HR Practices
Help organizations "walk the talk" internally. Human resources can set the standard for how employees are treated, not only at the time of hire, but also throughout the employment life cycle. Internal human resource practices are a good place to begin the journey of improving job quality and equity; a sound foundation in human resources is essential for advanced work down the road.
The HR Practice Approach
This lever focus on making changes internal to your own organization based on your own pain points. Common pain points include cost or time to hire, turn over of staff, opportunities for internal advancement and promotion, diversity of candidates, diversity of leadership roles and productivity and engagement. Often, such changes involve close coordination with the human resources office in order to understand current benefits, pay structures, or learning and development opportunities. Change can be made at different levels of the organization including:
- Department: Direct influence on staff's sense of purpose and meaning as well as the work environment and culture
- Department/HR: Usually shared responsibility for earnings, learning and development, schedules, and voice and representation
- HR: Generally centralized responsibility for benefits and safety/security
Sample Ways to Use this Lever
- Data Collection: Reviewing existing information such as HR documentation, attraction, retention and advancement statistics or salary data and benchmarking against the market as well as organizational job quality commitments
- Implementation: Adapting or expanding benefits and resources to better align with job quality principles such as the addition of remote work options, 4x10s schedules, changes to paid leave, retirement match programs, internal tuition assistance, loan forgiveness, or other upskilling incentive programs for front-line staff
- Employee Engagement: Performance of staff surveys, focus groups, leadership coffee talks, stay interviews or similar to better understand what employees value and where opportunities for improvement exist
To get started with HR Practices, use the self assessment and quick start guide.
Get More Information
Help organizations "walk the talk" internally. Human resources can set the standard for how employees are treated, not only at the time of hire, but also throughout the employment life cycle. Internal human resource practices are a good place to begin the journey of improving job quality and equity; a sound foundation in human resources is essential for advanced work down the road.
The HR Practice Approach
This lever focus on making changes internal to your own organization based on your own pain points. Common pain points include cost or time to hire, turn over of staff, opportunities for internal advancement and promotion, diversity of candidates, diversity of leadership roles and productivity and engagement. Often, such changes involve close coordination with the human resources office in order to understand current benefits, pay structures, or learning and development opportunities. Change can be made at different levels of the organization including:
- Department: Direct influence on staff's sense of purpose and meaning as well as the work environment and culture
- Department/HR: Usually shared responsibility for earnings, learning and development, schedules, and voice and representation
- HR: Generally centralized responsibility for benefits and safety/security
Sample Ways to Use this Lever
- Data Collection: Reviewing existing information such as HR documentation, attraction, retention and advancement statistics or salary data and benchmarking against the market as well as organizational job quality commitments
- Implementation: Adapting or expanding benefits and resources to better align with job quality principles such as the addition of remote work options, 4x10s schedules, changes to paid leave, retirement match programs, internal tuition assistance, loan forgiveness, or other upskilling incentive programs for front-line staff
- Employee Engagement: Performance of staff surveys, focus groups, leadership coffee talks, stay interviews or similar to better understand what employees value and where opportunities for improvement exist
To get started with HR Practices, use the self assessment and quick start guide.
Get More Information
Sample steps an organization could take to advance this lever:
Data Collection and Assessment
- Conducting internal review of existing HR documentation to determine alignment with organizational job quality and equity commitments
- Reviewing attraction, retention and advancement statistics over time
- Assessing alignment of program operations guides, manuals and related requirements with job quality and equity commitments
- Conducting salary and equity assessments, with a focus on benchmarking salaries to the market based on job skills and competencies required (not just to other nonprofits)
- Creating or expanding learning and development opportunities for existing staff to increase retention
Design and Implementation
- Redesigning jobs to maximize job quality
- Allocating internal budget to address job quality gaps within the organization
- Designing and implementing changes related to stable and flexible schedules, remote work options, 4x10s schedules, changes to paid leave, and/or other scheduling changes
- Establishing or increasing employer retirement match programs or a home buying incentive benefit (e.g., down-payment assistance program).
- Setting up internal tuition assistance, loan forgiveness, or other upskilling incentive programs for front-line staff.
- Developing internal career path and progression that includes upward mobility opportunities to continue in direct service and/or move into management.
- Developing and funding "shadow roles" for BIPOC staff where an individual is compensated as they are learning about a role a level up.
- Exploring shared services models that could enable consolidation of compliance functions across a set of small nonprofits and enable staff to focus more of their time on the aspects of their jobs that they love, such as serving the public
👋 Learn How to Implement the HR Practices Lever
STEP 3
Selected your lever(s)? Now move on to documenting your goals.