NGO Human Resource Management: Nepalese Context

I was bugged down by the thought that how challenging is the Human Resource Management (HRM) on NGO setting. I thought of it for a while, talked to different people on the organization, and went through different google search. While doing so, I found one nice article written by Bernard C. Nwaiwu, CEO of the CEDE Trust Fund which has worded down all the thoughts I had. I couldn't agree more on the lines below (I have copied it below for your reference, you can go through the following link to read the full article)

http://www.cedetf.org/uploads/publications/Legitimacy%20and%20human%20resources%20-%20Exermining%20some%20critically%20management%20challenges%20facing%20NGOs.pdf

"Manpower planning is a major HRM challenge for NGO managers, who are saddled with the

problem of staff recruitment and development. NGO recruitments are mostly project based.

The implication of this is that project staff have a start date and a known end date, which

makes it tight for NGOs to invest in staff development, in most cases, NGOs ignore critical

HRM issues such as induction for new recruits while staff are assigned to projects without

any training on organisational culture. This could dent the image of the organisations were

the behaviour of such new staff contradicts the professed values of the organisation."

He has further written that NGO jobs are less attractive to experienced recruits as people tend to favor more stable opportunity compared to project based vacancies in NGO and their pay scale is not competitive when compared to corporations.  Do you think the same matches the Nepalese scenario?

I would not agree to his points that NGO jobs are less attractive because we are seeing boom of NGOs in Nepal. In fact, figure shows that more than 45,000 NGOs existing in Nepal, if we assume that only 50% of them are active then, these NGO on an average requires 10-15 staffs minimum to operate making it more than 300,000 people working on the sector. Isn't it the huge number? There is another thing that we can observe, whenever there is a vacancy announcement on the newspapers or job sites more than 50% is covered by the jobs of the NGO.  Its obvious from these vacancies that NGO is growing on the market on day to day basis not only in size but also, in operation, no. of projects, and district outreach etc. We will find at least 2-3 NGO in each of the district headquarter, the number is even greater on the Midwestern and Farwestern part of the country. I remember visiting to Nepalgunj, where almost every hotels are packed for conducting the programs of the NGOs.

If that's the case, we cannot deny the fact that at least in Nepal, NGOs are creating more market stimulation than corporations if not in all but certainly on the job creation. The youths seems to be very  enthusiastic about it. Earlier people used to think about the joining the government service after completing the graduation then came the trend of the banks & financial institutions and now, the craze has gradually shifted towards the NGO. Few days ago, I was talking to recent college graduates, among them more than 90% had done their three months internship program from the NGO sector and they do not see any other option but to join the sector. One of my question to those graduates was why? why NGO and not banks? The answer was obvious we get two days holiday and have high benefits package, banks do pay significantly lower to the support and mid level personnel's than what NGO pays. Also, few argued that they provide employment favorable environment, help employees live balanced life style; one does not have to work overtime,  people talk/practice the gender friendly work environment, there is fixed dates for most of the deliverable and moreover they can go to the rural parts of the country.

On the backdrop of the above scenario and well known nature of the NGO, what do you think will be the future of these Nepalese Human Resource? Give a thought and pour in you views in the comment box.

Thank you...!!!