Background
Christian Aid is a large and influential international relief and development agency and the preferred development agency of 41 Christian churches based in the UK and Ireland. Its essential purpose is to work with partner organisations across the world to “expose the scandal of poverty, contribute to its eradication, and to challenge structures and systems that keep people excluded”. Diversity is a big part of the organisation which employs about 750 staff; 450 based in the UK and 300 spread across 26 overseas locations in Africa, Asia/Middle East and Latin America/Caribbean. In order to achieve its essential purpose a priority for Christian Aid is to maintain and develop relationships with supporters (those who make financial and other contributions) and to utilise its resources (approximately £94 millions in 2006) to deliver effective relief and development projects. Chief Executive Daleep Mukarji is very aware that, as a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Christian Aid must utilise learning as it works to ensure that supporters are satisfied with their relationship with the organisation, that they trust it to do good work and to make an impact.
The contribution of learning
Relief organisations are not known for the development of their HR or management processes but Christian Aid have found that, since the establishment of an HR function in 1998, learning and training interventions have enabled the organisation to develop and implement HR resourcing processes and organisational capability relevant to both short-term and longer term objectives. In particular, learning has become an integral part of the organisation’s drive to cope with continuous change, the requirements of long-term sustainable development and the challenge of managing humanitarian relief projects in new and sometimes unexpected situations.
Since 2005 learning has formed part of the organisational strategy to develop new ways of both valuing staff and developing employees’ sense of ownership and commitment through effective leadership and management processes. Mukarji reflects “We needed a major change process that would change our culture, our ways of working, and more importantly some of our attitudes and behaviour … (and) learning and training was there to help with leadership development”.
Learning investment and alignment processes
Learning is identified as a strategic goal within Christian Aid as the need to continuously “strengthen the organisation” is published as one of six focus areas in the organisation’s five-year plan, suitably named Turning Hope into Action. Naturally occurring disasters around the world, from tsunami to earthquake, can place exceptional demands on the organisation and deliberate steps are taken after the event to identify necessary learning and ensure that things are done differently as a consequence. In this way learning from experience, action learning, knowledge sharing processes and collaboration tools form the basis for enhanced performance and service delivery. Indeed the effective “infiltration” of learning within the organisation can enable people to understand how they can improve and have a greater impact and influence as a result. The reception-resource centre-café area on the ground floor of the London office, shared by visitors and employees alike, provides a physical symbol of the learning-in-action culture that Christian Aid is seeking to develop.
Historically, management and leadership development is another area that has traditionally been neglected by NGOs and, as a result, it has been necessary to import management talent from other sectors (public, private or military). Management learning processes are helping to overcome this in Christian Aid. An objective within the “strengthening the organisation” strategy is to develop and grow leadership and management capability throughout the organisation. Management action learning programmes have been constructed around a newly introduced competency framework, with defined values and standards (see the CIPD case study ‘Action Learning for Management Development at Christian Aid’). This change programme aims to cause a cultural shift towards encouraging managers to accept accountability and to empower others to do the same. As Mukarji puts it “The best thing is that … (now) managers are more corporate, more strategic, more confident, more willing to see that they are capable of being management”.
Measuring and reporting on the value of learning
Daleep Mukarji and the Head of Learning and Development, Jimmy Naudi, know that they have some way to go with measuring the value of learning. Their view is that learning is measurable “but not easily”. A specific measurement tool, the annual staff attitude survey has been introduced to provide a picture of changes occurring within the organisation. Mukarji is looking at how managers feel, and at specific measures of staff turnover, job satisfaction, and individual performance. Increasingly, the service level agreement concept is being introduced to provide a further dialogue between service units (including learning and development) and their internal customers, despite the language being somewhat unfamiliar in the relief and development agency work culture.
Story telling is also utilised as a vehicle for both knowledge sharing and measuring learning. Naudi encourages people to use stories and personal experiences as a way to link learning interventions with resultant changes in their behaviour, or changes in their thinking. This process of “anecdotal reflection”, therefore, provides a link between measuring and maximising the value of learning to the organisation. At Christian Aid, qualitative or ‘soft’ data about behavioural change and management development provides evidence that learning is becoming embedded so that Naudi is able to reflect that, increasingly, “key individuals within the organisation believe that learning and development is a positive thing for the organisation to do”.