Community organisations and the importance of good work
Community organisations play a vital role in the wellbeing of communities, not only through projects and services but also as employers. Work can provide material security and stability, peace of mind, connectedness, personal development, and can help us feel energised and alive. At the local community level, good work reduces poverty and deprivation, supports a stronger economy, and enables social inclusion. It is a recognised social determinant of health, serving as one of the biggest factors affecting our quality of life. Not only is good work beneficial for the individual and society, but it is also hugely helpful for the organisation – leading to increased loyalty, motivation and productivity.
Pathways to Good Work – the Toolkit
Funded initially by Power to Change, Locality has been part of a research collaboration with Middlesex University to better understand how our members are providing good work in the context of enormous challenges. We completed a further round of interviews with members in 2024 to update our research. What we uncovered was a deep reservoir of excellent practical advice which we capture in our Pathways to Good Work Toolkit. This is a reflective tool which members can use to identify both existing good practices and areas where there may be scope for improvement.
What do we mean by ‘Good Work’?
The Toolkit provides a framework of seven key dimensions of Good Work, including:
- Meaningful work – people’s sense of purpose and value around what they do.
- Voice, democratic governance and inclusive culture – how empowered employees and volunteers feel in making their views heard in the workplace.
- Contracts and job design – concerning issues such as the length of contract and number of contracted hours.
- Pay and benefits – the level of remuneration given to workers and benefits they receive, such as maternity or paternity leave.
- Skills and development – making the best use of individuals’ strengths and abilities.
- Flexible working – shaping the way the job is undertaken to suit both the individual and the organisation.
- Health and wellbeing – how work affects the mental and physical health of the workforce.
Meaningful work
Community organisations are in some ways very well-placed to provide good work. A notable advantage is that they provide jobs with social purpose, where work feels valuable and meaningful. Whereas many people in the UK feel their job is not making a meaningful contribution to society, community organisations by contrast offer some of the best possible opportunities for making a difference – like supporting people’s mental health, protecting the local environment, and transforming community buildings. Working locally allows you to hear people’s stories and see the visible changes in your community.
Challenges for community organisations in providing good work
However, we know through speaking with our members that there are significant sector-wide challenges to providing good work. Our research has been timely as community organisations face an incredibly difficult operating environment shaped by numerous crises including the pandemic, high inflation, and precarious state of public sector finances.
Finding the money for good wages, benefits and permanent contracts remains the single greatest challenge and will be familiar to most. Members often find, for instance, that the funding available to them is not enough to pay the real living wage. One spoke to us about their organisation’s ongoing battle to provide this for their workforce, where they find it difficult to secure the amount needed through local authority contracts. We heard from others about how funding does not allow them to provide the benefits they would like, such as paying above the statutory level for maternity and paternity leave.
The short-term nature of grant funding also constrains what community organisations can do. Many are reliant on short-term funding opportunities for their income, as it is comparatively rare to secure multi-year funding. A few we spoke with highlighted the difficulty of providing permanent contracts on this basis, given the uncertainty around whether funding will continue. This also makes it difficult to increase wages sustainably, as they cannot guarantee they will be able to provide the higher level in the long term.
New challenges emerging
As these old challenges appear to have intensified, new challenges have also emerged. One of the most significant impacts of the pandemic was the dramatic rise in remote working, now common practice. While this is beneficial in many ways, members highlighted some of the new challenges around this, namely: increased difficulty in building a collaborative team culture and greater risk of loneliness.
Another challenge relates to the trend of employing people with lived experience of disadvantage relevant to their role (such as mental ill health, or substance misuse). These opportunities will hopefully increase as considerations of diversity, equity and inclusion continue to be embedded. However, while lived experience can make individuals uniquely qualified for their role, they can also bring physical and mental health challenges which require additional support from employers. One member told us about the challenge of striking the right balance between supporting people’s individuals needs while ensuring equal treatment across the workforce.
Exploring the art of the possible in providing good work
While significant, community organisations rise to these challenges every day. By their nature, our members are creative, resourceful, and forward-thinking, which they apply to overcome the obstacles to providing good quality work.
Organisations participating in the research provided examples of working within the context of what their organisation can deliver to enhance their offer of work. They demonstrate both a commitment to their workforce, and willingness to work creatively and flexibly, to provide the best conditions they can. They also seek longer-term strategies to lay the foundations for best practice.
The Pathways to Good Work Toolkit captures some of the best advice arising from our research. It has been created from the bottom up, drawing on the practical experience of our members. It also recognises that community organisations face different challenges in their experience of providing good work and avoids a one-size-fits-all, prescriptive approach to making recommendations.
Examples from the Toolkit: managing temporary contracts and low pay
Navigating the challenges around funding provides a good example of such pragmatism. While the recommendation is given for organisations to diversify their income streams to reduce dependence on grant funding, there is acknowledgement that not all will be able to achieve this, at least not in the short term. Hence there are also a range of considerations for what could be done while the ideal scenario remains out of reach.
For instance, where it is not possible to provide permanent contracts, the Toolkit suggests several ways to support staff. This includes maintaining close communication about efforts to source new funding or helping staff network across the wider sector and putting in a good word with other employers. Members participating in the research told us just how valuable employees find it when they commit to helping them get on and building a close, collaborative relationship.
The Toolkit also addresses the challenge of low pay. Recognising it is not always possible to pay the living wage in the short term, it recommends setting this as a longer-term aspiration and thinking about the wider offer of employment to compensate. This might include options for flexible working, building a strong and supportive team culture, or considering less obvious benefits such as discounts (in one example we heard, discounts were provided on meals at a local community-run café, helping staff keep more of what they earn). We heard from members how they maintained a high staff retention rate despite not paying as much as they would like, given the other benefits of working for their organisation.
Managing budget and time
As well as navigating challenges around funding, our members described many other ways in which they are striving – often on a small budget and very limited capacity – to provide the best conditions of work possible. We heard from members about how they have been working hard to apply the ethos of community building to their own workforce, putting new support systems in place such as more regular 1-1 and team meetings. We heard from others about how they seek opportunities to develop the skills of their workforce, in one case paying for their employee to undertake a youth work qualification.
Alongside these aspirations there was also the recognition that it is difficult to do everything you would like – there will always be competing pressures on time and budget. The advice from members on how to manage this issue was again practical and helpful. One mentioned the importance of building a close relationship with staff and asking what matters most to them. This can help you decide, for instance, what types of training opportunities to prioritise, or what kinds of benefits or flexible arrangements would work best for the workforce. Another cautioned against trying to do everything yourself and advised drawing on the strengths of everyone in the organisation – encouraging peer support between team members was highlighted as one way of doing this.
Others mentioned the importance of developing an action plan with clear goals and timelines. An action plan can be especially helpful to keep sight of longer-term aims amidst a hectic schedule and shorter-term pressures. It also helps communicate to staff the direction of travel for your organisation. The Toolkit can be a helpful starting point to developing this, helping you think through what could potentially be improved across the seven key dimensions.
The key takeaway
Community organisations have demonstrated their ability to provide good quality work in the context of a challenging operating environment. They have found ways of mitigating and overcoming some of the biggest structural barriers, particularly around funding. They are also adept at identifying what matters most and providing the best conditions they can within the budget and time available. Often their offer of work is rewarding and meaningful in a way unrivalled by other sectors. We have aimed to capture some of our membership’s best practical advice in the Pathways to Good Work Toolkit which we hope will enable peer-peer learning across the network.