By: Samantha Maldonado
How well is our staff aligned to their current roles?
Is our staff leaning into their strengths?
Is our staff contributing their best to the organization?
How can we best support staff to further develop their skills?
How well does our staff engage with the diverse communities we serve?
One of the biggest factors that ensures an organization’s success is its people. Yet as many nonprofit leaders know, there is an ongoing challenge of attracting and retaining competent and mission-aligned talent to drive impact and fulfill the mission. In 2023, three quarters of organizations surveyed in the Council of Nonprofits’ Nonprofit Workforce Survey Results reported having at least one vacancy within their ranks. Even more troubling is that of the organizations that have a vacancy, three-quarters of them reported vacancies in program-specific roles. This has a clear impact on mission success.
Attracting employees is not the only concern, however. Organizations face pressure to retain top talent. And recent data shows this. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s State of Nonprofits 2024 report found that 95% of surveyed leaders expressed some degree of concern about burnout within their organizations. A further 69% of those surveyed were very concerned about retaining talent.
Nonprofit leaders are asked to juggle a lot, but finding time to invest in your staff is a key exercise. Assessments are a highly beneficial and underutilized tool for nonprofit leaders to enhance talent retention, streamline hiring, and promote strategic growth. They provide insights into employee strengths and behaviors, aiding in informed decision-making and team balance. Spectrum’s strategy integrates impact, finance, and people to align the right talent with the mission, helping to ensure effective service to the community. The learnings from these assessments can empower teams to perform at their best.
For a deep dive into an individual’s personality and identity
The Assessment: HOGAN
What It Is
The HOGAN examines individual personality traits from all perspectives by measuring the “bright side, dark side, and inner self/values”. The bright side of someone’s personality shines when they’re in control, happy, and successful. The bright side will tell you about an individual’s potential for growth. On the other hand, the “dark side” evaluates someone’s capacity for failure and can come out when they’re stressed, either at work or in their personal life.
This individually derived comprehensive assessment offers insights into behavior, identity, and reputation, providing the depth needed to hire the right employees, develop talent, and build effective leaders. The HOGAN assessment is a great tool for anyone and everyone interested in understanding how their own or a staff member’s personality and behavior impacts their reputation (i.e., how others describe and interpret their behavior) and outcomes that matter (e.g., effectiveness at leading people), as could be needed in a new role.
A team report is also available and may be useful as a tool to offer insights in terms of group trends, areas of convergence/divergence and describe the overall team score implications. The Team Report helps individuals understand their teams’ mix of strengths, weaknesses, and values, as well as identify and correct potential “fracture lines” to maximize team performance.
When To Use It
- Reducing Turnover: They help identify performance risks before hiring candidates.
- Maximizing Value: By freeing up administrative time, organizations can focus on employee development.
- Long-Term Impact: Individual development sustains ongoing growth.
- Deeper Insights: Hogan Assessments explore strengths, values, and performance risks beyond a resume.
For comprehensive leadership insights, actionable plans and personalized developmental guidance
The Assessment: Center for Creative Leadership 360
What It Is
Understanding oneself more fully forms the bedrock of personal and professional growth. By methodically gathering insights on an individual’s performance from peers, direct reports, colleagues, and superiors, the CCL assessments deliver a comprehensive overview of a person’s strengths and areas for improvement.
These assessments are available for targeted audiences:
The CCL assessments deliver several benefits across a range of different leadership levels. Specifically, senior leaders can expect to address the specific issues of senior-level leaders in a common, shared framework, enabling measurement and benchmarking of the skills and behaviors most needed at the top. Middle to Upper-level Managers are measured against 16 critical leadership competencies in addition to five career derailers, such as difficulty adapting to change, building and leading a team, failure to deliver results, lacking a broad, strategic orientation and problems with interpersonal relationships. Understanding these derailers can help you proactively address potential weaknesses in staff and support them in keeping their career on track. Beyond these groups, this assessment can be tailored for all. These benefits include:
When To Use It
- 360 Feedback: Provides a comprehensive view by collecting feedback from peers, direct reports, and supervisors.
- Common Language: Teams gain a shared understanding of leadership traits.
- Individual Profiles: Allows leaders to compare different profiles within their team.
For insights into an individual or team’s cultural humility and opportunities for growth
The Assessment: Intercultural Development Inventory
What It Is
The IDI measures individuals’ and groups’ placement along an intercultural development continuum. The IDI explains different views on cultural differences. It starts with narrow perspectives like Denial and Polarization, moves through a middle stage of Minimization, and progresses into broader perspectives like Acceptance and Adaptation. This assessment is applicable when working with and leading diverse staff along with being particularly helpful for organizations that work with diverse audiences as it measures how adept personnel are at positively interacting with identities and cultures that may differ from their own.
When To Use It
- Cultural Competence: Provides insights into intercultural competence and supports development to cultural humility.
- Developmental Approach: Helps individuals grow in their understanding of cultural diversity.
- Create an Inclusive and Considerate Culture: As individuals and groups move along the continuum, their capacity and ability to experience cultural similarities and differences with more complexity increases.
Retain and Invest in Key Talent With an Experienced Partner
Imagine having a reliable partner with whom you can share and develop your ideas, offering you the support and guidance you need to bring your strategic initiatives to life. With implementation coaching, you’ll have the space to discuss, refine, and define accountability measures, ensuring consistent progress. The coaching engagement provides a safe environment to visualize and understand the nuances of change leadership, helping you anticipate what each stage of your strategy will look and feel like. Through coaching, we help you to interpret the results of the assessments, support your ongoing talent development needs along with guiding post strategy project partnership toward successful execution.
If interested in determining which tool(s) would best serve your specific talent retention and development goals, contact Spectrum Nonprofit Services. We are well positioned to help you and your nonprofit mitigate common roadblocks, inclusive of people related challenges/opportunities, to implement initiatives successfully.