Episode 84: Soft and Hard Skills - What to Look for in a Nonprofit Employee

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall," your weekly podcast making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. It's great to have you back here on "Around with Randall, and of course I am Randall.

On today's podcast we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about some interesting issues involving the great resignation, great reshuffling. They've kind of begun to change the name a little bit more from the part of the organization, and some things that I think will be important for all of us to realize when we are looking for the next great employee that's more challenging today than ever. And that's going to be, I think, the tactical pieces that come out of the podcast is some things you can do to be prepared to know what to look for, the timing, maybe some thought processes on interim status, things of that nature. As you are aware in the current world, particularly in the nonprofit world, we are going through an immense change. We've done a number of podcasts on this employment area including the work around the published article in the Association for Healthcare Development Professional, AHP and its publication that was highlighting the great resignation and the employment study that Hallett Philanthropy did. You're all aware of all of these changes. What is it that we need to be looking at when we're looking for either replacement, or we're going to increase our staff, or we've got to add to, you know, the the talent pool that we have?

I found some interesting conversations being developed through a couple of of articles. The first was one coming from The Nonprofit Times, which was what nonprofit, top non-profit leaders, are looking for and it brought up some interesting points. They classify the qualifications or the things that we want in employees into kind of buckets, and while I had thought about it, I hadn't articulated it quite in this way and I thought it was pretty brilliantly done. The first is hard skills and frankly that's where I spend the most amount of my time when I'm working with clients and advising them. And the hard skills are the things that are going to be the important daily activities and the skills that are needed to complete them for a particular position, and they're going to be very different depending on the particular job that's being asked to be done. So if you're a major gift officer, it's about the ability to communicate and to make phone calls. I always talk about the idea of resiliency and because there's a lot of times that we might be rejected in those calls, feeling a sense of rejection, I train on that as a part of the educational outreach that we do at Hallett Philanthropy. If you're in the infrastructure database world that's going to be about understanding how databases work, how you get data in and out of them, how to create reports. If it's in the finance area, obviously accounting and the understanding of the almighty dollar, debits and credits directly involved with trying to keep all the accounts in line, budgeting process, things of that nature. And if you're a leader, do you have a long-term vision? Do you, are you able to troubleshoot? Do you communicate well on different platforms or different group, with different groups? All of those are considered hard skills.

What I was most impressed with in this article was the conversation around the thought of soft skills. These soft skills are really about the kinds of attributes that an employee applicant might have, or an employee, once they're hired. And they list a couple of them in the article and I want to share these with you. I tend not to spend as much time on them, but frankly that's to my detriment. Hard skills obviously are going to be the way in which someone gets their job done, but soft skills are going to be how they align with your mission. At the end of the day the organizations that are doing very well are in terms of employment are ones that have employees that are not only delivering their hard skills and their results but are aligned with the mission. Probably, I need to spend more time with these. So let's list them here if we can for a moment. It's the ability to collaborate with diverse groups both internally and externally, not communicate. Collaborate, building rapport, and joining in a direction that you the organization or the relationship needs to go, jointly together. Having genuine authenticity. A dear friend of mine, and i don't mind plugging him, Nathan Chappelle, is one of the more genuine people I've ever met, that he values what he does. Whatever that, how often that is, on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis. At the same level he does his personal life he's dedicated, he, what you see is what you get. There's a sense of authenticity as to what he wants to accomplish, both at home and in office. Finding people like that's hard. It's a difficult world in which we look at. I love the DISC testing which talks about communication styles in your, kind of, home environment. And then you're adaptive, which is usually considered like stressful moments and authenticity is really based on the same scores in the DISC, which I will not get into the details here today.

The DISC in the different kind of communication in that natural state at home where you're comfortable, an adaptive state when things are stressful are they the same. And if they are the same that's probably at least a sign of authenticity. Interesting thought process to think about how authenticity probably elevates the entire office and the relationships you're able to build.

Self-motivation, self-starter, this is particularly important in today's world as we've seen immense changes over the past two years with work environment, more people working from home. Are you able to self-start at home? Do you need help getting started every day and getting your tasks done, or are you able to do so on your own? Another one, the approach to work that is resourceful and innovative. How do you respect limited resources but be innovative with those resources and getting new resources that the organization may not have access to? Creating a wonderful opportunity to be creative in how you build relationships. Create a strategic vision. Represent the organization. That idea of knowledge, of limited resources, and the ability to use what you have, effectively. Critically important.

The last is long-term commitment to, and passion. Not around the mission, but the mission-driven work. And I think that distinction is important. At the end of the day, our missions should be what drives us but the work that we do should support that mission, and that's what most employees are dealing with. While a CEO may be worried, long term, about how the vision and mission of the organization will be applied most everybody else in the organization is doing work to support it and they have to buy into that work, those tasks, that daily responsibility. And if they don't, even if they believe in the mission but the work doesn't support it, they'll more likely go find someplace else to go. And I think that is happening in nonprofit work.

So when you talk about collaboration and authenticity and motivation and the idea of of being resourceful, as well as the idea for commitment towards the work that you do every day, there's a group of people that naturally fit all of these kind of details or or attributes, and those are millennials. Millennials may be better built for today than we realized. If your organization is understanding what millennials are looking for millennials have told of us through study, after study, after study and now particularly as we move into generation z's, that they want their personal beliefs to align with their life's journey. So at home do my personal values, what I think is important align with my significant other, spouse, whomever's in the house. That's not unusual. Very tried and true. But they want to let, they also want to extend into the office environment. And because of the way they've been raised with technology changes and things of that nature, they embrace things like flexibility, and innovation, and meaningful work, and be willing to change at a moment's notice. I think sometimes we give millennials a bad name. It's just that they see the world differently. The question becomes, can we take advantage of that because they may be better equipped in this era of soft skills, and what we're looking for, to be more aligned with what we're trying to accomplish in office.

The other thing that comes from this is the idea that we're seeing more and more, i'll call it, HR. Human Resources commentary on the nonprofit world that HR, or the leaders that make decisions on hiring principals, or the hiring actual decision of people they're concerned about, the skills gap. So a terrific article again out of the Nonprofit Times, NPO. Employee skills gap widens, can't convert on strategy, and this goes back to that differentiation between soft and hard skills. If you don't have the soft skills it makes it hard to maximize your input and output along the strategy lines that the leadership is presenting.

So let's think about this in a study done here recently through LinkedIn. The new modem of surveying employees and employment issues, 49% of leaders indicated that they were concerned about their employees in leaders, non-CEO managers, supervisors, a skill sets in developing all that they could be. What is it we need them to do and how do we help them get there? That there is a gap in this moment and half of the, half the executive said they have doubts whether the skill sets meet expectation and the question is what are they going to do about it. This has put a heavy burden on HR professionals because they've, they're being charged with finding the talent and we're going to get into this here in just a second on the tactical. The other thing I would mention is is that organizations are finally coming out of the pandemic, looks like investing more into what I'll call learning and development opportunities, whether that's coaching, conferences, education - formal or informal. In that same study, 48% of this, those surveyed, felt like there would be extra money resources available in the near future, or currently, to help employees grow. And I think this is going to be key. The organizations that choose to invest in their employees are more likely to keep them and so if we're viewing this from the organizational perspective, what are you doing to help your employees grow, get to where they want to go? And I'm not sure we're doing enough of that, in particular in a nonprofit sector. I was just recently at a conference and it was uplifting to finally get to see people face-to-face, but a number of them said this is the only thing that we're going to be able to do because our budgets have been cut. What is it your organization's doing to invest in your employees to get them to develop to all that they can be to serve your mission and to get those work daily routines the hard skills necessary to deliver?

So tactically, what are we talking about? Well the first tactical piece is that budgeting process. Can you allocate some resources to ensure your employees have the ability to grow? Sometimes that's a fight with a board or a supervisor, but having those resources is important. The second thing is that your searches, whether for an executive or a major gift officer or an infrastructure person, may be a lot longer than they used to be, which brings up several things to consider. Number one is the reason why is because it's supply and demand. There are people who have many more options to choose for jobs rather than just yours. Number two is that I think that which has been long overdue, we are actually more open to individuals who aren't like us and so diversity is an important characteristic and we're more open to people that maybe we didn't think about three years ago. That hopefully would have been done more naturally but if it gets to the result of giving people a more fair chance, then at the end of the day i'm for that. I think the other thing regarding longer searches is that we're gonna have to become more creative about nonprofit jobs and hiring individuals who aren't in the nonprofit sector. this is challenging with hr departments, in particular, large organizations because they have a very dedicated view of we need exact job experience and i've been saying this over and over for more than a decade, we need great job skills. Those hard skills. If we have those and they can demonstrate them in another area then that's fine, but getting that option open is sometimes a real challenge.

Number two is is that we may get into scenarios and situations with a board or if you're the supervisor or manager where you get panicked a little bit and just hire someone because you need to hire someone. And the term I put with that is settling. We don't want to do that. We may have to hold out longer, and that requires a second step. It may require a more creative thought process on the interim. Tag. How do you give someone the opportunity to serve in that interim role? Maybe as an application of themselves or or job opportunity that they weren't doing, and maybe they could work the way into the permanency or the becoming the permanent replacement, but having options is going to be important. We're seeing an uptick in the number of interim people who are coming into an organization and staying longer, particularly at the executive level. They're the interim CEO, interim CFO, and they stick around for a while and that may become a norm if you're not going to settle. It may take longer to find someone, but the job still has to be done. How do you build an interim opportunity internally or externally that's going to allow the organization to continue forward but also ensure you're not going to settle in the job prospect process as such.

Number three, it's a buyer's market, and I've had multiple people who have said I basically made the offer of the job and two days later they called, yeah I know I kind of said yes but I took another job or I think the terms ghosting - not my area of expertise -, they literally have hired the person they never show up, day one, because they got another job. It is so difficult right now. It's so challenging because the market is such that the people who are looking employees, the applicants have all the advantages and it's really important that again that soft set of skills we highlight, to know that they're aligned with what we're trying to do. That's more likely that they come and work on our team if we so desire. The other interesting thing is there's a number of positions that we might use a search firm. I've got personal experience with clients that they have approached search firms and search firms have basically said we are so busy we can't take you on right now. That should be another indicator of this bigger picture of where the job market is. I've never seen that. So how do you advertise, how do you think outside the box, how do you get that job and those wonderful opportunities to contribute to the nonprofit out into the community, where you can get applications that meet your desire level of soft and hard skills, dedication, talent? It's a really interesting time right now because organizations are really on the negative side of the balance sheet when it comes to figuring out employment situations. The applicants have all the power. So how you look, what you look for, how you set yourself up with interim status, how you as a board or a leader are not going to settle all of these things can play a critical role, philosophically, in being aware of what you might have to do to make it all work. And that's a lot of tactical work in conversations and organizational buy-in to make sure that the organization as a whole is doing all the right things in these turbulent employment times.

don't forget to check out the website that's halletthilanthropy.com - two or three blogs posted per week, leadership, nonprofit all kinds of things for you to consider. If you'd like to reach out to me that's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Would love to hear your suggestions on a topic. And if you're downloading, watching, whatever leave me a review. I'd really appreciate it. Share with a friend, might be helpful to someone else, and that's that's why I do this. It's not for marketing purposes, it's really for the classroom of the 21st century. How do we help each other get to where we want to be? Don't forget you're part of something really important, valuable making a contribution to your community. That's what nonprofit works all about. In my all-time favorite saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. At the end of the day we are people who make things happen for the things in our community that are wondering what happened. The causes or the individuals who need a hand up. And that's the essence of what we do in philanthropy. I appreciate your time today. Hope this was helpful on the great reshuffle. I look forward to seeing you right back here on the next edition of "Around with Randall." don't forget make it a great day.XX