Industries
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.
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NGOs and Social Enterprises
HR for Community Development Organisations: Field Workers, Volunteers and Village Teams
A community development organisation works village by village, through people who live close to those it serves. Here is how to support the field workers who hold it together.
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Share your requirementsHow the work is organised
A community development organisation works with villages, urban settlements and neighbourhood groups on water, sanitation, women's groups, savings, local governance, schools or farming support. Its team is made up of programme managers at a district or head office, field coordinators, community mobilisers who often come from the villages they work in, and volunteers who give time on and off. Staff travel across blocks by bike, shared transport or on foot, visit settlements in the evening when people are home and report back on meetings held, groups formed and issues raised. Funding usually arrives in project cycles of one to three years, from several donors, each with its own reporting. A community worker is trusted because of who they are, which makes them hard to replace and easy to overload. See also HR for NGOs and social enterprises.
Who does the work
- Community mobilisers and field workers
- Field coordinators and cluster leads
- Programme managers
- Volunteers and community leaders
- Trainers and facilitators
- Data collection and monitoring staff
- Finance and administration staff
- Executive director or chief functionary
Where HR strains in community development organisations
Field workers carry the relationships
Villagers trust a particular worker, so if that person leaves or is moved, the groups they built can fall away.
Pay does not match the load
Field workers cover many settlements for modest pay, with travel, evening meetings and festival-season demands that nobody counts.
Women workers face extra constraints
Travel after dark, family expectations and safety at remote sites shape who can do the job and how long they stay.
Project ends take trained people away
A grant closes and experienced workers are let go or leave for a new project elsewhere, taking local knowledge with them.
Volunteers drift without structure
People give time with enthusiasm, but there is no clear role, record or recognition, and numbers drop quietly.
Reporting is heavy at the bottom
Field staff spend evenings filling formats for several donors, and the time comes out of community contact.
Supervision is thin and distant
A coordinator may see a worker once in a month, so problems in the field or at home surface late.
What a working HR set-up looks like
- 01
Define the field worker role
A clear scope on the number of villages or groups, the hours of work, travel and what reports are due. The role design and job descriptions work provides this.
- 02
Make travel and safety routine
A rule on travel timings, check-in calls and what to do in an unsafe situation, with extra care for women staff. The health, safety and wellbeing work helps.
- 03
Plan for project endings
A simple process to ask each project, six months before it closes, what happens to the people and the groups, and which staff move to the next cycle. The HR strategy and workforce planning work covers it.
- 04
Give volunteers a defined place
A short role description, a record of who is active and a simple way to thank and review, kept separate from employee records.
- 05
Reduce the reporting load
One set of field formats serving most donors, collected once, with data entry supported by the office. The HR reporting and analytics work shows how to structure it.
What to put in place first
- Count the villages and groups each field worker covers and how many hours that takes in a week.
- Ask women field staff what makes travel or work hard.
- List projects ending in the next year and what the plan is for each person on them.
- Compare how many reporting formats a field worker fills each month.
Confirm 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.
Where GullyHR helps
- Role design and job descriptions
A field worker role with a realistic number of settlements and clear expectations.
- Health, safety and wellbeing
Travel and safety routines for field staff, with particular attention to women working in remote areas.
- HR strategy and workforce planning
Planning for project ends so that trained people are not lost with each grant cycle.
- Employee engagement and culture
Ways to recognise field workers and volunteers whose trust in the community is the organisation's main asset.
Every engagement starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes. Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in ngos and social enterprises, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Management
"We need two more people": the headcount plan nobody wrote
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
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HR Management
The safety poster nobody reads
A laminated notice, an annual drill, and an incident register with three entries in two years. What workplace health and safety looks like when it is real.
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HR Management
The engagement survey that made things worse
Eighty per cent responded, the report was thorough, and six months later trust was lower than before. What went wrong between the survey and the silence.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
It depends on distances, the work in each village and the size of groups. Time a typical week and set the number from that, rather than from a donor's target alone.
Plan early. Look for roles in other projects, share the news in good time and pay final dues promptly. Confirm contract and notice obligations with a qualified professional.
They need their own simple arrangement covering role, conduct, safety and records. Confirm whether any legal duties apply with a qualified professional.
Ask them what makes the job hard, then adjust travel timings, pairing and check-in routines. The answers differ by area and are best heard directly.
Sometimes through restructuring roles or how costs are shared across projects. Where it is not possible, work on travel support, recognition and workload.
We would ask about your field workers: how many villages each covers, how travel and safety are handled, and what happens to trained people when a project ends. Reporting load at the bottom of the chain often comes up too. A good first piece of work is a clear field worker role with a routine for travel and safety. Scope is then agreed in writing before anything begins.
More on HR for ngos and social enterprises
All 7 business types in ngos and social enterprises · Find another business type
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See all HR topics for ngos and social enterprises, or another industry.