The leadership and the retention of employees that work for nongovernmental organization (NGOs) in Thailand

Leadership is a key success factor in the success in managing of any organizations including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Most Thailand’ s NGOs focus on community services which related to women rights, education for less opportunity people, healthcare, and rescue services. In Thailand, most employees who join and work in the NGOs not only because of financial issues, but they believe some other factors. This study aims to investigate the impact of leadership on employees retaining in nongovernment organizations in Thailand. Four Thai NGOs were taken in this study. In-debt interview was employed to collect data from managers who worked in the NGOs.

The results found that leadership played important roles in NGOs employees’ retention in addition to other job satisfaction factors in most organizations. All leaders in the sample NGOs determined high value of their employees. The leaders stated that they would find the best way to retain their employees to work for their organizations in the long term. First, they collected information related to factors impacted on the employees’ satisfactory in working. However, if they found the problem, they would work along side the employees to resolve it. Some NGOs found the organizations’ working philosophy helped them to screen people who are going to join working with the organizations. The employees who accepted those philosophies before joining to work in the organizations seemed to fit the work condition and continue to work in the organizations in longer period of time. Finally, the results found that leadership in the NGOs played more importance roles than other factors which are relationships among employees, devotion to voluntary works, work condition, internal communications, compensation, and hygiene factors in order to retain employees to work with the NGOs.