TPP Not for Profit is a recruitment consultancy specialising in meeting the needs of organisations in the charity, arts and public sectors. Each month we cover a recruitment or retention topic from the viewpoint of the third sector.
Finding the right person for your organisation is essential, but it can be difficult to find those candidates that tick all the boxes on your job description and person specification. It can pay to sometimes try more creative ways of finding those candidates, especially passive candidates who are not actively looking for a new role.
This month we look at 8 types of creative recruitment adverts, using examples from the web that caught our eye (although not always for the right reasons!)
1. Before even applying these organisations tested their skills.
2. These certainly weren’t proof read!
3. These are enough to make you feel claustrophobic
Imagine if one of your key employees left. You need to find a replacement, and in a hurry. It can be tempting to look at your best, more productive employees and think “we need someone just like them”. After all, they are your top employees, so more of them will be more of a good thing, right?
Well, not necessarily. We’ve previously written about how important it is for charities to embrace diversity, and this is a classic mistake employers can make. Recruiting a workforce made up entirely of people like you can ultimately lead to sterility and an end to progress.
Why is it a bad idea?
Having a team who all have a similar background and similar points of view can easily lead to a lack of new ideas. A little bit of creative tension is great for inspiring people – you need people who can contribute different perspectives, can bounce ideas off of one another and disagree with each other.
Even more than in most organisations, it’s important for charities to maintain a diverse staff. Although charities now generally have a more diverse workforce than in private sector companies, the third sector as a whole still struggles with the perception that charity employees are all white and middle class. The sector also has a moral duty to uphold equality and diversity, and a diverse workforce is important to reflect the background of service users.
Why does it happen?
We are all genetically predisposed to like people like us, as we naturally feel that we ‘get’ them and that we can trust them. Candidates who share interests with their interviewer can chat and make small talk more easily, which makes an interview feel much more comfortable and successful.
This is particularly true with referrals, often a key source for internal recruitment. Employees tend to know people like them, and the added weight of recommendations means that those candidates have a greater chance of being hired.
What can you do about it?
It is important to note at this point that you don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Avoiding hiring clones doesn’t mean you do not want to replicate previous successes within your team. The key is separating out a candidate’s motivations and ability to handle a role from their personality, background and interests.
The best way to remain objective is to agree the criteria necessary for the role, score candidates against that and make your decision based on those scores. Behavioural interviewing will help you to stay neutral and focussed on the candidate’s ability to do the job, rather than their personality. Avoid relying on your gut feeling and consider using psychometric testing to remove even more bias from the interview process.
It’s always a good idea to invite a couple of wild cards to interview. Even if they don’t work out, it can be rewarding just meeting with them and give you access to new ideas and points of view.
How TPP can help
If you’re struggling to find someone to fit a role, it’s always worth talking to a specialist recruiter like TPP. We are experts at refining job descriptions and person specifications to make sure only key attributes are included. We are also a professional third party, so less susceptible to the natural bias that employers feel towards the personality types of their current employees.
By Jayne Morris, Chief Executive at TPP Not for Profit.
Charities are very good at encouraging private sector companies to give their staff time off to volunteer, but how many have their own policies in place to support their own employees in volunteering? In this article, we look at the benefits of promoting volunteering to your organisation’s staff and the different ways in which you can support them.
Why encourage your staff to volunteer?
Charities may think that encouraging their own employees to volunteer may simply be taking them away from their desk for no real benefit, but this is far from the truth.
Your employees have chosen to work in the charity sector and obviously want to support good causes. It is likely that many of them are already involved in some sort of voluntary activity. By allowing them time to help other organisations, you are both supporting the sector as a whole and showing your employees that you value them and recognise the value of their volunteer work.
Giving a workforce opportunities for volunteering has been proven to improve productivity, morale, and retention. This is as true for third sector organisations as for those in the private sector. An occasional change of scene and a bit of variety in a role can make a huge difference in improving someone’s happiness, as well as giving them a new perspective and the opportunity to look at their current role in a new way.
Volunteering is an excellent and extremely cost-effective way for staff to develop new skills and learn from other organisations. Charities are very good at sharing best practice, but there’s no substitute for being on the ‘shop floor’ of an organisation to learn how they really do things. Some organisations even include volunteering done in performance reviews and promotion decisions.
Having your own staff volunteering policy in place could help support your argument when going to the private sector to ask for time or funding. It’s a great way to demonstrate to companies that you truly believe volunteering is valuable.
How can you encourage volunteering?
There are various different ways in which you can approach volunteering in your organisation, depending on the size and make up of its workforce. When choosing what to put in your volunteering policy, you need to balance the potential benefits of volunteering against any impact of staff being away from their desks.
As a first step, you could take a proportion of your staff out of the office for a short period of time to work on a specific volunteering project. Many private sector companies approach these opportunities as team-building exercises. However, these short-term projects can be difficult to organise and don’t always benefit the recipients in the long term.
You could find another organisation to partner with – perhaps a local charity or one with overlapping aims. You could then ‘swap’ volunteer employees on a regular basis in a mutually beneficial arrangement; both parties learning from one another’s experience.
Probably the most flexible option is to allocate a certain amount of paid leave each year for volunteering. Each staff member can then choose where, how and when they use their own volunteering leave, and an employee’s support for a charity can be sustained over the long term.
Rather than give paid leave for all volunteering, some organisations choose instead to match employees’ volunteering time. So for every hour a member of staff volunteers in their own time, they receive a matched hour of paid leave, up to a specified limit. This requires a bit more commitment on the part of your employees, but can be a less frightening prospect for smaller organisations.
So what next?
Once you have decided which option best suits your organisation, make sure you have a policy in place which is circulated to all employees (you can find an example policy template here). Whichever option you choose, your employees will certainly be appreciative. And remember, volunteering must always be optional and must be done for another organisation, not the employee’s own charity, or it is simply extra unpaid work.
TPP give all of our own employees 5 days volunteering leave a year, and many of our staff are trustees or regular volunteers for various charities. You can find out more about the volunteering that our staff do on our website.
By Penny Antoniou, Social Care Manager at TPP Not for Profit
Recent government announcements to sanction job seekers who refuse zero-hour contracts, have received a mixed response. With recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics revealing that 1.4 million people are on zero hour contracts, which according to the ONS has increased more than threefold since 2010, we take a look at the benefits, drawbacks and alternatives for charities and other not for profit organisations when considering these types of contracts.
The CIPD results showed that 34% of charities compared with 24% of public sector employers and 17% of the private sector employ staff on zero hours contracts.
Why would you use them?
Zero hour contracts are flexible for both employer and employee. For many charities,operating is becoming increasingly unpredictable, due to changes in funding and the way their services operate; such as service users being given their own budget to spend with providers of care. Therefore they don’t have a regular need for staff and these contracts allow them to meet their users’ needs without wasting funds. For employees who don’t need a set number of hours each week, such as students/carers, zero hour contracts give them the flexibility to work when it suits them.
The government have recently been pushing for more flexibility in terms of staff working hours, home working etc, and the charity sector has traditionally offered more flexibility than commercial organisations. Zero hour contracts offer a lot of flexibility for staff and, unless stipulated in the contract,allow employees to work for more than one organisation, enabling them to ensure they still have a regular income.
What are the disadvantages?
On the flipside, many people need stability and regular income, so they can manage their everyday bills and commitments. Employees on zero hour contracts can also miss out on benefits, such as pensions, especially when employers offer a certain percentile of salary towards pension contributions.
People on zero hour contracts may not be fully committed to your organisation if they are working for more than one charity and you may still not have staff available when you need them, as they may be working elsewhere.
It can be difficult to work out holiday pay, holiday accrued, whether the contract still exists between assignments, especially if they work for more than one employer. It is important to therefore ensure their work is tracked by HR and a good relationship is managed between the employee and manager.
Zero hour contracts can prevent continuity of care, especially in health care settings where care workers get to know the people they care for and their health needs. Zero hour contracts could result in a breakdown of communication or a lack of staff to cover.
Not for profit organisations need to consider the negative publicity surrounding zero hour contracts. Only last year, organisations such as Turning Point became the target of news stories. Turning Point did respond to this negative press with a statement; however charities should consider the negative impact on donations and to potential donors compared with the savings they make on these contracts.
Points to consider
Before implementing contracts such as these, organisations should think about their aims and ethos and ensure any contract is consistent with this. Give these contracts to the smallest amount of your overall staffing numbers as possible and regularly review how these are working. Where possible, ensure zero hours staff are receiving the same employment rights as staff with part-time or full-time contracts.
Ensure you both have a copy of the employment contract and if they are managed by a team/line manager, ensure they are aware of their contract and work in-line with their employment status. At all times the contract should be of benefit to you as an employer and to the employee.
Consider other types of staffing contracts, such as annualised hours. This offers the employee a fixed salary where they work more hours when there is a need and less otherwise. If more hours are required in addition to the fixed hours, you could consider paying overtime.
Temporary or contract staff also offer flexibility without commitment. By working closely with an agency such as TPP, you could have a bank of candidates available at short notice who are actively looking for temporary work.For further information on our temporary services please contact us on 020 7198 6000 or email info@tpp.co.uk.
For further information or advice on zero hour contracts, you may find the following websites useful:
Finding the right person for your organisation is essential, but it can be difficult to find those candidates that tick all the boxes on your job description and person specification. It can pay to sometimes try more creative ways of finding those candidates, especially passive candidates who are not actively looking for a new role. 
