Jobs in civic organizations

Human resources management – biggest drawback

At the moment the civic sector in Macedonia comprises over 4,000 civic organizations of various profiles facing a lot of problems and open issues in their operating. The biggest drawback of the civic organizations is in their managerial structures, particularly in the part of the human resources management. Faced with everyday problems of surviving from a project to a project, as a result of the weak sustainability, these organizations do not pay enough attention to the people who actually “make” the organization. The profile of people engaged in these organizations is various, but we can say that lately there have been more young and high-educated people who join these organizations, as an opportunity for career development as professionals in the non-profitable sector. The organizations’ management is already facing the problems such as personnel fluctuation, incorrect and irregular distribution of the working tasks and responsibilities and it has negative effect upon the organization’s efficiency. One of the reasons for such condition is the drawback in the human resources management.

Activating the personnel within the organization, more precisely determining working tasks of the people engaged has imposed as an especially relevant part of the human resources management in the civic organizations. The management of the associations is led by the attitude that people who are engaged are mainly volunteers and the fact that they do not receive any salary for their work means that they do not have a job. Thus, in almost all organizations, except the professional non-profitable organizations that we, unfortunately, have not many, there is no description of the jobs. In the civic organizations tasks are carried out that are of vital importance for the society’s functioning. Especially important is their role in the social-humanitarian sphere (humanitarian campaigns, socialization of people with special needs, health education of the marginal groups), in the development activities (support and motivation of the population in the rural areas while building water supply systems, awareness strengthening) and everywhere the state cannot or has no interest to act. According to this, the need for defined jobs in the civic organizations is obvious.

Job description unites all relevant elements of the job, such as the main tasks and obligations, necessary qualifications and functional relations with the other jobs in the organization. Job description is a document that is to be at both employer and employee’s disposal, but also at the potential employee’s disposal, therefore it should be written clearly, using established phraseology and offer enough clear information about responsibilities, competencies, working conditions, monitoring, necessary competencies, coordination, necessary information.

There is no universally accepted standard form of a job description, because there are various jobs, still a good job description should contain the following information:
1.      Identification: job title, position in an organization’s diagram, job location (factory, department, machine);
2.      Job contents: job objectives and contents, that is concise description of what the employees should do, how and why they are doing it: a detailed job description, specific tasks, responsibilities and competencies, link with other jobs, specific methods, equipment and techniques written in chronological or logic order;
3.      Job specification: mental skills, such as basic education, capability to do the job and responsibilities, physical characteristics and working conditions are the basic components of the job specification.

The thing that the civic organizations are missing is the precise determining of what functions, or more precisely, what jobs are necessary for free functioning. This is obstructed as a result of the fact that in the organizations there is no awareness of the need for specifying the working tasks and the competencies in the organization and their standardizing. The reason is also the fact that the working tasks are often changed as a result of working on different projects. Associations set too many general objectives to cover more fields in order to be more competitive at the funds “market”. Their sustainability directly depends on more project-proposals to be approved by donators. Funds they receive are often short-term (six months to a year) and they always refer to different activities. All this makes jobs in the civic associations a very dynamic category.

However, the working tasks carried out in the civic organizations are necessary for functioning of a democratic society. It imposes the need for professionalization of a so-called third sector, which means defining jobs in the associations.


(To be continued in the next issue)



Concept page

The term job denotes a group of positions (jobs) similar to their basic functions for realizing the organization’s goals.

Job is one or more working tasks carried out by an individual in a given form for a certain time. In an organization there are as many jobs as there are people employed.

Working task is a special working activity created for achieving a special goal (e.g. writing letters, filing etc.). Each working task is realized through a number of operations. For successful carrying out the operations, the individual has to have certain knowledge, skills and attitudes, that is, should know and want to carry out that operation.

Human resources management enables establishment of balance between people and organization’s needs. It is a sum of activities that should guarantee that the real people are at the right place in the right time in order to carry out the planned tasks. Human resources management covers activities related to providing, development, activating and maintaining the personnel within the organization.