Roundtable: HR Trends and Challenges
The Kiwi Partners’ HR team hosted a roundtable networking event where we welcomed people leaders in the nonprofit community to dine with us and discuss the trends they are seeing and challenges they are navigating. Below, we share the key topics that came to the forefront during this insightful conversation:
Executive Coaching
People leaders recognize the growing need for nonprofit executives to establish leadership development opportunities by engaging with objective and external coaches. Conventional leadership coaching focuses on developing soft skills such as emotional intelligence, empathy, and effective communication. An alternative approach involves adapting a hybrid methodology that integrates coaching into broader leadership development programs, combining traditional with personalized training. This strategy would empower executives to respond more rapidly to changes in the working environment, by discussing and analyzing current experiences and challenges, and testing solutions continuously.
Compensation Strategies
An important initiative many of our clients are concentrating on is evaluating their compensation strategies with the goal of ensuring competitiveness, internal mobility, and timely recognition. While there is a greater need for establishing clearer and more transparent compensation programs, people leaders also recognize that flexibility is required to allow for pay decisions to follow programmatic and organizational needs, as well as to retain key talent. We also conversed about ensuring executive compensation aligns with overall organizational-wide approaches to pay strategies.
Celebrating Achievements and Rewards
Our colleagues acknowledged the evolution of workplace dynamics and employee expectations. With them, there is an increasing necessity for new ways to recognize and reward employee achievement. Every nonprofit tackled the challenge differently depending on organizational culture. However, a common theme emerged: the demand for personalized, creative, holistic, remote-friendly, experience-based, and real-time recognition and rewards programs.
Mental Health & Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
As HR professionals, we appreciate the growing efforts placed on mental health and DEI at our various organizations, as these endeavors have allowed our teams to be more supportive. We also discussed the challenges we are experiencing as some individuals go beyond these initiatives’ expectations, ranging from oversharing to making others uncomfortable. Establishing boundaries and restating guidelines for these efforts are some of the strategies the group will revisit in the new year.
Many of our clients have small HR teams, which makes it harder for them to find a sounding board and a community of colleagues to tap into. As we start the new year, we remain committed to fostering these relationships and helping our clients overcome their people challenges.
Do any of these HR topics strike a chord with your organization? If you've encountered similar challenges, we're eager to hear about your experiences and to be your strategic partner in addressing these challenges. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to schedule a call with us.