Teoría Omega del MAT

Several issues emerged from the case study analysis regarding the workforce and human resources within the ethnic minority social enterprises. The first issue concerned the difficulties that these organisations experienced in recruiting staff due to the limited financial resources for their day-to-day operations. The second issue related to the difficulties in maintaining staff due to the poor working conditions, limited training services and job insecurity and instability. The third issue pertained to the quality of management, that is to say, assessing managers and board of directors’ skills, network building and lobbying capacity and how this influenced organisational development.

7.4.1 Difficulty in staff recruitment

The findings from the fieldwork revealed that most ethnic minority social enterprises selected for the case study employed few full-time staff. In fact, two thirds of the case study organisations employed less than five full-time staff (see Tables 7.1 and 7.2). Respondents stressed that case study enterprises employed few full-time (paid) staff, as they were unable to offer a competitive remuneration package due to the organisations’ limited financial resources. For instance, the Director of a food cooperative in Newham that provides fresh

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fruit and vegetables in the East London area claimed that the reduction of grant funding limited their finances and restricted their capacity to hire and retain skilled staff. He stated: “There are few people working here. The biggest problem we have is when we get a grant. As soon as the grant goes away, the person [staff] is gone, so the skills that the person has taken over the years is lost; therefore, a loss of skills is a problem as is the insufficient number of staff we have. Because of that, it is a constant struggle” [Director, CS4].

It was notable from the case study analysis that these enterprises were heavily dependent on part-time staff, volunteers and casual workers for their operations (see Tables 7.1 and 7.2). The importance of hiring part-time staff and volunteers has also been observed within mainstream (non-ethnic minority) social enterprises (Peattie and Morley, 2008). It was also apparent that there were two types of organisations that had high levels of voluntary workers. The first were well-established ethnic minority social enterprises (previously voluntary and community organisations) that have been operating for a long time and which rely on a large number of volunteers. An example of this is a social enterprise that was established in Tower Hamlets to provide social care for Asian disabled people that rely on a high number of volunteers to provide these services (see Case 1 in Table 7.1). The second type was recently established social enterprises which tended to hire most of their workers on a voluntary basis at the time that the interviews were carried out (from August 2010 to June 2011). A typical case example that demonstrates this is a catering co-operative which opened in Greenwich in 2008 to provide employment for the local community. Although the Director commented that the organisation relied on volunteering work, she expressed her intentions to employ all of these volunteers on a paid basis in the near future (see Case 8 in Table 7.2). In one case, even the organisation’s founder worked on a voluntary basis. This social enterprise was formed in Tower Hamlets in 2010 by a first generation Black African to provide training and employment opportunities for London’s immigrants (Case 3 in Table 7.1).

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The founder asserted that all people involved within the organisation were working on a volunteer basis, including herself, because they had just started up; thus, they had little income to employ staff with but she emphasised her intentions to employ herself and the others eventually.

Evidence also revealed that in a number of cases, organisations recruited relatives, and friends, principally as casual workers or to do volunteer work. This was clearly exemplified by the Manager of the catering cooperative in Greenwich who confirmed that he had relied on relatives and friends from the local area (see Case 8 in Box 7.11). This would seem to concur with the ethnic minority entrepreneurship literature, which indicates that ethnic minorities tend to rely on informal employment or voluntary staff (Ram and Jones, 2008).

Box 7.11 Use of informal employment

“I have my children that I am training to be responsible and how to serve people, how to respect people and all that, so I do give them jobs to learn. Also they are the youngest community for tomorrow; you know what I mean; in places they see something like that then they become a model. We also employ locals; my neighbour, she is also my friend, she is the admin, well… you know, I do not employ qualified people, but local people who I know want to work. I tell them to come along and I train them” [Manager, CS8].

Not surprisingly perhaps, findings revealed that all case study organisations employed ethnic minority people, principally from the local area. An example of this is provided by the Director of a health-related social enterprise in Tower Hamlets who reported that she had employed ethnic minority staff from different nationalities to work directly with their service users by pointing out: “We have a lot of people from different communities that are working here: Bangladeshis, Somalis, Turkish, African Caribbeans, Gujarat people, Polish… Well, we don’t work with a community unless we have someone from that community working for us. So, now for a year and a half we have been working with the Polish community and we have a Polish worker and we work with newly arrived Polish people and settle Polish people” [Director, CS10].

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In a number of cases, organisations hired staff from the same ethnic minority community as their service users. It seems that respondents saw co-ethnic employing in this way as beneficial for service users, and often mentioned the importance of having a common language and cultural values. This can be illustrated with selected examples drawn from the case studies. The first comes from a social housing association in Greenwich that was established by local Black African Caribbeans to help young single people from the same community (Case 9). The director, a Black Caribbean male, stressed the importance of having staff from the same background as service users as essential in being able to provide them with the necessary support (see Box 7.12). The second illustrative example comes from a social care organisation in Tower Hamlets (Case 1) that provides services for Asian disabled people. The Director, a Bangladeshi male, recognised the benefits of employing people from the same community (see Box 7.12).

Box 7.12 Employment from within service users’ ethnic minority community

“All our staff are Black African Caribbeans; well, the fact that we are part of the

very community we serve ensures that our services closely match the needs of our tenants” [Director, CS9].

“Ninety-five per cent of our service users are Bangladeshis. Most of our staff are also from Bangladesh; well, they can speak English and Bengali. We find this is an advantage for someone who knows Bengali because if service users don’t speak English, we can help in Bengali. In that sense, people are getting more advantages to work here because they are Bangladeshis and they can speak Bengali” [Coordinator, CS1].

7.4.2 Difficulty of maintaining staff

Evidence revealed that one of the biggest difficulties faced by most ethnic minority social enterprises, particularly the small ones, was the fact that they faced difficulties in maintaining staff due to the poor working conditions, lack of training opportunities, and insecurity and instability.

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There was evidence of disquiet amongst staff members in the social enterprises regarding their working conditions. Frustration with regards to low salaries and long working hours were evident. An example was provided by the Project Manager of a social enterprise in Newham who pointed out: “I am working so many hours and I am not well paid. I work all day long and I have a low salary. Well, in a social enterprise, even if you are paid for 20 hours you really work a hundred! [Project Manager, CS4]. Further, there was acknowledgment that the nature of working in a social enterprise entailed accepting poor working conditions.

Moreover, findings demonstrated that most organisations could not deliver adequate training services for their staff due to their limited financial and human resources (see Tables 7.1 and 7.2). An example of this is provided by the Director of a childcare recruitment agency that opened in Tower Hamlets in 2005 who pointed out: “We do not have time for training; we are not many staff; we have to do other things; we do not have either money or time for training courses” [Director, CS5]. The findings also demonstrated that although the largest case study enterprises provided training courses for their staff, they often only delivered internal training for them, whereas providing external training was much less common due to the cost implications. An example of this is illustrated by the Director of a social enterprise in Tower Hamlets that offers health activities (Case 10 in Box 7.13). Another example comes from the Director of a large and well-established disabled focused social enterprise in Tower Hamlets (Case 1 in Box 7.13).