‘Meaningful’ work less important in charities than business

Howard Lake | 25 March 2014 | News

Fewer charities than businesses think that providing “meaningful and rewarding work” is a key factor in engaging staff.
An online survey of HR contacts conducted by training and mentoring firm Inspire Motivate and Engage (IME) found that 60 per cent of charity HRs cited this compared to 87 per cent of their colleagues in the commercial sector.
Despite this, charity HRs did not think it would inhibit their efforts to attract talented people – 65 per cent identified finding talented new employees as one of the main HR challenges for their organisations this year, the lowest-rated of a number of issues, including lack of a pay rise (69 per cent), reduced training budgets (85 per cent) and “overwhelmed” employees  (70 per cent).
“This result surprised me,” said Claire Atkinson, IME’s ceo. “Charity workers already have meaning in their work due to the very nature of what they do and the positive impacts made as a result. This however is not the case for many small businesses and is an area of concern for HR managers in this group.”
According to the survey, the best ways to engage charity employees would be by providing career development opportunities (cited by 92 per cent of HRs) and career growth for the top performing staff (80 per cent).
More than 600 charities were invited to participate, with 50 charities and 45 businesses completing the survey.
IME has launched a new corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative providing funding for third sector training courses to employees who would not be able to access such programmes without financial support. The programme provides grants for employee training, with 200 places available to charities across the country.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.