.

It is increasingly common for organisations to reduce the risk of recruiting for a new position by trialling potential staff on a temporary or contract basis beforehand.  This is a particularly useful tactic when recruiting for hard-to-fill roles, as you can hire temporary staff who lack some of the required experience but are a good personality fit, and train them up while on the job.  These employees will also often accept a lower pay rate until they are fully trained, making this a cost effective solution to your recruitment issues.

Temporary or contract?

A temporary worker is generally defined as one supplied by a consultancy on an adhoc basis, usually without a defined period of employment. A contract worker, on the other hand, is generally on a fixed term assignment, often employed directly by the client.

TPP generally recommend that if you need help for longer than 3 months, it is usually more cost-efficient to hire on a contract, rather than temporary, basis.  The other circumstance in which you might choose to hire a contract worker is if you need to guarantee cover for a specific project or period of time, as you can factor in a notice period, which would not be relevant for a temporary worker.

How to get the best from your suppliers

Prior to recruitment of a temporary worker, you’ll need to contact your chosen consultancy with a brief including your requirements, essential skills and expected turn-around time.  If you have a regular requirement for temporary staff, it’s worth investing more time with your consultancy to ensure they understand your organisation’s employment culture and structure– this will save time when recruiting for individual roles.

Depending on your requirements, the consultancy will either let you know who will be attending or send over a shortlist of candidates for interview.  Giving your recruitment consultancy regular feedback on temporary employees will greatly help them continue to select the best possible candidates for you.  It can also be worth asking a temporary worker for their feedback at the end of an assignment.

All temps supplied by TPP will already be referenced, saving you time.

Inducting a temporary worker
To get the best out of your temporary workers, it is important to give them a thorough induction when they start.  If you regularly use temporary staff, it’s best to put together an induction checklist to save valuable time when a new employee starts.

The length and detail of an induction will vary depending on the role, but should include at a minimum the following points:

• A brief background of your organisation, why the temporary is there and what you’d like them to achieve
• Health & safety, fire exits etc
• Hours required, including smoking, tea or lunch breaks
• Who they report to, who signs off their timesheets and other team members and/or organisation hierarchy
• Location of toilets and tea/coffee making facilities
• Use of internet/mobile phones etc during work hours

Involvement and Integration

Integrating temporary staff into your own workforce effectively will produce the best results.  After October 2011, when the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 come into force, it will also be a legal requirement for employers to ensure that temporary workers have the same basic employment and working conditions as comparable permanent employees.

• When temporary staff arrive, make sure that someone is assigned to meet and welcome them, show them their work station and let them know who to report to
• If time permits, introducing a temporary employee to other members of the team or organisation will help them feel welcomed and included
• Temporary staff should have access to staff canteens, childcare or similar facilities
• Ensure temporary workers are notified of any internal vacancies, eg via an intranet or notice board
• Make sure your regular staff, particularly at a senior level, understand the value of temporary employees to your organisation and that they respect both them and the contribution they make
• Report back to your consultancy immediately if a temporary worker does not meet your standards or requirements

Motivating temporary workers

Keeping your temporary staff content and motivated will ensure that they perform as effectively as possible for your organisation.  Remember, you may well wish to re-hire current temporary employees or even offer them permanent roles, so it is important to give them a positive impression of your organisation.

One of the most important factors in keeping your temps happy is to ensure that they are paid on time.  Make sure you always book a temporary or interim worker in with your consultancy, rather than directly with the employee, and ensure that their timesheet is signed off in time.  If you know you are not going to be available to authorise a timesheet at a given time, you can make arrangements with your consultancy so that the temporary worker is not penalised.

Wherever possible, temporary workers should be looked after like your permanent staff.  If a temp has done well in their role, a simple expression of appreciation and gratitude is often all it takes to ensure they continue to excel.

You could also consider ways to incentivise your temps, if you think this will help them to perform above expectations.  Paying them for additional hours, letting them clock off early, or offering them commission can all help to reward exceptional work.  TPP can help you decide what would be most appropriate in any given situation.

Temporary workers and VAT

The recent case of Reed Employment Ltd v Revenue & Customs, in which a VAT tribunal ruled that employers hiring temporary workers should pay VAT only on commission, rather than on the whole of their wages, has generated a great deal of interest in the third sector.  If the exemption stands, it could restore most of the value of the VAT exemption on temporary workers which was withdrawn in 2008.

Having lobbied against the concession being removed, TPP have been following the Reed v HMRC case and are currently seeking further advice about the implications this may have on our clients

In the meantime, we recommend that our clients ensure they are prepared for the enforcement of the Agency Worker Regulations and they look at negotiating improved terms with their suppliers of temporary staff, possibly through deals to use consultancies such as TPP exclusively.

TPP and temps

TPP supply temporary, interim and contract staff for all disciplines and at all levels.  We have a pool of experienced and highly skilled candidates to choose from; available at very short notice.

To discuss your organisation’s temporary requirements and how TPP can help, contact us on info@tpp.co.uk or 020 7198 6000.