Why NGO and social enterprise employees leave and how to understand why
Staff at NGOs and social enterprises leave for funding, field and workload reasons as well as pay. How to understand why, listen early and act.
7 min readRead articleA community hall is hired out for weddings, meetings and festivals, run by a small trust and a few staff. Here is how to organise caretakers, bookings and event help so the hall earns and staff are treated fairly.

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Share your requirementsA community hall is a building rented for weddings, receptions, naming ceremonies, meetings, coaching classes and festivals, managed by a society, trust or caste or community association. Its staff are few: a manager or secretary, a caretaker who often lives on site, cleaners, electricians or plumbers on call, security, a booking clerk and a part-time accountant. Work comes in waves. Wedding season, festival weekends and holidays are packed, while other weeks are quiet. Event nights run late and end with heavy cleaning, wedding debris and damaged property. Cash deposits, rent and extras pass through a few hands. Hirers bring their own caterers, decorators and sound crews, so the hall staff manage many outsiders. Committee members are volunteers and may want favours for friends. Staff are poorly paid, may not have written terms and depend on gifts from hirers. See also HR for NGOs and social enterprises.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in community halls. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Wedding months are overloaded and other months nearly empty, so staff pay and hours are hard to settle.
The caretaker lives on site and is expected to answer calls at any hour, with no clear hours or rest.
Cleaners and watchmen depend on gifts from hirers, so they may favour those who pay and resent those who do not.
Deposits, rent and extra charges are handled by one clerk, and shortages cause suspicion.
After a wedding, damaged chairs or fittings lead to arguments about who was responsible, hirer or staff.
Committee members ask to waive charges or give dates to friends, which puts the manager and clerk in difficulty.
Post-event cleaning is hard physical work with no protective gear or extra pay.
Extra hands are hired by word of mouth, with no record of who worked or was paid.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Employee Administration; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for ngos and social enterprises, not in general.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a community halls business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Role, hours, pay, residence rules for the caretaker, leave and extra pay for event nights.
Role, hours, pay, residence rules for the caretaker, leave and extra pay for event nights. See the HR documentation process.
A rota for peak weeks, agreed extra pay and a clear plan for slow months.
A rota for peak weeks, agreed extra pay and a clear plan for slow months. The attendance, shift and leave process shows how.
Either a fixed event allowance for staff or a defined and written share of service charges, so nobody depends on goodwill.
Either a fixed event allowance for staff or a defined and written share of service charges, so nobody depends on goodwill.
A numbered receipt book, two-person checks on deposits and a daily summary to the secretary.
A numbered receipt book, two-person checks on deposits and a daily summary to the secretary. Confirm with a qualified professional.
A condition list before and after each event, signed by hirer and staff, to settle damage fairly.
A condition list before and after each event, signed by hirer and staff, to settle damage fairly.
A simple muster for event helpers with dates, hours and pay.
A simple muster for event helpers with dates, hours and pay. The payroll process management guidance shows how.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Written terms for caretaker and staff, including residence and on-call rules.
Rotas and extra pay for wedding season and late nights.
A record and pay routine for casual event labour.
A staff and booking policy that survives committee changes.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in ngos and social enterprises, and one on each of the topics this page points to.

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Yes. Set out duties, hours, rest, visitors and what happens at exit, since home and work overlap. A qualified professional can advise.
Offer a fixed allowance for event nights or a written share of charges, and tell hirers that staff should not be tipped separately.
Use a signed condition checklist before and after, with photos, and a clear charge schedule agreed at booking.
Keep a muster, pay on the day or the next, and record who was paid what. Ask a qualified professional about any rules that apply.
Set a written policy on discounts and priority dates, approved by the committee, so staff can point to it politely.
We would ask how the season runs, what the caretaker really does and how cash and damage are handled. A sensible first piece of work is written terms, an event-night rota and a handover checklist. Scope and fees are agreed in writing afterwards.
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