Let HR‐savvy board members handle staff complaints about administrator

• Published date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ban.31163
• Date: 01 October 2020

2 Board & Administrator

DOI 10.1002/ban © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC • All rights reserved

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Let HR-savvy board members handle

staff complaints about administrator

Experts often advise that boards

have competent advisors with a

breadth of experience and knowledge

under their belts, and—if possible—

deep expertise in a field that will

benefit the board and their organiza-

tion’s management and operation.

While prospective board members

with finance and legal backgrounds

are often sought after, those with ex-

perience in human resources can also

prove quite valuable to boards and

organizational leadership.

Take the case of an executive direc-

tor at a California-based nonprofit

who was recently notified by her board

that an anonymous complaint from an

employee had been submitted to the

board regarding some of the ED’s man-

agement decisions. By going around

the ED to take the issue straight to the

board, the employee broke protocol—

typically, such complaints should be

taken directly to the ED, as disagree-

ments with staff are usually within

the ED’s scope of responsibility. But it

would be wrong to dismiss the com-

plaint simply because of the manner in

which it was lodged, according to Mark

Fulop, a strategic advisor to nonprofits

and an executive director of a non-

profit organization in Portland, Oregon.

“Any time a staff member (or mem-

bers) of an organization breaks the

chain of command and approaches

the board directly with concerns

about the executive director, they

must take the complaints seriously. It

is for situations like this that a board

needs competent advisors, in this

case, a human resource professional,”

Fulop said.

“The board critics and support-

ers of the nonprofit leader may want

to prosecute or defend the leader

without focusing on the merits of

the performance complaint. Human

resource advice will stay focused on

performance and not personalities,

and, above all else, keep the board

impartial.”

According to Fulop, the heart of

this question is about the role of the

board in managing a nonprofit organi-

zation. When a board hires an execu-

tive director, it chooses to delegate

the operational responsibilities of the

organization. Those responsibilities

are outlined in documents such as the

ED’s job description, the organization’s

strategic plan, and operations policy

and procedure manuals, he said.

“These documents should guide the

board’s response to unsolicited staff

members’ complaints about manage-

ment decisions. Of course, if the com-

plaints allege misconduct, then they

must be investigated. Short of that,

if the claims are simply a disagreeing

point of view to delegated decisions

within the executive director’s scope

of responsibility, the board would be

ill-advised to insert themselves as a

referee in the dispute.”

That said, it is the board’s respon-

sibility to have competent HR advisors

help them parse the performance and

personality dynamics at play, Fulop

said, and then assess the organizational

risk underlying the complaint and cre-

ate and implement a plan of action.

For more information

Mark Fulop is executive director

of Store to Door, a Portland, Oregon–

based nonprofit that supports inde-

pendent living for area seniors and

people with disabilities by providing

an affordable, personal, volunteer-

based grocery shopping and delivery

service. For more information, visit

https://storetodooroforegon.org. ■