Jobs in civic organizations

Human resources management – the biggest drawback 

(continues from the previous issue)

Managing structures within civic organizations are regulated by the organization’s statute and are almost equal for all associations. A managing structure mainly comprises a president of the association, an executive board and groups that are focused on certain issues depending on the type of the organization. These groups are somewhere called commission, remaining from the old way of work.

The operative personnel is mixed. In contrast to the production and public enterprises, these organizations do not have standardized job yet, thus precluding from grouping and advancing. The terminology that is used for jobs in civil organizations is taken from the English speaking area and often cannot be adjusted to our conditions. Thus, in the non-profitable organizations there is a project officer or program officer. Lately the term project or program assistant has been used and it is a good solution in accordance with the English term. Adjusting terminology depends on how well people in the organizations are prepared to use the already standardized job titles, e.g. educator instead of trainer.

Another problem that hinders jobs determining and specification in civic organizations is the dynamics of changes. Namely, the surroundings greatly affect the internal conditions in the association. All the changes in external factors (change of the donator’s policy, organization’s new interests, changes in the socio-economic sphere etc.) affect the basic processes in the organization. Thus the working tasks that people in the organizations should perform, also change. The practice shows that during a year, one engaged person (a member of the management, an activist) in a smaller civic organization performs several working tasks that can hardly be put in one job (communication with the public, writing draft projects, keeping records etc.). If we make an attempt to design a job, it will be hard to comply with some of the criteria for shaping the job (technological homogeneity, education similarity, phase dependency, personnel continuity, personnel optimum).

A tendency in the non-governmental sector is to professionalize the civic organizations. It means that we have to work on forming an internal structure in the organizations, outside the managing structure (president, assembly), consisted of several jobs that will meet the organization’s objectives. The internal systematization will cover several jobs with a range wide enough, and enough flexible to adjust to frequent changes of the basic process in the organizations. This can be achieved with a generic description of the job. Considering the basic processes in the civic organizations in the Republic of Macedonia, it can be concluded that most of them deal with representation and information and a smaller part deal with training and financial support. According to this, the following generic jobs can be formulated in the civic organizations: project associate, public relations officer, trainer, administrative secretary. The managing structure in the civic organizations has certainly not been taken into consideration.

Project associate independently runs projects in the organization, identifies the target group’s needs, formulates projects, applies to the donators (in accordance with the internal procedures of the organization – approval by management), takes part in implementing activities, observes the activities and reports on the carried out tasks. This job definition gives enough width and a possibility to follow the dynamics of the basic process, that is, it does not limit in terms of the type of the activities, but still it clearly defines the performer’s responsibility and competence.

Public relations officer is a bit more specific category, however, even here there is enough space for modification of the tasks in accordance with the changes in the process. Public relations officer communicates with the media and the wider public, makes press-announcements, bulletins, articles, leaflets etc. and looks after building the public image of the organization.

Trainer provides support and facilitation in the process of thinking and resuscitation for one’s own potentials and people knowledge. The trainer also possesses professional knowledge and transfers knowledge and skills from a certain area. The trainer determines the needs for training, prepares a training plan and program, develops materials and delivers training, evaluates training and reports.

Administrative secretary is a universal category in every more developed civic organization and his/her tasks are to run the organization’s archive, to organize meetings, to inform the members of the organization and to keep personal files.

If more attention is paid to defining jobs in the civic organization, there will be more positive changes in the work efficiency and increased productivity.
 

Concept page 

Job analysis: it is a systematic procedure that determines the nature and contents of work (tasks, obligations and responsibilities), conditions and methods of working, as well as determining the individual’s physical characteristics “required by the job”. Through job analysis we come to the job description.