75% of charities perceive staffing and/or skills as a significant risk to their organisation according to Managing risk? reducing your risk exposure? the third annual survey of senior managers and charity trustees in the UK, by PKF accountants and business advisors and the Charity Finance Directors’ Group (CFDG).
The problem appears to be greatest at chief executive and senior manager level with two thirds of cases highlighting this as a significant risk.
A third of charities identified the lack of finance staff skills as an issue with almost a third of respondents seeing obtaining trustees with suitable skills as a prominent problem.
Other staff and skill shortages identified by respondents included volunteers, health professionals and care staff, middle managers and specialists covering IT, estates or science.
The most popular action taken to address this risk being to provide training to existing people, which has been tried by almost half of respondents citing this as a significant risk.
Other popular responses were reviewing remuneration packages to aid retention or recruitment, succession planning to cope with loss of existing staff and recruitment drives to bring in new staff. Few charities had reduced their activities in response to the staffing or skills problem.
The 2004 survey was carried out in May and June 2004 and, like the 2002 and 2003 surveys, charities from across the UK were questioned (308 in total), giving a broad cross section of views on the risks facing the sector and how risk management is operating.
Charles Cox, partner and head of charities at PKF, said: Staffing and skills shortages can manifest themselves in three main ways: concern over losing existing staff with difficult to replace skills, current vacancies that are difficult to fill and skill gaps in the current staff or trustees. The responses to this year’s survey suggest that all three of these are prevalent, and for many organisations the risk covers several different categories of staff.
For some types of skills, such as nursing and care staff,
there is a national shortage, while for others the issue is
more about attracting the right people both into the sector and to a particular charity.
The sector has often been reluctant to pay the market rate for expert skills and has therefore relied upon other factors to attract people. Unless it is significant, a general increase in remuneration for charities is unlikely to attract large additional numbers of skilled people to the sector, remuneration packages do, however, provide a viable option for individual key posts.
For copies of the 2004 PKF charities risk survey please contact Janette O’Byrne on 020 7065 0318 or e-mail
janette.obyrne@uk.pkf.com
Charities struggling to recruit the right staff
Third annual survey of senior managers and charity trustees in the UK
