A Dark Side to Nonprofit Employee Engagement

I'm almost finished with a really fantastic book "Passionate and Profitable: Why Customer Strategies Fail and 10 Steps to do them Right" by Lior Arussy. In my quest for customer experience knowledge, this book is one of the most practical I've found. It is available for free digital loan for users of the New York Public Library system.  Chapter 8 is titled: "Do we employ functional robots or passionate evangelists?" The idea is that recruiting, retaining, and delighting passionate employees translates into delivering the types of experiences companies desire for their customers.  But what if there is a dark side to tapping into that passion?

In my nonprofit career I have had the privilege of working with many talented people who are very committed to their organization's cause. The social sector has a clear advantage over our for-profit counterparts. By the very definition we are mission focused. This is not to say that there aren't businesses with a clear mission or societal benefit; the best ones clearly have it. This is also not to say that there aren't nonprofit or government employees who are drones collecting a paycheck, completely disassociated from the mission (sadly there are).

The bigger risk for businesses: unengaged employees who could care less about their company's mission because it's unclear or the company has shown little interest in cultivating a passion for their work. They don't see themselves as making a difference in anyone else's lives. Their jobs are a means to an end and interchangeable with any number of different opportunities.

The bigger risk for nonprofits: over-reliance and abuse of their employees' passion for the mission. All too often cash-strapped organizations successful in attracting talented people willing to exchange salary for heart don't recognize the sacrifices they're asking their employees to make.  Just as companies that fail to understand the journeys their customers take, failure to recognize employees as an important customer will doom any customer-facing experience initiatives.  This isn't a new concept. Nonprofit professionals are always asked to "do more with less" and are all-too-familiar with the term burnout. This article in the Nonprofit Quarterly was written in 2002 but could have easily been written yesterday:

The vast majority of nonprofit workers come to work in the morning because they love their jobs, but many go home at the end of the day exhausted by the workload and unsure that they have the tools, let alone the stamina, to come back the next morning.

From the book:

The inability to design and execute a well-crafted employee experience will damage the organization's ability to differentiate and build a compelling value proposition.Without employee experiences, there is no customer experience. To unleash the best in your people, you must treat them like customers. You must give them the same surprisingly amazing treatment that makes them want to excel and give you the best they have to give. Show them your commitment, and they will reciprocate.

Inc agrees that happier employees help companies' bottom lines (profit). Wouldn't it hold true that a nonprofit's bottom line (mission) would benefit?