Advanced HR: restructuring, discipline and fairness

1Restructuring without breaking trust

The end of a grant often forces staff cuts. Local labour law sets the framework (notice, severance, consultation of staff representatives); the NGO's policy sets the ethics. A fair restructuring rests on:

• objective criteria, written and communicated (posts tied to the grant, required skills, seniority);
• early communication and individual meetings;
• support: reference letters, sharing CVs with partners, help with the job search.

The team that stays is watching: how those who leave are treated determines the trust of those who remain.

2Discipline and internal investigations

A disciplinary procedure follows steps: documented facts, written notice, the person's right to explain and to be accompanied, a proportionate and reasoned decision, and the possibility of appeal. For serious complaints (harassment, sexual exploitation and abuse, fraud), the investigation is entrusted to a trained person independent of the line management concerned, with an investigation plan, separate interviews and a factual report.

The principles: confidentiality, a survivor-centred approach, protection against retaliation, presumption of innocence and interim measures where needed.

3Pay and fairness

A pay policy rests on a salary scale (job classification, steps), a local market salary survey and clear progression rules. Gaps between national and international staff are sensitive: they must be justified by objective differences (expatriation, recruitment market), not by status. Essential benefits (health, security, evacuation, psychosocial support) are part of the duty of care towards all staff.

4Conducting a workforce reduction: timeline, legal steps and criteria

The end of a grant, a budget cut or a change of strategy regularly force NGOs to reduce their workforce. These situations are foreseeable: the end date of every funding agreement is known from the moment it is signed. Yet they are often handled in a rush, in the last month, with unprovisioned end-of-contract costs and improvised communication. A well-managed restructuring begins three to six months before the effective date.

The minimum legal framework

International Labour Organization Convention No. 158 on termination of employment sets out principles taken up in many labour codes: a valid reason connected with the operational requirements of the organisation; for terminations for economic or structural reasons, information and consultation of workers' representatives as early as possible on the reasons, the number of people affected and the measures to mitigate the effects; and notification of the competent authority (often the labour inspectorate) within a prior time limit. Each national labour code specifies the time limits, the thresholds (for example a reinforced procedure beyond a certain number of dismissals within a given period), the severance payments and the order of dismissals.

The natural expiry of a fixed-term contract at its end date is generally not a dismissal, but it is still subject to rules: notice period for non-renewal, end-of-contract payment in some countries, and risk of reclassification if successive renewals have exceeded the legal limits.

The standard timeline

Objective and defensible selection criteria

When several people hold comparable positions and only some of them are retained, written criteria are needed, communicated before they are applied, and applied by a committee. Commonly accepted criteria:

• Link between the position and the funding that is ending: the first criterion, which determines the positions abolished, not the people.
• Skills required by the positions retained, assessed on documented evidence (degrees, experience, appraisals from the past two years).
• Length of service, often imposed by law as a criterion for the order of dismissals.
• Social situation (family responsibilities, disability), taken into account in some labour codes.

Excluded: membership of a community, age as such, sex, pregnancy, trade union activity, having filed a complaint or reported misconduct. The committee then checks that the result does not have a discriminatory effect, for example a proportion of women dismissed far higher than their proportion in the workforce.

Performance criteria can only be used if appraisals exist, are recent and have been conducted in a comparable way. A manager who discovers at the time of restructuring that an employee is "weak", without any written appraisal, creates a legal risk and an injustice.

5Worked example with figures: going from 40 to 28 employees at the end of a grant

Fictional context: the international NGO "Ponts Humanitaires" runs a food security and livelihoods programme in Tessaro province funded by two donors. The first grant (60% of staff costs) ends on 30 June; the second continues, and a new, smaller project is signed. Management must go from 40 to 28 employees on 1 July. The country's fictional labour code provides for: one month's notice for less than five years of service and two months beyond that; severance pay equal to 30% of the monthly salary per year of service; and consultation of staff delegates and information of the labour inspectorate 30 days before notifications for any dismissal of ten or more people.

1. Analysis of positions

Before any selection, three field officers whose fixed-term contracts expire on 30 June and who had already indicated that they wished to leave are confirmed as voluntary departures. A call for voluntary departures with an additional payment of half a month's salary receives two applications (one driver, one field officer). Seven departures remain to be decided by applying the criteria.

2. Selection matrix for field officers (extract)

There are 10 officers left for 8 positions, i.e. 2 departures. Criteria approved with the staff delegates: skills for the new project (urban livelihoods, cash transfers), out of 40 points based on appraisals and certified training; performance appraisals from the past two years, out of 30 points; length of service, 2 points per year up to 20 points; family responsibilities, 2 points per dependant up to 10 points.

The committee (deputy director, HR, a coordinator from another programme; staff delegates as observers) checks the composition: the two lowest-ranked officers are one man and one woman, in a team of 10 that includes 4 women. No discriminatory effect is found. Officer A-09, ranked second to last, filed a grievance against his supervisor six months earlier: the committee checks that his appraisals were not written by that supervisor after the grievance and records the check.

3. Cost of the restructuring

For all nine dismissals and compensated voluntary departures, the total cost comes to 14.2 million LCU. The provision built up since the start of the grant covers 11.5 million; the gap of 2.7 million results from untaken leave accumulated beyond the policy and must be financed from the organisation's own funds. The organisation checks the eligible share against the terms of each funding agreement: statutory severance payments are generally accepted by donors pro rata to the project period when they result from legal obligations and the organisation's usual policy, but discretionary additional payments are not.

4. Communication

• All-staff meeting at D-75 led by the country director: reasons, timeline, criteria, support, contacts. A questions-and-answers document is circulated in two languages the following day.
• Individual meetings in the presence of the supervisor and HR, in a closed room, at the beginning of the week and the beginning of the day, never by phone or email, unless a documented security constraint makes it impossible.
• Handover of a letter including the detailed calculation of amounts due, the dates, and the avenues of appeal.
• Meeting with the remaining team on the same day, to acknowledge the difficulty and present the new organisation.

In this example, the main flaw was not the restructuring itself, but the lack of leave monitoring: a leave policy applied every quarter would have avoided an ineligible cost and allowed employees to rest.

6Conducting an internal investigation: method, roles and standards of proof

An internal administrative investigation aims to establish the facts so that the organisation can take a decision: disciplinary action, protection measures, improved controls, reporting to donors or the authorities. It is not a criminal investigation; it does not replace one and must not compromise one. The reference document for humanitarian organisations is the CHS Alliance investigation guidelines, supplemented by each organisation's own protocols and donors' contractual requirements.

The principles

• Survivor-centred approach for allegations of sexual exploitation, abuse or harassment: safety, informed consent, confidentiality, non-discrimination, access to assistance regardless of the investigation.
• Confidentiality: access to information limited to those with a strict need to know.
• Independence and absence of conflict of interest: the investigator is not part of the reporting line of the people concerned and has no ties with them.
• Fairness towards the subject of the complaint: information on the allegations, the opportunity to respond and to produce evidence, presumption of innocence.
• Standard of proof: administrative investigations generally apply the balance of probabilities (the facts are more likely than not to have occurred), not the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt; the organisation's policy must state this.
• Protection against retaliation for those who report and for witnesses.

The steps

1. Receipt and recording of the allegation through the dedicated channel; acknowledgement of receipt; immediate assessment of risks to the survivor and to others.
2. Preliminary assessment (a few days): would the allegation, if proven, constitute a breach of policies? Is there enough information to investigate? Who has jurisdiction (internal, external, donor, United Nations, authorities)?
3. Mandatory notifications: donors and United Nations agencies impose in their agreements short deadlines for reporting allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse, fraud or diversion, often in the order of 24 to 72 hours or "without delay"; check each agreement.
4. Terms of reference and investigation plan: precise allegations, questions to be established, sources of evidence, list and order of interviews, timeline, risks, security measures.
5. Collection of documentary evidence before the interviews: emails, registers, distribution lists, accounting records, CCTV footage, while preserving their integrity.
6. Interviews, generally in this order: the complainant or survivor (only once if possible, by a trained investigator, preferably of the sex of their choice), the witnesses, then the subject of the complaint. Two investigators, or one investigator and a note-taker; record reviewed and signed.
7. Analysis: for each allegation, the inculpatory and exculpatory evidence, its credibility, and a conclusion: substantiated, unsubstantiated, or unfounded.
8. Factual report to the designated decision-maker, without a recommendation of a specific sanction in many policies, so as to separate fact-finding from decision-making.
9. Decision and follow-up: disciplinary procedure, protection measures, reporting to the authorities with the survivor's consent unless legally required, improved controls, informing the parties of the outcome within the limits of confidentiality.

Model investigation plan

An investigation badly conducted by an untrained person can do more harm than no investigation at all: retraumatisation of the survivor, destroyed evidence, a subject of complaint cleared on a procedural flaw. If the organisation has no trained investigators, it calls on qualified external investigators or shared mechanisms.

7Building and managing a remuneration policy: method and example

A remuneration policy meets three sometimes conflicting requirements: being competitive in order to attract and retain skills, being sustainable in light of funding, and being fair, both internally (same work, same pay) and with regard to the local market (not draining staff from public services and national organisations). It rests on four tools: job classification, the salary survey, the salary scale and the progression rules.

Step 1: classify the positions

Each position is evaluated, not the person holding it, according to weighted factors. A simple point-factor method is sufficient in most country offices:

The total number of points places the position in a grade. A committee (HR, two programme managers, one support manager) grades the positions on the basis of the job descriptions, and documents each grading.

Step 2: conduct a salary survey

• Comparator group: 8 to 15 employers in the same market (international and national NGOs, United Nations agencies for certain positions, private companies for support functions such as drivers or accountants). NGO forums often organise joint surveys, which reduce costs and salary bidding wars.
• Benchmark positions: 10 to 15 well-defined positions present at most employers (driver, guard, accountant, field officer, project officer).
• Data: base salary and total cash remuneration (regular bonuses and allowances), benefits (insurance, thirteenth-month salary).
• Analysis: median (P50), first and third quartiles (P25, P75) per benchmark position.
• Market positioning: a written decision, for example targeting the NGO market median for most positions and the third quartile for a few functions in short supply.

Step 3: build the salary scale

Each grade has a midpoint set according to the chosen positioning, and a range (for example from 85% to 120% of the midpoint) divided into steps. The difference between the midpoints of two successive grades is often between 12% and 20%.

Fictional example: grades 3 to 6 of the Tessaro office

Analysis of the existing payroll reveals three anomalies: two drivers recruited in an emergency are paid above the maximum of their grade; an accountant is on the first step despite six years of service; women in grade 5 have an average salary 9% lower than men in the same grade with comparable length of service, because starting salaries were negotiated individually. Decisions: the two drivers' salaries are frozen (no reduction) until the scale catches up with them; the accountant is repositioned at the step corresponding to her length of service; individual negotiation at hiring ends, with positioning according to a written rule (relevant experience), and the gender pay gap is corrected in two budgeted stages.

Step 4: progression and adjustment rules

• Annual step increment, conditional on an appraisal that is at least satisfactory.
• Cost-of-living adjustment: annual review, and more frequent in the event of high inflation; partial indexation to a published index; decision coordinated with the NGO forum where possible.
• Currency of payment: in the event of rapid depreciation, a scale in hard currency converted monthly or indexation protects purchasing power, within the limits authorised by law and the central bank.
• Payment method: bank transfer or mobile money preferably; cash payment, sometimes unavoidable, requires dual signatures, a payroll sheet signed by each employee and a security risk analysis.

National and international staff

Pay gaps between locally recruited staff and international staff are one of the most sensitive issues in the sector. They are partly justified by different recruitment markets and by the costs of expatriation, but they become hard to defend when identical positions of responsibility are held by a national and an international staff member with considerable differences in pay, or when essential benefits (insurance, evacuation, psychological support) differ according to status. Localisation commitments encourage the creation of senior positions open to national recruitment and of national salary scales capable of remunerating those positions.

The simple fairness test: could you explain, in front of the whole team, why each person is paid what they are paid? If the answer is no for even one person, the policy has a problem.

8Common mistakes, auditors' checks and variations by context

Common mistakes

What auditors and donors check

• Payroll: consistency between contract, salary scale, payroll sheet and payment; segregation of duties between preparing, approving and paying the payroll; monthly reconciliation; search for ghost employees and duplicate bank accounts.
• End-of-contract costs: legal basis, calculation, share charged to each project, absence of double funding.
• Investigations and reporting: compliance with contractual notification deadlines, case follow-up, corrective measures, protection against retaliation. Donors such as FCDO, through their enhanced safeguarding due diligence, and United Nations agencies, through their PSEA assessments of partners, examine these arrangements.
• Salary policy: existence of an approved salary scale, a recent salary survey and adjustment rules, and consistency between the proposed budget and the salary scale applied.

Variations by context

• Sudden-onset emergency: rapid scale-up, then an equally rapid scale-down after the acute phase; from hiring, plan short contracts clearly linked to the emergency phase and inform employees of the likely duration.
• Protracted crisis: stable workforce and long length of service, hence large end-of-contract payments; rigorous provisioning and transition plans towards national partners.
• Economy with high inflation or depreciation: frequent salary reviews, choice of currency, coordination between organisations to avoid bidding wars.
• Insecurity: dismissals potentially dangerous for HR staff and management (threats, community pressure); prior security analysis, notifications in a safe location, two people present, attention to employees exposed after their departure.
• Remote management: investigations are more difficult; use of external investigators based in the region, secure remote interviews and preservation of digital evidence.
• Transition to a national partner: possible transfer of staff under the conditions of local law, harmonisation of salary scales, funding of transition costs.

9Interview questions and key references

Interview questions

Key references

• International Labour Organization, Termination of Employment Convention, 1982 (No. 158) and Recommendation No. 166; Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100); Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190).
• CHS Alliance, Guidelines for Investigations: A Guide for Humanitarian Organisations on Receiving and Investigating Allegations of Abuse, Exploitation, Fraud or Corruption by their own Staff (2015).
• CHS Alliance, PSEA Implementation Quick Reference Handbook (2017).
• Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), Six Core Principles Relating to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and resources on the victim-centred approach.
• United Nations, United Nations Protocol on Allegations of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Involving Implementing Partners (2018).
• OECD Development Assistance Committee, Recommendation on Ending Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Harassment in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance (2019).
• Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR), Misconduct Disclosure Scheme.
• CHS Alliance, Groupe URD and Sphere Project, Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability, 2024 edition.
• Charter for Change (2015) and Grand Bargain commitments on localisation.
• Labour code of the country of operation, collective agreements and the organisation's country HR manual; general conditions of the funding agreements of the donors concerned.