‘Support, supervision and training are key to employee motivation’, says Caritas HR Manager

Caritas HR Manager Patrick Harvey speaks to MaltaCEOs.mt about his experience as Human Resources Manager within a local non-Governmental organisation and how he overcomes the struggle of employee demotivation within his organisation.

Mr Harvey firmly believes that sometimes, boosting employee engagement and motivation requires a lot of individual attention, understanding and support. At local NGO Caritas, this is mainly done through supervision, frequent staff meetings, seminars, training and fun activities.

Discussing the ‘quiet quitting’ trend with MaltaCEOs.mt, Mr Harvey confirmed that, working for an NGO this is not something that they see very often albeit “one cannot generalise.” However, like in every other place of work, he does come across employees who seem to lose interest from time to time, and this is where he realises that if they do not act upon it immediately, it could eventually lead to quiet quitting too.

Entities, be they in the private or public sector, for-profit or not-for-profit, governmental or NGO, must be on the lookout for varying employee behaviour, because very often the signs are more than obvious.

“The first step is to understand the employee and support them whenever they us,” Mr Harvey said whilst adding that in NGOs there is the tendency to “find employees with intrinsic values towards their job, hence they might desist from quiet quitting.”

Despite facing their jobs and the world of work in a potentially different manner, working for an NGO does not mean complete immunity from demoralisation and disengagement.

Delving deeper into how Caritas achieves this, Mr Harvey confirmed that “as an NGO with sound moral values we strive to instil a workplace culture where vulnerable people deserve the best, and this means that employees are encourage to give their 100% to our clients.”

“To achieve this, we need a motivated workforce where they fully apprehend the culture of the organisation, and therefore we invest a lot in activities that target employee motivation and formation such as regular group supervision, unit and staff meeting, formation seminars, and regular staff training,” Mr Harvey concluded.