NGOs and Employee Alignment and Education

Theme: an essential goal for internal stakeholders communications is to align the perspectives and motivation of employees with the evolving strategy of the effective NGO. This is not an easy task, for two distinct reasons.

First, NGO employees are invariably mistrustful of change. Their employment has always been based on the bedrock of “security.” Since change necessarily detracts from security, most NGO employees find the onset of competition to be an unwelcome change.

Second, it’s not always easy to communicate about the NGO’s evolving strategy. In the past, NGOs needed to communicate about events that were easy to forecast into the future – building power plants, planning capital projects, energy conservation, etc. These were all standard operational initiatives, easy to describe and communicate. But effective NGOs will pursue an expanding list of increasingly complex project/programme purpose initiatives. The universe of communications topics expands dramatically for the effective NGO, with some evident only as time goes by, and others too sensitive to communicate about prematurely.

Therefore, the NGO must commit significant planning and effort to craft an on–going series of employee communications that achieves three goals: 1) building a tolerance for change; 2) enlisting employee motivation and commitment; and 3) educating employees about the evolving NGO strategy as it becomes appropriate to communicate about strategic developments.

This module reviews how employee communication and employee education merges as a critical concern for top management in a effective NGO. The module reviews methods that are effective for different organizational levels (i.e. front line employees, new hires, middle management, etc.). The module also provides examples of how competitively effective NGOs can build the motivation, comprehension, skill level and job performance of employees through effective employee communications.

Deliverables: the specific deliverables of this module include:

4a) Employee Alignment and Education Checklist, indicating the methods best used to build employee tolerance for change and to align employees with the evolving NGO strategy; and

4b) Employee Alignment and Education Insights Document, customized findings (based on the interactions during the seminar between participants and the instructors) on the ways the NGO can utilize internal employee communications to enhance employee effectiveness and motivation, and maximize shareholder value.