Welcome to the inaugural issue of UST’s Quarterly Nonprofit Digest, a bite-sized overview of the employer strategies, sector statistics, and resources that UST shared throughout the most recent months.

This quick 4-step reference guide—highlighting key findings from Q1—will provide you with the innovative employee engagement strategies you (and your staff) need to succeed. In this rendition of the quarterly digest, discover strategies for:

• Streamlining your onboarding processes
• Creatively engaging your dedicated staff
• Crafting a positive, vibrant company culture

You’ll also gain access to helpful checklists, survey templates and best practice tips for developing both new and existing employees.

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The employee experience is how employees feel about what they encounter and observe over the course of their employee journey at a nonprofit organization—involving many different interactions and touch points across your organization. When looking at the journey of an employee—from the first day on the job, to the day of their exit interview—take into consideration their needs and how they evolve over time. 

From an HR perspective, viewing the employee experience as a whole can be overwhelming. By identifying the various stages and assigning a point person to each stage of the employee journey can make it easier to adjust or apply new processes.

The employee experience can be broken down into four main stages, each stage identifying a shift in what the employee needs, from the application process to when the employee leaves the organization.

Application Process

Think of applicants as a customer, create a simple and straightforward application process. A complicated, time-consuming process could put you at risk of losing potential candidates due to a rigorous application process. Responding to all candidates, regardless if they make it to the interview stage, should be a part of your process. Unsuccessful candidates may re-apply down the line for a role they’re better suited for or could be a potential customer one day. Treating each applicant with respect goes a long way as this is a representation of your brand.

Onboarding Process

Ensuring that you successfully onboard a new employee is critical. How do you know if your current processes are right for the journey of the employee? Be willing to ask and listen for feedback from the moment an employee joins your team. Utilize technology that makes it easier to collect their views, questions, and feedback through out the employee journey. For instance, onboarding surveys are a great way to collect and act on the feedback provided. With new employees, they can provide a fresh perspective on how your company operates and even offer insight on experiences with previous employers. Taking advantage of the opportunity to listen to employees during this stage, can help prevent minor issues from becoming bigger problems down the line. A smooth onboarding process can result in immediate productivity and long-term sustainability.  

Create a Sense of Belonging

Once an employee is established and has found their footing within their role, they need new challenges to continue their learning and development. These challenges motivate them, creates a boost in both engagement and productivity—a win-win for the employee and the organization. A lack of progression can lead to a decrease in productivity and/or employees looking elsewhere for new employment. It’s also important to gather feedback on a consistent basis, this shows you’re actively listening and taking action on their insight to help develop your staff.

The Departure of the Employee

When an employee decides to leave, it’s important to have an exit strategy in place to create a smooth departure. This is a vital part of the employee journey as the exit interview is an opportunity to gather honest feedback. This insight could help your organization make improvements to increase your employee retention and improve your employer brand.

Nonprofit organizations need to ensure they are focusing on the employee experience—aligning and understanding the stages of the employee journey. Employees can provide different types of feedback, all depending on their stage in the employee experience, so be sure to listen and have the tools in place to gather their feedback. Use their insights to improve how your organization operates, this offers an opportunity to better engage your staff and retain them for a longer duration.

What is inclusion in the workplace? Inclusion is defined as a proactive approach in the recruiting and engaging of people with different perspectives, backgrounds, and demographic identities. Nonprofit leaders see the importance of building a more inclusive workplace as it helps employees feel more comfortable, valued, and productive. Creating a workplace that is welcoming and inclusive, encourages employees to be innovative while also cultivating a culture of accountability.

Having a workplace with a diverse mixture of people who all feel valued within a unified, positive culture can be essential to unlocking an organization’s full potential. Employees have the ability to flourish in a diverse workplace and organizations can benefit from new ideas, new skill sets and employee engagement.

Here’s four strategies to help create and cultivate an inclusive working environment:

1) Applaud Differences Amongst Your Employees: An important way to show employees that you embrace and respect their backgrounds and traditions is to encourage inclusiveness in the workplace. For example, offering a separate space or private room for prayer or meditation. Employees with certain religious backgrounds can use this space to practice daily religious rituals without being disturbed.

2) Train & Support Leadership Team: Leaders play an essential role is encouraging inclusion strategies and efforts. Offering mandatory training and discussion groups to your leadership team is vital as they are acting role models to your employees. These types of trainings can help leaders learn how to better manage a diverse team. Also, it can help leaders become aware of certain biases, teach them how to be an active listener and to actively encourage different viewpoints.

3) Take Time to Listen to Your Employees: To have a better understanding of the needs and wants of your employees, conducting a survey can help highlight where the inclusion and engagement issues currently exist. Taking the time to complete an assessment of an organization’s current demographics and processes can be a great starting point to learn where to apply new strategies that promote inclusiveness.  

4) Create a Productive Meeting Protocol: Meetings should be designed to allow everyone in the meeting to feel comfortable to share ideas and contribute feedback. Consider distributing meeting materials in advance and listing out questions and topics to be discussed during the meeting. For workers in different time zones, consider rotating meeting times. This shows consideration to those employees having to start their workday earlier or later in order to attend the meeting.  

While introducing these strategies may vary from business to business, the most important thing is that every employee is on the path towards a more inclusive work environment. The potential for positive outcomes when striving for inclusion can be significant, often resulting in new ideas, fresh perspectives and helping employees perform at a higher level.

While remote work was on the rise even before the COVID-19 pandemic, most employees taking advantage of working from home still had some form of in-person relationship with their employer and fellow teammates. While it is still relatively rare for companies to hire employees to work remote from day one, we can see that this practice is changing. As stay-at-home orders continue in many states, more employers are having to rely on virtual recruitment and finding this will most likely become the new standard for all future recruiting.

From the perspective of talent acquisition and nonprofit business leaders, the most significant challenges being faced by organizations are resulting in changes that will continue after the pandemic. Some of these changes have resulted in unforeseen positive outcomes—creating a whole new outlook on what a day looks like in the office.

Here are four major changes revealed by the global pandemic and the lasting impact they will have on what the future of work looks like:

1) At-Home Working Environment: As organizations adapt to a remote workforce, the more willing they are to make a permanent change going forward. This will have a direct impact on the need for office space; many organizations are already considering downsizing the amount of office space needed, in turn saving money on overhead costs. Organizations should have a thoughtful plan in place prior to making their operation fully remote. By sharing remote working policies with staff and providing additional training to managers overseeing a remote team, you’ll ensure a much smoother transition.

2) Recruiting Becomes Virtual: As we’ve seen in recent months, talent acquisition teams have incorporated new recruitment practices—ranging from interviewing candidates over video, to giving job offers without meeting a candidate in person. Virtual recruiting has proven to have such success it will most likely carry over as a new process post pandemic.

3) Technology is Priority #1: Many organizations have come reliant on advanced technologies to help navigate this new remote working world. Talent acquisition teams have seen how technology has streamlined onboarding processes and how this is the more desired approach by both hiring managers and new employees. While incorporating a more technology-based recruitment system will require more training, it will increase privacy and security. 

4) What Does Success Look Like Now: An organization can’t remain a float without their employees and now, more than ever, it’s important to listen and invest in your employees. This pandemic has forced organizations to make necessary investments in technology to ensure a functional working model. In turn creating significant benefits for both employees and their employers.

Now, the question everyone keeps asking is “what will happen when stay-at-home orders are lifted?” While there’s much talk about “getting back to normal,” some have come to terms with the notion that it isn’t most likely to happen. As organizations’ country-wide learn how to make remote work more functional, the possibilities of being able to leverage a larger pool of candidates, particularly those high-skilled hard-to-fill positions, is likely to become increasingly appealing. Talent acquisition and human resources leaders adapting to virtual interviews, offers and onboarding, has streamlined recruitment processes, while saving money. Nonprofit organizations will be able to use these recent changes to improve future recruiting outcomes.