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Essay On Staff Retention

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Lack of staff retention is not only the loss of employees in nonprofit organizations, but also the loss of institutional knowledge of the nonprofit organizations. At the time employees leave the nonprofit organization, the value of the employees including the intangible knowledge, network of the employees doesn’t belong to the nonprofit organization anymore. A report from Center for American Progress estimated that most of the time, nonprofit organizations 20% salaries to refill the positions. At this point, why organizations keeping losing staffs even though the organizations have many reasons to retain their staffs. Although organizations know the importance of staff retention, there are many barriers that cannot be easily changed by the …show more content…

In “Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out’, almost 6000 nonprofit employees report rising burnout rates (3 out of 4 executive directors plan to leave their jobs in the next five years) and increasing frustration with their careers (69% of respondents said they were underpaid) (Ewers). The last reason is that nonprofit sector, especially new organizations, focus on keeping cost down and lower earning potential which has few career advancement. Most of the time, nonprofit organizations competing for funding instead of how they have fulfilled their mission statements. This restricted employees’ talent. People, especially students who just gradate don’t want to be in this kind of organizations with limited speed of development. “It is low paying and offers few opportunities for career advancement” (Leon and Marcotte, 2011) Nationally, over the past 12 years, the number of public charities is up 50%, from 643,000 to more than 965,000 (Chalmers). Not only charities, other kinds of new branches in nonprofits sectors are growing as well. Those new organizations are usually very limited. The number of opportunities provided depends on how boards do to build the organizations. It’s impossible to prevent employees from looking for better opportunities (Beckbridge). Thus, what’s important is to know why employees are leaving. What other organizations are offering that makes employees to leave. Retention challenges are exacerbated as the nonprofit sector

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