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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 · Livelihood and skilling programmes
HR for Livelihood and Skilling Programmes: Trainers, Mobilisers and Placement Teams
A skilling programme succeeds when trained people get work, and that depends on trainers, mobilisers and placement staff pulling together. Here is how to run them.
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Share your requirementsA livelihood and skilling programme trains young people and adults in trades, services or enterprise skills and helps them into jobs, apprenticeships or self-employment. It may be run by an NGO, a social enterprise, a CSR partner or a government-linked scheme. Staff include mobilisers who recruit candidates in villages and slums, trainers who run batches in a centre or a classroom, centre managers, placement officers who work with employers, and follow-up staff who track what happens after training. Outcomes are counted in batches: enrolled, trained, assessed, placed and still working after a few months. Targets are therefore set against each stage, and funding often depends on them. Trainers are often practitioners from the trade rather than career teachers. See also HR for NGOs and social enterprises.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in livelihood and skilling programmes, you may see
- Targets cascade into pressure
- Mobilisers and placement staff blame each other
- Trade trainers lack teaching skills
- Placement does not mean retention
- Staff are tied to batch cycles
- Employer relationships sit with one officer
- Centres are far apart and unevenly led
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in livelihood and skilling programmes
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.
- Candidate mobilisers
- Trainers and master trainers
- Centre managers
- Placement and employer relations officers
- Counsellors and soft-skills facilitators
- Post-placement follow-up staff
- Assessment and certification coordinators
- Programme managers and finance staff
Where HR strains in livelihood and skilling programmes
Targets cascade into pressure
Batch enrolment, completion and placement numbers are passed down to staff, and mobilisers or placement officers feel the squeeze first.
Mobilisers and placement staff blame each other
Mobilisers enrol candidates who are not ready for the jobs on offer, and placement staff struggle to find roles for them.
Trade trainers lack teaching skills
A skilled electrician or tailor may not know how to teach a mixed batch, and training quality varies by person.
Placement does not mean retention
Candidates are placed and leave within weeks because of pay, distance or conditions, so the real result is not known until follow-up.
Staff are tied to batch cycles
Trainers are hired by batch and idle between them, or let go and rehired, so skilled people drift to steadier work.
Employer relationships sit with one officer
A placement officer's contacts at factories, hotels or retail chains leave with them, and the organisation starts from scratch.
Centres are far apart and unevenly led
Quality at each centre depends heavily on the centre manager, and standards slip where supervision is rare.
HR topics for livelihood and skilling programmes
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Learning and Development; HR Analytics and Management Reporting. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for ngos and social enterprises, not in general.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a livelihood and skilling programmes business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Align targets across the chain
Mobilisation, training and placement measured together by the number of candidates who reach a job and stay, rather than as separate numbers.
What this coversHide
Align targets across the chain
Mobilisation, training and placement measured together by the number of candidates who reach a job and stay, rather than as separate numbers.
What this coversHideMobilisation, training and placement measured together by the number of candidates who reach a job and stay, rather than as separate numbers. The performance management process can carry this.
Build a trainer standard
A short method for delivering a batch, a practice session with observation and a refresher each year.
What this coversHide
Build a trainer standard
A short method for delivering a batch, a practice session with observation and a refresher each year.
What this coversHideA short method for delivering a batch, a practice session with observation and a refresher each year. The learning and development process provides the structure.
Keep a shared employer file
Contacts, job types, pay ranges and feedback on each employer, held by the organisation and not a person.
What this coversHide
Keep a shared employer file
Contacts, job types, pay ranges and feedback on each employer, held by the organisation and not a person.
What this coversHideContacts, job types, pay ranges and feedback on each employer, held by the organisation and not a person.
Follow up after placement
Planned contact at set points after joining, with reasons for leaving recorded and fed back to the training team.
What this coversHide
Follow up after placement
Planned contact at set points after joining, with reasons for leaving recorded and fed back to the training team.
What this coversHidePlanned contact at set points after joining, with reasons for leaving recorded and fed back to the training team. The HR reporting and analytics work sets this up.
Smooth contracts between batches
Trainer arrangements that cover the gap between batches, such as moving to refresher or mobilisation tasks.
What this coversHide
Smooth contracts between batches
Trainer arrangements that cover the gap between batches, such as moving to refresher or mobilisation tasks.
What this coversHideTrainer arrangements that cover the gap between batches, such as moving to refresher or mobilisation tasks. The workforce planning work covers it.
Start by checking where you stand
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 requirements- Compare enrolment, completion and placement numbers for your last three batches.
- Ask placement officers which mobilised candidates were hardest to place and why.
- Observe two trainers teaching the same module and note the differences.
- Check what share of placed candidates were still working at your last follow-up.
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.
How GullyHR helps
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.
- Performance management process
Shared targets that follow a candidate from enrolment to a lasting job.
- Learning and development
A way to help skilled practitioners become good trainers, with observation and refreshers.
- HR reporting and analytics
Batch and follow-up data turned into a view of what is working at each centre.
- HR strategy and workforce planning
Staffing built around batch cycles so skilled trainers are not lost in the gaps.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
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
Why employees need clear expectations before performance reviews
A review can only judge what was agreed beforehand. How to set expectations that are specific, written and revisited, so the review stops being a surprise.
5 min readRead article
HR Process
The training calendar nobody attends: fixing the learning and development process
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead article
HR Process
The 6 HR reports a founder should get every month without asking
Six numbers, one page, same format each month. What they are, how to define them so they mean the same thing twice, and what each one tells you.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Measure the full journey to a job that lasts, not enrolment alone, so mobilisers are encouraged to bring people who fit the opportunities.
Often yes, with help. Teach the method, let them watch others and give feedback after observed sessions. Not everyone suits it, and that is fine.
Plan work for the gap, such as refresher sessions, mobilisation support or curriculum work. Confirm contract terms for fixed-term staff with a qualified professional.
Common reasons are pay, distance, housing and unclear job expectations. Follow-up records show which of these affect your candidates, and what to tell the next batch.
Keep an employer file with names, outcomes and notes, and have a second person meet each key employer at least once a year.
We would walk the chain from mobiliser to trainer to placement officer and see where targets turn into pressure or blame. Trainer skills, contracts between batches and follow-up after placement would also come up. A sensible first piece of work is aligning targets across that chain and setting a simple trainer standard. Afterwards we send a written scope and you decide whether to go ahead.
More on HR for ngos and social enterprises
All 7 business types in ngos and social enterprises · Find another business type
Community development organisationsCSR implementation partnersTechnical and vocational institutesChurches and faith-based organisationsGrant-making foundationsHealth and nutrition NGOsPerformance Management in ngos and social enterprisesLearning and Development in ngos and social enterprisesHR Analytics and Management Reporting in ngos and social enterprises
See all HR topics for ngos and social enterprises, or another industry.