April 17, 2003 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Human-services charities could soon face a serious shortage of workers, predicts a new report by a Washington think tank. The report says human-services workers are asked to do too much for too little.
The survey, by the Brookings Institution, was based on interviews with 1,213 private, nonprofit, and government workers in child care, child welfare, youth services, juvenile justice, employment, and training. Some 2.5 million people work for social-services groups, according to the survey.
The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates from June to October last year and paid for by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
More than a third of the survey respondents who work for charities, 35 percent, say their most talented co-workers leave their jobs within a couple of years, and about half of those respondents say co-workers who leave their jobs usually leave the field entirely.
At the same time, graduating college students express little interest in working for human-services groups, suggesting that a shortage of qualified workers could become a critical problem in the future, according to the report.
The survey showed that nonprofit human-services workers are particularly motivated by their organizations’ missions, says Paul C. Light, director of Brookings’s Center for Public Service, who designed the survey.
Government and business employees in human services were more likely to come to work for the paycheck than those working in nonprofit groups, he says. By contrast, he says, human-services workers employed by nonprofit organizations are more driven by their missions.
But the survey also showed that those same workers face twin disadvantages, Mr. Light says, because serving poor clients tends to involve heavier workloads, more stress, and less money and encouragement than do other public-service jobs. At the same time, nonprofit groups generally have more difficulty providing necessary equipment and supplies, and cannot offer the kind of work environment, compensation, and career-advancement opportunities offered by government or business. “When you couple that with the fact that they’re serving low-income clients, an underresourced field, the nonprofit human-services worker pays a double penalty,” Mr. Light says.
As a result, he predicts that recruiting problems faced in the future by the human-services field will be compounded for nonprofit groups. “The nonprofit sector has a work force it doesn’t deserve,” he says. “It doesn’t provide the resources, support, rewards, or respect these workers deserve. You can only abuse your talent for so long before they’re going to exit for greener pastures in the private sector or government. Sooner or later, this work force just isn’t going to show up for work anymore.”
Making a Difference
Like other nonprofit workers who were surveyed by Brookings last fall in an effort to define the charity work force, those who work in nonprofit human-services jobs are much more likely than for-profit or government workers to say that they took their jobs for the chance to help people and make a difference, according to the new Brookings survey. Only 5 percent of nonprofit workers in human services say they come to work for the paycheck, compared with 16 percent of other nonprofit employees, 41 percent of federal employees, and 47 percent of those in business.
However, 35 percent of people in social services who work for charities say they have too much to do, according to the survey.
Nonprofit workers who served low-income clients were more likely than those who helped middle- or high-income clients to say that their pay was low (46 percent compared with 38 percent), and were less likely to agree that talent is rewarded (60 percent compared with 65 percent). They were also less likely to say that they always trusted their organizations to do the right thing (52 percent versus 65 percent).
Most of the study’s results included human-services workers in business and government, as well as the nonprofit field. Among those findings:
- Eighty-one percent of all human-services workers surveyed agreed that it is easy to burn out in the work that they do. Seventy percent agreed they always have too much work to do, and 75 percent described their work as “frustrating.” Slightly more than half said they felt unappreciated.
- Sixty-seven percent said their pay was low, and 62 percent said they work long hours.
- Among the employees who were 18 to 35, 30 percent said they intended to leave their jobs within two years, and another 13 percent said they would depart within five years.
Copies of the report, “Health of the Human Services Workforce,” are available free by contacting Sherra Merchant, Brookings Institution Center for Public Service, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, or by calling (202) 797-6424.
