Our recent CharityVillage Connects podcast episode explores the issue of job satisfaction in the nonprofit sector, with a new report, Burden of Care: Addressing Challenges in Employment in the Nonprofit Sector, indicating that job satisfaction amongst nonprofit workers is lower than those in the public or private sectors.

As part of our discussion, we spoke to Pamela Uppal-Sandhu, Director of Policy at the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN), about this issue, as well as how their Decent Work initiatives might just be an important part of the solution to widespread workplace turnover, burnout, and dissatisfaction. We’re pleased to present a short excerpt of Pamela’s comments here.

We kicked off the interview by asking Pamela about what ONN is seeing in terms of the HR crisis in the sector.

Pamela Uppal-Sandhu: We’ve been measuring the HR crisis for a couple of years now, since the end of 2021, which is when we started to really see this moment be different than other moments in terms of recruitment and retention in the sector. And we started measuring it in our survey last year. And so the number has stayed the same, 65% of the sector is still experiencing recruitment and retention issues. And when we ask, what are the top factors, [they are] exactly the same as last year, staff burnout and stress, compensation packages are the top two pieces around being able to recruit or retain people.

This year we actually asked a couple of new questions. We asked, has anyone left your organization, have you experienced turnover this year? And 77% of our respondents reported some sort of turnover this past fiscal year. And so we also wanted to know, so where are people going? If they’re leaving our sector, what are they doing or where are they working? And so those responses have been really interesting. In Ontario, the response rate was 37% said that their workers were leaving for another nonprofit for the same or similar job. So we’re competing amongst each other for labour and to pay the best and to have decent work conditions. And then 36% were leaving for the public sector for the same and similar job, which we know is an issue.

Oftentimes, [it’s the] same funding portfolio, whether you’re a nonprofit municipal school board or hospital or for-profit, if you’re in that space. And nonprofits get less money than the other two and that means our wages are lower. So you could be a child care worker, a PSW, a DSW, and [in] our sector you’d get paid less, wherein you could do the same job, same qualifications in the other two sectors and get paid much more, significantly more. And we’re calling that a wage parity issue.

And it’s something really to think about because no one has calculated, I think, in our sector, and you can correct me if I am wrong, but the true cost of staff turnover and burnout. We know what happens, we see it every day. There’s staff disconnection, there’s low morale, and folks who are still on the team have to pick up extra work. If you’re on the front lines, you’re experiencing vicarious trauma. There’s lots of compassion fatigue, especially if you’re asked to do more and help more with much less and the work is hard. If you’re getting paid minimum wage to help people find housing, we can also get paid minimum wage to work at McDonald’s. What’s easier, right? And so, we’re definitely seeing some of that.

And I think one thing we also have to remember is that our staff isn’t separate from the communities that we serve. So they’re also experiencing the affordability crisis, right? One of the things that we’re noticing in the big city centers is an exodus of staff in those areas. And sometimes when a lot of demand and increase for service, meeting that demand sometimes comes at the expense of our workers. Take on that one more client, you know, just work that extra two hours, because sometimes it is a life and death matter. And how do you say no to that? And so, and I would say it’s not just frontline. I think everybody in the sector, regardless if you’re a board member, senior leader, or middle management, everyone’s experiencing burnout because the issues are so important and the issues are so alive and so front and center and there’s so much uncertainty. And we are really doing a lot with not a lot of support and resources, which can really be difficult.

Next, we asked Pamela how implementing Decent Work initiatives in nonprofit workplaces could be a solution to these issues.

Pamela Uppal-Sandhu: At ONN, we’ve been building a decent work movement in the sector for the last 10 years. This is quite a long time. And really, for some folks listening, it’s not a new concept, we borrow it from the International Labour Organization, where decent work means fair, stable and productive work so that it’s a source of dignity. It really brings together this concept of work, of labour, with social protection, dignity, benefits, pension, fair wages, productivity, all of those pieces together.

And as I shared, we’ve been doing this for the past 10 years. And it’s taken a lot of different iterations. Part of the movement building was really looking at it from a gender-based intersectional lens. What does decent work for women mean and how do we build that, particularly if we’re a sector of 77% women? We’ve also talked about decent work and volunteerism. Volunteerism can’t replace employees and workers but volunteers are so important and critical to the work that we do. I mean our board of directors are usually volunteers, right?

And then, over the past iteration of our decent work movement, we really centred reconciliation, anti-Black racism, really thinking about what does decent work for our Indigenous workers and our Black workers in our sector look like? And how do we really think about questioning and challenging white supremacy in our cultures at work? And so, a bunch of resources around that have been created as well.

What I will say is that this moment that we’re in right now is so interesting because the pandemic has really forced people to rethink what their relationship to work is. And by default, what their expectations of their employers are. And I think that’s sort of the tensions that we’re seeing. People are questioning internally, what type of work do I want to do? What gives me motivation, and self-fulfillment? What sort of fits the lifestyle I want to live? They’re questioning the quality of their jobs. They want good work. They don’t want to just work from minimum wage and precariously and perhaps not have a pension to retire on. And their expectations of employers to meet those demands are valid and are coming up more and more. And so, we are seeing in our sector workers want decent work. They want better wages, better benefits, flexibility. Now hybrid work models are really, really important, especially for folks that are caring for children, [as well as] long-term stability, pensions. You want to retire on a pension. It’s no longer a hope or maybe we’ll have it someday.

And that’s great because that’s what the goal of the Decent Work Movement was, both from an employer and employee perspective. We wanted to empower workers to demand better for themselves, but also really equip the sector as an employer with all the things they would need to be able to make that happen and really talk about the value around that. Because as I shared, we’re competing with each other, but we’re also competing against many, many other industries for workers. And although we’ve always been able to rely on the mission and vision, passions alignment, and values alignment for people to work in our sector, that might not be enough in the future when many other places might start offering that too.

Finally, we asked Pamela to point to available resources that can help nonprofit organizations get started with putting Decent Work into practice.

Pamela Uppal-Sandhu: There are so many resources. So I really do encourage people to go check out our website, www.theonn.ca. Because, as I shared, we’ve been doing this work for the past 10 years. And so we’ve really built an evolving suite of toolkits, resources, and guides that folks can rely on. And it’s really meeting where nonprofits are on their decent work journey. If you’re just at the beginning, you’re trying to figure out what this would look like, there’s a decent work charter and a checklist to sort of guide you through that. If you really want to look at it from a gender-based intersectional lens, we have a guide on setting up compensation practices with a gender equity lens. We have information on parental benefits and maternity leave benefits. And more recently, as I was sharing, we have our decent work pathways that has come out. And this really thinks about and centers equity, really.

And what I’ll say is that, again, there’s something for everyone, whichever part of the journey you’re at, and that it’s not a commitment that requires money. It’s a commitment that is about how do I make my workplace better and safer and more accessible for workers and our employees and whoever is going to come back in [to support the work]. And it’s such a critical recruitment and retention tool.

Once the data is collected, how will it be used? Could it lead to Canadian charitable boards engaging in tokenism in order to check a diversity box on their T3010?

We did do another new question in our survey this year, because what we were noticing was that the sector was kind of not waiting to get more funding really to fix some of the recruitment and retention issues, but really were trying to implement some of their own strategies. So we asked, you know, what are some strategies that you’re implementing? Across the board, everyone’s implementing flex or hybrid work models. Some are raising compensation and mental health and wellbeing. Those were the top three things that people are focusing on. And so that kind of energy, I think, is really important.

Although, the issues we’re facing are systemic in nature. And so we have to do both, [including] the systemic advocacy work. So we’re not funnelling people into low-wage jobs, quite frankly, but also [looking at], what is in our control? How can we really create safe, decent workplaces in our sector?

Want to hear more from Pamela Uppal-Sandhu? Listen to her full interview in the video below.

Listen to Pamela Uppal-Sandhu and other sector experts discuss workplace turnover and job satisfaction in our new podcast episode. Click here to listen.