Empower Your People. Elevate Your Culture
Tailored HR strategies for not-for-profits to strengthen your workforce and drive mission success.
Practical Human Resources Solutions
People are at the heart of every successful not-for-profit organization. Yet attracting, developing, and retaining the right talent while maintaining a healthy workplace culture can be challenging in an increasingly complex environment.
The Osborne Group helps not-for-profits strengthen their organizations through practical, people-focused human resources solutions that align with their mission, strategy, and goals. From leadership development and succession planning to organizational reviews, compensation strategies, and HR leadership support, we provide the expertise needed to build engaged teams, strengthen organizational capacity, and position your organization for long-term success.
At The Osborne Group, our HR Principals partner with not-for-profit leaders to build people-first strategies that strengthen culture, reduce turnover, and create high-performing teams. From compliance to leadership development, we bring:
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Deep Expertise
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Customized Support
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Collaborative Approach
What Are Our Clients Telling Us?
I don’t think my organization is healthy.
Many clients want to build a more motivated and enthusiastic team, lower staff turnover, and support staff more effectively. An HR Audit from The Osborne Group assesses your current HR state, identifies potential risks and gaps, and provides a baseline to assess the impact of changes.
We need more leadership bench strength.
In many not-for-profits, management handles most day-to-day HR issues, but occasionally needs extra support for time-consuming, specialized or complex matters. We offer interim or ad hoc HR leadership and advice to your team.
We're struggling to recruit and retain staff.
Staff and applicants indicate our overall compensation packages are not competitive. Our compensation reviews help you remain competitive, fair and compliant on all aspects of compensation, including salary, total benefits, and pathways to promotion.
My organization doesn’t seem to be operating efficiently.
If your team is experiencing productivity challenges, unclear roles, or service delivery issues, we can conduct an organizational review to uncover inefficiencies and propose improvements.
Our HR policies and processes are not robust, efficient, and scalable.
Missing or outdated policies can pose legal and operational risks. We help ensure your policies are up-to-date, compliant, and support your team effectively.
We don't have the resources for specialized HR projects.
If your internal team lacks the time or needed expertise for specific HR initiatives, we can step in and deliver targeted project support that gets results. Our team has the skills needed to hit the ground running.
We need some senior-level help.
Common triggers include an impending retirement or sudden departure, an outdated organizational or program structure, new programs that are not meeting service targets, help with mergers and integrations, restructuring, or emerging board/staff concerns. We’re here to support you through any HR challenge.
Our internal capabilities are not allowing us to grow and deliver as fast as we want.
Often when organizations focus on operations, they forget about developing the skills of their leaders. Our team has the expertise to define required competencies, build organizational resilience, identify skill gaps and deliver the programs to close those gaps. Developing leaders allows organizations to deliver on their goals and objectives efficiently while ensuring needed skills are developed in the organization for now and the future.
How does The Osborne Group help address these problems?
Our team has extensive experience developing customized HR solutions for not-for-profits as well as for profit businesses. Here’s how we can help your organization:
- Advising and coaching executives on people management issues and practices.
- Building alignment between HR strategies, policies, practices and your organizational goals and culture.
- Developing leaders to take your organization to the next level.
- Attracting, retaining and motivating employees with best-in-class talent management strategies and practices.
- Providing compensation, benefit, and pension solutions that recognize, reward and enable staff success, including custom sector specific compensation surveys.
- Establishing legally compliant policies and procedures that support operational excellence.
- Recommending effective organizational structures that align with your mission and strategy.
- Conducting organizational scans to help you identify risks and areas for improvement.
- Offering strategic input on complex HR matters.
- Providing specialized skills your organization may not need or afford on a full-time basis.
Tailored HR Solutions That Fit
HR Audits & Organizational Health
I don’t think my organization is as healthy as it could be. An HR audit can be important when facing a major transition or considering how to minimize staffing risks, improve performance and manage organizational risk.
The audit will identify shortcomings, gaps and risks, and review operational matters, including organizational structure, roles, compensation structure, work culture, policies and procedures, labour relations situation, information tools. These audits often include staff interviews, and identify risk areas and opportunities for improvement in organizational effectiveness and employee engagement.
HR Leadership Support
Providing ongoing HR support is one of our most common engagements with clients. We provide extra HR capacity for time consuming, complex or specialized skills tailored to your organization. Support can come in one of three forms:
- Interim – A time-limited solution, pending long term decision or staffing resolution (e.g., new hire, staff development, staff leaves)
- Ad hoc – An HR consultants is available to you on-demand when issues arise
- Ongoing/fractional leadership – Permanent part-time HR assistance when a full-time resource is not required.
Leadership and general HR support for your team can include team building, coaching HR staff, managing change, governance support, policy and procedure development and implementation, compensation reviews, staff effectiveness reviews, support for unusual issues or workplace investigations, strategic alignment, and tracking results.
Talent Management and Employee Development
The Osborne Group principals have extensive experience in leadership training, development and coaching in the not-for-profit sector. We have a solid understanding of the many HR services that organizations struggle with as they adapt to new circumstances, changing public expectations and funding uncertainty.
We custom design the approach to employee development to meet each client’s needs. The range of topics include:
- Recruitment
- Performance Coaching
- Career Path Development
- Competency & Skills Development
- Succession Planning
- Training and Development
- Best practices for program delivery
Implementation and Operational Planning
A strong strategic plan must be supported by effective implementation. We help organizations translate strategy into action through:
- Development of annual organizational and departmental plans
- Identification of required resources, budgets, and timelines
- Progress tracking and reporting mechanisms
- Support for adjusting priorities as conditions change
- Alignment of work plans with performance management
- Best practices for program delivery
Leadership Development and Succession Planning
Development of senior staff is a key element of talent management, and improves organizational culture by ensuring consistent management and messaging. Ensuring good succession planning, particularly at the executive level, helps manage risk and ensures a smooth transition when it happens.
HR Training
Osborne Group principals can provide a wide range of training and education for managers and staff, ensuring everyone understands their HR responsibilities and organizational policies, including:
- Accessibility
- Sexual violence and harassment
- Job analysis and pay equity
- Progressive discipline and termination
- Compensation
- Pension plans
- Specific training on information and tools used by the organization
- Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
- Building high performance organizations
- Employee and labour relations
Employee Engagement Surveys
Employee Engagement Surveys are useful tools for setting a baseline of employee and organization culture and then enabling the organization to track changes and improvements in key employee areas.
Compensation and Pay Equity Reviews
To carry out a compensation review, an Osborne Group principal will:
- Collect and review the current compensation model and policy, including salary structure and pay bands, and benefits
- Review organization charts, job descriptions, current staffing and salaries, benefits and pension information
- Review and recommend leadership compensation
- Perform external benchmarking within related sectors and comparable organizations
- Benchmarking is done using commercially available surveys or by developing and fielding a custom compensation survey to a select group of employers.
- Propose new salary structures and grids for staff
- Perform pay equity tests on current and proposed salaries to ensure compliance with legislation and maintenance of overall pay equity
Organizational Review and Development
We offer tailored organizational design solutions that empower not-for-profits to thrive. We utilize a proven methodology to deliver insightful audits and assessments that drive improvement. A comprehensive review will examine:
- Management practices including delegation of responsibility and promotion of teamwork
- Service quality
- Individual accountability and ownership
- Adaptability to future change
The process may include some of the following activities:
- Reviewing the organization's mission, vision, values, culture and strategic plans
- Evaluating staff objectives, workloads, capacity, priorities and performance feedback
- Researching best practices and developing recommended organization structure and responsibilities
- Documenting process workflows, decision-making structures and inefficiencies
- Identifying process improvements to workflows, job responsibilities, impact on clients, etc.
Transform Your Not-for-Profit with Expert Organizational Design
If your not-for-profit is struggling with human resources, governance, operational, or financial challenges, our experienced team is here to help. With tailored reviews and strategic solutions, we ensure your organization is structured for success.
Governance and Policy Development
Osborne Group principals have deep experience aligning client policies and procedures with legislative requirements. We understand best practices across the not-for-profit sector and can assist clients in determining what is appropriate for each organization. The process may include:
- Reviewing the mission, vision, values, and strategic plans
- Reviewing existing governance and policy documentation
- Gap analysis to determine what enhancement work is required
- Researching, developing and implementing recommended policies and procedures
Employee and Labour Relations
We assist with:
- Staff Alignment with Strategies and Priorities
- Collective Agreement Negotiation
- Management of Collective Agreement
- Grievance Management
- Workplace Investigations
Recruitment and Staff Management
We help implement a permanent solution to address gaps in staffing and skill sets. We support all aspects of the hiring process: role definitions and descriptions, required skills, candidate screening, interviews, background checks, job offers and negotiations.
Meet Our HR Strategists
Our HR Principals don’t just advise from a distance, they work alongside your team to deliver tailored solutions that fit your culture, challenges, and goals. In this short video, meet some of our senior strategists and hear how we help not-for-profits navigate leadership transitions, improve policy and process, and strengthen organizational culture.
Our Team Approach
Expertise and Experience
We build a team to match your project, with the necessary skills and background including facilitation and interviewing skills, research and document review capability, project management, and subject matter expertise. This approach ensures you get the benefit of several perspectives along with the specific knowledge of your sector that allows us to hit the ground running.
No Surprises
Our approach to every project is customized to meet the needs of our client, with input from voices across the organization, and with frequent reviews of progress on the assignment. We follow a strict “no surprises” delivery policy. Starting with a sound project structure established at the outset, our continuous reporting ensures the client understands the findings at every stage of the project.
HR Services
Talent Management
Recruitment
Performance Coaching
Competency & Skills Development
Career Path Development
Succession Planning
Training and Development
Employee Engagement
Employee Surveys
Compensation Reviews
Benefit Reviews
Organization Communications
Recognition Programs
Wellness Reviews
Organizational Review
Employee Assessment
Change Management
Mergers, Acquisitions, Divestitures
HR Admin Oversight
Payroll
Benefits Administration
HR Information Systems
Shared Services
Policies and Procedures
Employment Standards
Legislative Requirements
Internal Policies
Health and Safety
Workplace Violence
Employee and Labour Relations
Staff Alignment with Strategies and Priorities
Collective Agreement Negotiation
Management of Collective Agreement
Workplace Investigations
Grievance Management
Strengthen Your Not-for-Profit Through Strategic Human Resources Support
Your people are essential to achieving your mission. Whether you are facing recruitment and retention challenges, leadership transitions, workforce planning needs, or opportunities to strengthen workplace culture, we provide practical human resources consulting to help your organization build a stronger, more resilient team.
Contact The Osborne Group to learn how experienced HR support can help your organization strengthen its people, culture, and long-term capacity.