Nonprofit Congress

After reading the recent Ready to Lead report on nurturing
the next generation of talent in the nonprofit sector, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on the report’s recommendations about what nonprofits and their staff can do to improve the process. One tool that I think could help the process tremendously is online portfolios, which have benefits both for the organization and for staff.

What is an Online Portfolio?
An online portfolio (also known as an “eportfolio” or a “digital portfolio”), is a collection of employee information that is
maintained online. It includes records of the individual’s work history, competencies, credentials, and work samples and, done well, can provide a comprehensive picture of each employee’s talents and strengths.

There are a variety of free tools available that can be used to set up and maintain an online portfolio and because the portfolio is digital, it can be accessed anytime, anywhere. It also allows people to share a much wider range of information about their work, including multimedia, and some of the capabilities of these tools allow organizations to more easily and effectively recognize and manage staff talent.

Benefits to the Organization
From an organizational perspective, effective succession
planning and talent management requires that you understand the current capabilities and achievements of your staff, as well as their future career goals and aspirations. This allows you to devise strategies for supporting staff that take them from where they are now to where they would like to be.

Having staff create an online portfolio allows you to see where they’d like to go and to have all in one place the evidence that documents where they are now. Portfolios can be a tremendous aide to discussion with staff as they make competencies and gaps in skill much clearer to both the organization and the individual.

Done well, a system of online portfolios can also allow you to see if staff are continuing to develop. You can sign up to be automatically updated when staff add to their portfolios, which provides you with a way to keep an eye on what growth is taking place.

You can also use “tags,” a system for categorizing information, to see where staff are and are not progressing. For example, the organization can assign tags based on key competencies or areas of knowledge. As staff add to their portfolios, they can tag their work examples, etc. to correspond to these categories. Leadership can then review materials posted in each category to get a better sense of how both individuals and the organization as a whole are doing in developing in that competency area.

When staff begin maintaining online portfolios, this can create a culture of ongoing professional development and learning that is
critical to successful succession planning. Staff begin to see their knowledge and skills growing in a concrete way and leadership can use this information to make better decisions about staff training and advancement opportunities.

Benefits to the Individual

Online portfolios are also a tremendous benefit for individual employees. They provide staff with a framework for being more thoughtful about their careers and what needs to be done to prepare them for future responsibilities and ongoing development. They are also highly motivating. Staff can see and chart their growth as professionals, which is always encouraging. The process also gets them thinking differently about their work. It encourages reflection on experiences and documentation of work activities in a way that will demonstrate achievement and ongoing growth.

From where I sit, online portfolios offer a tremendous, low-cost way for both organizations and individuals to begin the succession planning process. Something to seriously consider for the future. . .

NOTE—If you want to learn more about how to create online portfolios, I will be running a 1-hour webinar on March 27, 2008 from 2-3 p.m. (EST) on “Using Free Tools to Create an Online Portfolio for Work or School.” In this webinar you’ll learn the basics of how to set up a portfolio, along with being introduce to three free tools that you can use to create your online portfolio. Registration information is available here.