Askncvo.org.uk

by sjrowe53

HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES IN VOLUNTARY ORGANISATION

*Shanmukaha Rao Padala     ** N.V.S.Suryanarayana *** Goteti Himabindu

Human resource practice aims at effective utilization of manpower for accomplishing the organization objectives. The vitality of the organization depends upon the quality of its human resource. Its effective utilization is a sine qua non of the rate of growth of any economy regardless of the structure and system of economy, and the governance.  No society and no nation can be proud of its human resource unless there is a systematic and sustainable development of capacities of its people and convert the human resource into human capital (Daleela,).  Not only potential and versatile but also it is a strategic resource, which can be fully utilized to generate income and wealth of a national without the active involvement of this resource. 

The former Indian Prime Minister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi stated that “The real strength of the country lies in the development of the human mind and body”.  It was also rightly expressed by an eminent philosopher of China, Kuang Chung Trum during the 7th century B.C. ‘if you wish to plan for a year, sow seeds, if you wish to plan for ten years, plant trees, if you wish to plan a life time development” (Billomeria). The Government of India has recognized the importance of HRD and has created a separate ministry under the control of a fuel fledged cabinet minister. The present study addresses a HR Practices in Voluntary organization to contribute to achieve organization’s success.

Objectives of the study:

The study has been carried out with the following specific objectives:

To given a brief profile of the selected voluntary organization namely Integrated Development through Environmental Awakening (IDEA) To examine the Human Resource practices in the selected voluntary organization. To assess the employees perception on HR Practices in selected voluntary organization.

Methodology:

The study is based on both primary and secondary data. The secondary data is collected from organization records, management reports and special project reports to understand the present state of organizations’ activities. Primary data is collected from the employees of the organization with the help of questionnaire. The total number of employees in the organization is 512. The employees are grouped into three categories based on the nature of work viz., manager, supervisors, and assistants from which 125 employees (around 25 per cent) are selected randomly.

HR Practices in IDEA:

   Integrated Development through Environmental Awakening is a voluntary organization and established in 1981. It is a research and development organization working for the sustainable development of tribals and for the protection of bio-diversity and environment in the North Eastern Ghats. The vision of the organization is to achieve comprehensive sustainable endogenous development through emotional integration and awakening on sociologically acceptable, economically viable, environmentally sound and culturally ethical lines. The mission is to facilitate tribals and rural communities to achieve endogenous development on above lines. The objective is socio-economic development and empowerment on sustainable lines.

   The organization mainly concentration on the development of Kondh, Poraja, Kotiya, Nooka Dora, Binjhal, Konda Dora, Gadaba, Bagatha, Koya, Konda Reddy etc., tribal communities and other incidental groups. The organization has been covered Andhra Pradesh and Orissa through its action and network zone approaches in about 500 tribal villages. It has been supported by NORAD- the Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi for development of Orissa; ETC/COMPAS- Netherlands for agro, eco-cultural development programmes in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, and Department of Science and Technology, Government of India for the herbal health and livelihood security programme in Araku valley of Andhra Pradesh.

   The organization philosophy emphasizes the need to build up emotional integration and awakening to achieve sociologically acceptable, economically viable, environmentally sound and culturally ethical lines of comprehensive sustainable endogenous development. This process is facilitating by organizing the target groups and project based core groups with a view to involvement of all cross sections of the community and traditional institutional functionaries, to achieve comprehensive sustainable endogenous development. The areas of activities of the organization are:

Indigenous Knowledge research, conservation and development with special reference to agriculture, environment, herbal health and nutrition for endogenous development. Sustainable eco and watershed development programmes. Gender development programmes. To help tribal communities to achieve self sufficiency, self reliance and empowerment so as to improve the livelihoods, food security and health and nutritional status on sustainable lines.

The achievements of the organization are broadly classified into three area viz., agriculture, environment and herbal health. The achievement is respect of agriculture is: traditional land and soil management, biological pest control, botanical pesticides, weed management practices documented, classified, tested and strengthened/revived and integrated with modern knowledge systems.

The environmental achievements are: mountain land and natural resource management related rituals and festivals revived and watershed problems controlled to a good extent and improved ecology and bio-diversity. Environmental related clan totemic concepts, traditional shifting cultivation regulatory mechanism revived. It results in the protection of about 76 floral and faunal species and 2.5 lakhs acres of forests from shifting cultivation and covering 3000 square kilometers in ANDHRA PRADESH and Orissa of North Eastern Ghats. These are the improvements of bio-diversity and contribution to control global warning (by controlling the fire from the shifting cultivation patches as a practice of tribals). As well the tribal forest based economy improved by six times, due to regeneration of forests, implementation of agro-forestry and sustainable agriculture on mountain lands.

   The achievements in respect of herbal health are: medicinal plants (about 2000 species) documented and a conservation unit (Kasturi) is established at institutional and village level for further research, testing and experimentations and training for revival and integration. About 12000 herbal healers have been federated as member in tribal traditional institutional functionaries’ network- Naikgotna. About 250 villages promoted herbal gardens, and 1000 ethno-veterinarian improved their skill and reviving their practices in the villages. Women groups have revived their traditional health and nutritional improvement practices by reviving the use of about 243 wild leaf vegetables, tubers and berries etc., and prepared their own nutritional food for children, pregnant women and lactating mothers with the combination of modern knowledge systems for nutritional improvement.

Employees’ perception on HR Practices in the Organization:

               Employees’ compensation, undoubtedly, is one of the major determinants of employee satisfaction in an organization. The compensation policy and the reward system of an organization are viewed by the employees as indicators of the management’s attitude and concern for them. Compensation is directly tied to the labour market. Remuneration is the compensation an employee receives in return for his or her contribution to the organization. Remuneration occupies an important place in he life of an employee.  It acts as the mainspring of motivation in the society. One of the biggest factors affecting industrial relations is the remuneration or compensation an employee receives for a fair day’s work. Majority of the union management disputes relate to remuneration. One of the main goals is attracting capable employees to the organization and personnel must perceive that the compensation offered is fair and equitable. An attempt is made in this study to find out whether the organization offer sufficient compensation to their employees or not and the employees perception in this regard are presented in Table.1. The table amply corroborates the fact that 58 per cent of the respondents under study are on the agreement side saying that the various compensation variables offered by the organization are good. Nearly 44 per cent of the employees under study disagreed, while around eight per cent remained neutral in this respect.

Table.1

Employees’ perception regarding the Compensation

Sl. No.

Statements

SA

A

N

D

SD

 TOTAL

1.

The organization remunerates proportionate to the employees abilities and work.

35

(28.0)

27

(21.6)

15

(12.0)

33

(26.4)

15

(12.0)

125

(100)

2.

The organization pay scale is the main motivating factor to work.

41

(32.8)

19

(15.2)

8

(6.4)

36

(28.8)

21

(16.8)

125

(100)

3.

The organization

Getting started with your non profit organisation

Any ‘light bulb’ moment which inspires you to set about doing something that enriches the lives of others is precious, and that passion and enthusiasm merits being put to good use. But this may not in itself mean it is a good idea to set up a new organisation immediately.

Think before you set up a non profit

The Charity Commission advises anyone thinking of setting up a new charity or other non profit organisation to do some research before going any further. There are already 180,000 registered charities in the UK and they estimate probably as many again smaller unregistered ones. More than 6,000 new charities were registered last year alone.

Look at what other non profit organisations are doing

What you plan to do may already be being done by others and duplication is discouraged as it results in similar causes competing for limited funds. This may result in damage to an existing charitable endeavour, which could adversely affect their vulnerable beneficiaries.

Researching what already exists in both your area of activity and geography should always be your starting point to ensure that your project genuinely adds value by filling a gap rather than duplicating and detracting from a pre-existing initiative. Working in conjunction with an existing initiative might be a “better” way to deliver public benefit.

Check your motivation

Are you prompted by outrage at hearing of a social injustice? Are you prompted by gratitude, or a feeling that ”that could have been me”? Have you been through a bereavement and wish to do something in memory of a loved one?  Are you at a stage in life where you do not have to use all your available work time to earn money to support yourself and your family?  Do you simply want to give something back to your community?

Just as “dogs are for life and not just for Christmas”, setting up a new organisation needs to be approached carefully with early consideration of long term sustainability and what will happen when you are personally no longer the driving force behind it. Harsh as it sounds, organisations which are overdependant on a founder are vulnerable and may not be sustainable. Effective founders need to be thinking of how they will be succeeded at an early stage.

Ask yourself some searching questions around why and how you want to be involved:

Is my aim to benefit one individual or family or a wider group of people?
Do I have a personal need to do this more than there is a real need for it to be done?
Will my project fill a genuine gap or am I duplicating something which already exists?
Check your objectives

From the outset it helps to be very clear about your objectives when embarking on a project. You should be able to write them down briefly and clearly, so that your vision can be easily understood by others.

The process of writing objectives and testing them out on others will help you to check that your idea is worth taking forwards. 

Vision and mission

Your project needs to have a clear and communicable statement of purpose. This should not be lengthy – two or three short lines is best. You will probably start out with a long and wordy expression of your vision; the process and discipline of distilling down to two or  three succinct lines will result in wording which clearly and engagingly communicates your mission to others and encourages them to “get on the bus”.

Write a mission statement

A useful process for generating your statement is:

write down all your ideas and plans, without editing or
prioritising them
Sort them into natural groupings, using different colour pens
 to indicate connected items.
keep refining the groupings until you have 3 core ones
try to write one sentence that captures the key messages from each of these groupings so that you end up with 3 sentences.
Work these sentences into one paragraph.

Try your mission statement out on a few “critical friends”. Ask
them to say back to you, in their own words, what it says, so that
you can ensure it says what you intended it to. This checking
process will be all the more helpful if you test it on a range of
people representative of the stakeholder groups you will need to
engage with if your project is to be successful. It is important to
challenge yourself and be open to constructive challenge by others to test out the validity and sustainability of your project.

Consider the time and talent needed for your non profit organisation

It might be helpful to consider the following questions:

Do I know how much time (capacity) will be needed?
Do I know what skills, experience, expertise, contacts (capability) are needed.?
Do I have the necessary capacity and capability to set this up?
How will I fund myself while I commit time to making it happen?
Can I make a long-term commitment to see it through?
Can my personal circumstances accommodate a major commitment to this activity?
Do I have access to others who will ‘get on the bus with me’ to build the project’s capacity and capability?
Who can be my ‘critical friends’ on the journey?

It can be really difficult to appraise your own strengths and weaknesses objectively and it is helpful from the outset to have a ‘thought partner’ who is well disposed but not directly involved in the project to act as a critical friend.

It can be helpful to make a detailed inventory of the skills and expertise that the project will need. Use your critical friend to help you list your own attributes and skills. This will help you identify what skills and expertise you need to bring into the project.

Think about what success will look like

To engage other people, including funders, it is crucial to be able to show what success will look like and to have a believable strategy and action plan to achieve it.

Think of it in terms of training to run a marathon: your goal is to run the full 25 miles but you build up to it in measurable stages, each challenging but achievable until you are cumulatively ready for the event itself.

Consider key milestones

You will need to develop a detailed project plan to demonstrate that you know what needs to be done and how to go about it. The following questions provide a useful model to start  thinking about milestones over a three-year period:

What will the organisation look like in three years?
To achieve this, what will it look like in two years?
To achieve this, what will it look like in one year?
To achieve this, what is my monthly action plan for year 1?

Developing these plans will help to guide your efforts and activities and make your plans accessible to other people you involve.

If you decide to go ahead it is important to organise yourself properly. Don’t try and re-invent the wheel, seek advice from other organisations in your area and be open to learn from their mistakes; its about getting the job done well rather than proving yourself. It is most unlikely that you will be able to make a success of it all on your own so allowing other people to share the journey from the outset is beneficial.

What type of non profit organisation? Registered charities

The Charity Commission website, clearly and comprehensively explains what is involved in setting up a registered charity. There are rules and reporting requirements stipulated under charity law which must be adhered to. There are sometimes tax breaks available to registered charities and some other non profit organisations. These must be discussed and agreed with HMRC (the revenue authority) before assuming that your organisation will be eligible.

If you expect the income of the organisation to be less than £5000 a year it does not necessarily need to be a registered charity but it will still be regulated by the Charity Commission. And there are some funders who are only comfortable donating to registered charities.

There are strict rules relating to the objectives and activities of a would be charity, for example:

It must be for the wider public benefit, and cannot participate in political lobbying.
It will require a proper constitution – the charity commission provide a general model suitable for small charities as a starting point, but there are many variations. The constitution sets out how the charity is to be run properly.
All Registered Charities are required to report annually to the Charity Commission; the degree of complexity depends on the size of the organisation. 

Trustees are responsible in law for ensuring that charities are well run for the purposes of their charitable objectives and as set out in their constitution. To understand the role and responsibilities of Charity Governance and Trusteeship, visit the Governance section.

There are several questions you should consider when setting up a charity:

If I set up an organisation using the Charity Commission’s model constitution will that ensure that I can register it as a charity?

No, there is no automatic right to registration; it will still have to pass the public benefit test to qualify. The Charity Commission provide a model wording for charitable purposes which aims to ensure that charitable status is only granted to organisations whose purpose is entirely charitable and not to those seeking to add a charitable veneer in order to secure the tax breaks of charitable status.

When do trustees need to be appointed? 

A minimum of three trustees need to be appointed from the outset; of these one must agree to act as chair and another as company secretary/treasurer.

This group will be responsible for publicly donated funds, ensuring that they are spent in achieving the agreed charitable purpose and that they are correctly accounted for. These are legal responsibilities. It is essential for example to set up a separate