 Okay, good morning everyone. Welcome to our course, VC310. Let's take a moment to pray and we'll get started. May I request somebody in the class, online class to pray and we can start. That's great. Lord, we want to thank you for this morning as we commit for your presence. We pray that you would speak to us, help us to understand and listen and comprehend Lord Jesus and also to apply this in our lives, in our ministry and everything that you have given us. We praise you. We honor your Lord, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you. Right, morning everyone. And we have been learning a lot of practical things on church and ministry administration today. We will move forward. Yeah, we're going to talk about, let me finish I think a little bit. We were talking about systems and processes last week and we went through various examples and what I just want to kind of in the last part is that for us to, you know, to keep improving, there are these three things we need to do which is to monitor, analyze and then repeat, correct things up, make some adjustments. So that's something that is ongoing. That is we always monitor, that means we check how things are going, then we analyze the results. That means we have to actually look at data, look at numbers. We cannot make decisions on just limits and fancies. Oh, I feel like this, I feel like it. No, what is the actual, you know, what is actually happening. So that's why we need to collect data and analyze it and then we can take, you know, whatever action is needed to keep improving. So I just want to encourage that. And again, our focus is not just on the numbers, but numbers are important to help us make good decisions. So everywhere we are looking at the numbers, you know, financially or any other things. But it's not that we focus on the numbers, but the numbers are giving us some information that will help us make good decisions. So from that perspective, we need to monitor, analyze the results. Today we're over to lesson number seven, which I think is a very important part of church and ministry, which is staff management. How do you manage the people who are working in the ministry who are part of the ministry? And I remember, you know, sometimes as I travel around when I'm in conversations with pastors, Christian leaders, you know, we can talk freely, we share our problems. And sometimes, and I've heard, you know, for example, one pastor came and said, you know, I hired one person from church to come and help me in the office. It's an administrative work. But this person comes when she wants, she goes wherever she wants. And she will come very late at 11 o'clock. She might go off by 3 o'clock. And pastors are afraid to say anything because if he says anything, he's afraid, he's afraid she might leave the church. So then he's coming and saying, so what should I do? How do I handle this? Because there is work to be done. He has engaged this person from the church to come and do the administrative work. But this person doesn't like, you know, comes in, goes as and when they please. And what pastors afraid, you know, how do I tell that, hey, you come at the morning, work fully, do all this work, you know, how do I do it? So then I had to, you know, I just asked, did you give off a letter? Like, did you say, you know, what this person is supposed to be doing? Did you put it in writing, you know, like a letter, what time they must come, what are the days of the work, the week they must work, like, you know, Monday to Friday or Monday to Sunday, or are they going to work Sunday, whatever it is? You know, did you put it in writing? No, no, no, I just said, come work So there was nothing written. So there's no, even that person doesn't know what is expected by the pastor is expecting that person to come at nine o'clock. That person doesn't know it's not being communicated clearly. So like that, we were just having conversations and I was just sharing some thoughts. So the point is that church staff, people are working full time for the church or the ministry. If we do it in a proper way, everybody will be happy. From their side and from our side, everything will go fine. And so the question is, how do we do this in a proper way? So in APC, and I'm just sharing from what we have, we have people who are called staff. These are full-time people, full-time salary staff of the church. They will get monthly salary and they're full-time. Then we have what is called as consultants. Consultants are paid hourly. So they're giving them the freedom to work however hours they can. Sometimes they may not be able to work like full 40 hours every week. So if they're not able to work full-time, maybe they're a homemaker or something like that. So it's okay, you work as a consultant. In which whatever hours you can work, you work. But in some cases, we'll say at least work 20 hours in the week because we need certain amount of work to be done. So we need at least so many hours. However, there's flexibility. So they are consultants. And many of these consultants work from home. The staff, most of the staff will work from the office or by the college or wherever they work in there. And sometimes we have flexibility. And then we have a lot of volunteers. Volunteers are non-paid staff, but they're also very important because they will, they're contributing their time and their skill. And a lot of the work is being done by volunteers. So part of the ministry, especially in the church, is how to manage volunteers. And volunteers are the biggest group. So we have around, I don't know exact number, but I would say around 300 volunteers. So our church staff may be 13. Consultants may be another 10 or something. I don't know the exact numbers, but it's around 30 to 10. And then there are volunteers around 300. So the volunteers are about 10 times more than their staff. But volunteers are very important. They may not be, they're not working, they're not being paid. They may contribute, you know, five or six hours a week, usually on the weekends. Some of them may be during the week they will do something, whatever they can. But they are the big part of what is happening. So we must take care of them also. And very important, the interaction between staff and volunteers is very, what to say, it has to be managed very carefully. And the interaction between staff and volunteers. Because, you know, both have their own, what to say, attitude of perspective things. Volunteers, you know, feel like, hey, I'm giving my time free. You know, you can't tell me what to do. I'll do what I feel like kind of staff, we have to get this done. They may want to, you know, put some pressure, you know, want to get things done so on. So that that relation between staff and volunteers have to be managed very carefully. Sometimes there are problems we have to sort them out. So all of these things we want to discuss in this lesson. So I just explained staff and consultants and so on. Now, how, what should we do? So I'm very important is the hiring process. You know, that means if we can make our hiring process very good, then we can bring the right people in. Then a lot of the problems can be taken care of, there is. Because if you bring somebody in, you give them the role, you give them everything, and then after two months you realize they can't do the work or they're not a good worker. Then it's a problem, you know, how do you tell them, hey, you're not doing well? That becomes another difficult issue itself. So it's better to avoid that go through a good process. So it is good. So just to, you know, give an idea of how we do the hiring. So first is we tell people to make the application. And so on our church website, we have on our environment page with all the open positions announced there. People can send us their resume. So let me just share, you know, just to give an idea of what we have on our employment page. Sorry, let me just pause this. So let me share this now. So in our church website, we have an employment page. It's a disability contact employee. So under here, there's employment page. And this is where we announce all our open positions, our positions are there. And we tell them very clearly how to apply. They have to complete this prospective employee personal statement, this document in Word of Media. They also have to include the resume. They have to send an email to this, to this email ID, along with resume. And they have to give us some details, which is the full time. If you currently employed a employer, what is the recent salary, which local churches which you are a part of. And what we do is we announce all our open positions here. So these are all the open positions. They're looking to hire people. And we have a role description for this. So this page is, you know, regularly updated and their new positions open and so on so forth. So people can come here, they can read the role description, and they can make an application for a particular role. Now, we are very particular. That means, if the first thing we check is, have they followed the instructions here? Sometimes even after all this, it's not sometimes, very often, they'll just send an email with the resume. They won't fill in, they won't complete this prospective employee personal statement. So then we don't even process those emails. Let's say, if this person cannot even follow basic instructions, then what work are they going to do? So we don't even pay attention to that. Or sometimes they may send their resume, they may send their prospective requirements, but they won't give us this information. They won't type this in the body of the email. Again, we just leave that email out. So this is like our first screening. Can they follow basic instructions? If they can't even follow these basic instructions, you don't even open, you don't even handle that resume. But for other people who actually follow these instructions very clearly, like they've given their resume, they've completed the statement, they have given us this information correctly in the body of the email, then it's okay. Here is something who can read and follow instructions. We want to work with that. So then we can take it forward. So this is our first screening. And let me go back to the PDF. So then we get the resume, the interview process, we review the resume. Of course, we look at the resume. Is there a match to the role that they have applied? Now, there is no perfect resume. There is no perfect candidate. It's very rare that you'll find somebody who's a 100% match to any role. Generally, if people are 70% there, it's good enough. You'll never find a perfect person. I mean, if you do find somebody, that's wonderful. But at least if their resume shows that they have 70% of what we are looking for, that is good enough to start. So from there, so we identify the candidates, that means at least they'll send a 100% match. And then there's an initial phone screening. So in the initial phone screening, we are just trying to check there. We have certain questions. Some of the things that we check is, okay, they're English, can they speak good English? The other thing here in the initial when you're looking at the resume and looking at the person's statement is we check their English. So in the person's statement, what they have written, if there's a lot of grammatical mistakes, the English is not good, we immediately, we don't even go beyond that. So we check their English, we check what they have written. So even the resume, if there are a lot of typing errors, grammar errors on the resume, then it shows us that this person cannot, he's not doing a good work. Their own resume has mistakes and how much, how will they treat it? So those are things we do in the initial, before even we do a phone call. How is the resume? What have they written on the person's statement? Is it all good? Is it a 70% match? Okay, that's fine. So assuming there's 70% match, then move forward, phone screening. Phone screening, on the phone, when they're talking to them, we are looking at their English, their spoken English and they communicate properly. And also, their motivation. So we would ask things like why are you interested in working for the church? So we want to see that they're genuinely interested in serving governments. It's not like, oh, I'm just looking for a job, any job will do. So we ask certain questions, why are you interested in the church? Sometimes over here, for example, we may ask questions like, what do you know about APC? Then it's so surprising, even some people who've got a lot of experience, they have not made it effortless to even learn something about APC. They have a lot of experience, maybe they've answered questions, sometimes I ask that question in the final round when they come and meet me. So what do you know about APC? That this person has got a lot of experience and he's stumbling, I don't know. So that means he has not made it effortless to even go to our church website, understand who we are, what we are about. Then it's like, okay, you're just applying for a job, but there's no interest in the organization, you don't even know what ministries we have, what we're doing. So these are questions we can ask, maybe in the initial phone screening or maybe even in the final round. So it's a typical question, what do you know about APC? And we see what kind of answer they give us. If they can't talk about it and tell us why they want to work for APC as a church, then it's like, okay, this person just looking for a job is just interested in here trying it. But if they're really passionate, they would make an effort to understand the organization, why, you know, why they're excited about working for this organization? What does that match? So have they done their homework before coming here? So sometimes I also find, I asked them, so, you know, what do you know about this role? So, you know, so what they have done is, and they may not be able to talk about it. So that means they have not even read the role described. They just apply, fill in the form, send it and ask them, what do you know about this role? They don't know anything. So that means they have not made an effort to prepare for the interview, not made an effort to prepare for the role they are applying. So then we don't even want these kinds of people, like they've not made enough efforts to understand what they're applying for, to prepare for the interview, to understand the organization. So these kind of things we can do in the initial phone screening itself, on the phone, we just ask them. And if they satisfy these things, the initial phone screen, and you feel like, yeah, this person is generally interested in serving drugs. They have a genuine desire to serve people, or ministry, and they have made an effort to understand who we are, to understand the role that they're applying for, then we can take it forward. So what we're doing is, we're putting the effort right in the beginning to make sure we bring the right people in. Then we can build a good team and do a good work. We're not hiring just for the sake of it. Then after the initial phone screen, if they do well in that, then we take them to the next round, which is sometimes there's a practical assessment, especially if it's a technical role, like if somebody is applying for IT or media, so then we give them a practical thing, like, okay, example, if he's an IT person, it's okay, come. They're going to give you a tour of a practical exam. We come to our office, we give you a computer, and we're going to do this, and we'll look at the work or the media in the office, create a video or a graphic or whatever. So we will do a practical assessment. If it is relevant to the role, otherwise, there's an in-depth interview. And I will give you some sample questions, what we ask. For example, let me just share this. Let me just show you examples of an in-depth question. So I will share these samples in the classroom, but I'll just share some, look at it now in the screen. So this is the prospective employee statement that you have on our website. We asked them some basic questions, what is your life vision, how working at APC should help them fulfill that vision, what is their personal testimony, what has happened in the journey of faith, how have they been involved in Christian ministry, and some references that they can provide. So this is the prospective statement. Then sample interview questions. This is an example. So like this, we have four different roles, we would have some very detailed questions. So this has been filled up in the personal employment statement. We asked them, okay, so how was your personal spiritual life? So this is for a pastoral role. These are questions. So actually, this interview might take at least two hours. But we want to understand the person in them. Now, especially if it is somebody whom we don't know well, suppose it's a person who's already been in church, already been serving, we would know them quite well. But if it's somebody from outside of life, then we will take a little bit more time to understand. So ask them about the Bible study, etc. How do they study the Word of God? They're preaching and teaching some theological questions, some pastoral questions, something about if they're going to be a leadership role, if they're going to be organizing, then working with people, handling finances, integrity, and then what do you know, what if we seek any question? So these are things that we would generally go through asking them how they did. So this will be in the in-depth interview, about two hours. And then if that is good, then we would usually have a group interview if they're going to be part of a team. So, for example, if somebody's going to be part of a pastoral team, we'd like other pastors to also meet with them, at least two or three other pastors to meet with that person. If they're going to be part of the, for example, IT team. If they've done the IT interview, but if they're going to, especially if they're going to be having some senior development roles, we'll let the other IT people talk to them. So just we want to see if everybody's comfortable in relating to this person. So they've cleared all the technical knowledge, all that they have. Now what's about, is everybody comfortable relating to that person. So that's the idea of the group interview. So most often, people are going to be working with teams. They're going to be part of something bigger. So that's why we have this group interview. But if it's going to be somebody working all by themselves, we can skip this group interview and then there'll be a final round with me. Sometimes I myself might do the in-depth interview if it's a pastoral role, but if it's other roles, other people are handling that. And so in the final rounds, again, I would just, I'll share some questions we ask, but the final round is like, okay, everything is clear, but I want to make sure that are there any red flags, things that could cause problems in the organization. So they may have the skills, they may have the motivation, but are there any danger signs? So we can check that. The other thing goes well, we'll make a job off. And the job off also, it's a written letter. So I'll give you a sample of it. So what are some of the things we check for when we are going through this interview process? You see this on page 23. We want to check their motivation. So why are they applying to ABC on page 23? What is the reason to want to work in a church, in a ministry, pressure ministry? Of course, they need to have skills in polling, if they have experience, if they have relevant experience. One of my favorite questions that I like to ask is, my favorite question is this, if you were given a blank piece of paper and you could do anything you want to do in this one, no limitation of money or anything, no limit, what would you do? So I put a blank piece of paper in front of them and I'll ask the question, if you can do anything you want, what would you do? So this is to see, if they say, okay, if I could do anything I want, I will go and play football or I'll go and play something. But they're not saying anything about this job or this opportunity or serving God. Then we know that this is not priority. Something else is priority. This is only okay, I'm just doing it as a job. But if they say that, if I can do anything, I want to go and serve people, I may go and start a church or I may go and do something, start a ministry. I've given the freedom to, that's what I will do. Then we know that there's alignment for ministry and so on. So it's a good thing. So it shows us what is this person really after. So it's kind of nice. And then we want to see that any red flags, dangerous attitudes. So we could ask questions like, why are you leaving your previous job? Why are you leaving your current job or why did you leave your previous job? Or if they start talking bad about their boss and suddenly talking bad about their previous workplace people, then those are all red flags. Those are not good signs. Other red flags, first, if anybody arrives late for an interview, finished. That's it. We won't even take it forward unless they have a balance. Suppose there was some heavy rain or there was some accident or some big thing happened. But generally, if a person comes late for an interview, everything ends there. They don't take it forward because that is telling us, hey, you don't value this enough to make it a point to come over. And we don't take, there's too much traffic. We all know there's traffic in the city, so you have to plan. If it's going to take you one hour to come to our office, you should leave one or two hours early. That's your responsibility, not our best. So there have been times when these things have really happened. We've set an interview for about four o'clock in the afternoon, 3.45, somebody will call. This candidate will call saying, Aston, just about to leave for the interview. It will take me 45 minutes to come. I said, don't even come. Don't come. Finished. It's the end. You know it's going to take 45 minutes. You're supposed to be here, the interview starts at 4. You're supposed to be 10 minutes before the interview. That's the right way. That means you should leave at 3 o'clock or 2.45. So such things have happened. Straight away, I said, don't even come, please. So these are basic things that you need to get right. How do you treat the staff? So as soon as they come in, we have our friend's office manager sitting there. How do they treat them? Do they say thank you or are they rude or that? So if she gives me feedback saying, hey, this person came and just spoke to me very rudely or they didn't treat me well, finished. So we just say, that's it. Because how do they treat everything else that is important? So these are little things we look for. Do they speak negatively about past employers? Experiences? Are they judgmental, critical about other denominations, churches? So in the interview, we're looking at this. How are they speaking about other churches, other denominations? So here's another question. What do you know about ABC? If they haven't done their homework, then they're not interested. They appear disinterested in that role. Sometimes they're vague in the responses. So I ask one question, they'll be talking about something else. Please answer the question. They go off on some other story. Then it's an indication they're actually going to cover something. They're not answering the question directly. Then these are things that... And then we make it a point that in case family members of people are already working apply, if they just go to a same interview process, we don't give any referential treatment. So that's something we do. Then we also do some background checks, especially we check the social media. So that means a go check their Instagram, go check their Facebook. What are they putting up there? So if there's anything that is of concern, then that's a red flag. If there's whatever. So people don't realize it, but in many cases, employers will check social media activity because that way you know what they're doing outside and how is it going to impact the work. So we do check their social media or online activity and background checks. And depending on if there are situations where we feel that we need to call somebody, like if the references that we have given, we would do that. Check them. Are they okay? But definitely we check social media to see if there are any red flags. So assuming everything goes fine, we will then give them an awful letter. And we also tell them in the awful letter to read the staff guidelines and so on. So let me just give you an example. I'll put the samples up there. A sample of a letter. I'll share this with you. So typically this is a sample of a letter. So the name that is so happy to have you join. So what is their role? What is their start date? And the details of the role is in the PDF. So they know this is what you're going to be doing. There's going to be a starting salary. And then of course, as you grow in the organization, your role in your response phase will increase and so on. And then they have to read our staff guidelines. So we have a, I'll go through our staff guidelines. So we have a HR document or staff guidelines that tells them everything about what they can expect when they work at JPC. So we tell them to go through it, sign it and send it back to us. So the awful letter is very simple, but it connects to the, it also mentions their role. It also mentions our HR document, which they need to read and call. So this awful is very clear that this is going to be a starting salary. This is your role. These are the guidelines you have to follow when you're working with the organization and so on. So we give them the awful letter. So let me just go through our staff guidelines and then we will pause and take any questions that you have. So, I'm sorry, let's open this pretty much. So for all our church staff and for all our consultants, we have this staff and consultant guide. This is like our Avisar dot humans, right? Before they join, they have to read this and sign off on it. They agree to how we want to work. So in our staff guidelines, I'll just quickly go through. I'll give you a copy of all of this. You can, you're most welcome to change it and use it. So we share with them, okay, this is the vision of the church. This is who we are, what do we do and what is expected from you as a church staff or a consultant. We give them a little bit about our destiny, what we are working towards. We tell them a little bit about our organizational structure. So they understand that. Then our core values and our culture, we have a separate lesson on core values and culture. I'll explain that. So they understand, we've taken through this core values and so on. And how we work, what we expect of them when they're working at ATC. We also have a code of conduct. Now in a private organization, you cannot say all this because people can link and spoke on the web. Private life is their business. But because we are a church, for us these things are important, you know that? No smoking, no alcohol, no unethical dealing. So this is part of our code of conduct and if they cannot agree to this, we will not hire them. And we can do that because we are a religious organization, we are a church organization. So we can make these as requirements if you're going to work for us. So we spell it out here so that there's no misunderstanding. But also we deal, we handle a lot of people information. That means we handle the information of people in our congregation and so on. So we need to keep that information private and confidential so we cannot misuse that information and other these things. And we have typically if somebody is joining us who is fresh out of college, they will go through a three-month probationary period. If they are already experienced people, then they skip this probation. And we have a one-month notice. So either way, we are dismissing them or they're leaving us. We typically say you give us one-month notice either way. So we have staff and consultants and sometimes we take in terms of training. Trainings will work with us and then they might decide to join us with time. So all our staff, they have medical insurance and they receive the what is called as employee product. That's the retirement savings and they are paid vacation. So a consultant will not get those benefits. So a consultant is free to work whatever hours they want. They won't get these benefits. A full-time staff will get those benefits and so on. And a trainer won't get it until they do. So work hours we spell here. You know you have to work at least 40 hours a week, typically Monday to Friday, eight hours a day. Now some of us are working on Saturday Sundays because our main work, I mean our ministry work happens on Saturday. So then we keep a little flexible for those who do that. So all these are details here. And then everybody reports their time in our time sheet and HR system. I'll show you that later. This is how they will be paid their salaries. There's how many vacation leaves, sick leaves they can have, etc. How to apply for leaves, public holidays. So basically all how they can work with us as you know, everything is already stated here. They just have to read it and then all of us follow same thing. So all of these things are spelled out here. Interaction with church members, you know we have to be careful how we interact with people in the congregation. That's important. They can have access to counseling. How do we decide on salaries? We show them you know these are the important for us. How much can they expect? Every year we divide salaries. So what can they expect? How much increase can they expect year on year based on the work? Bonus for those who are full-time staff. How was bonus calculated at the end of the year? So all these things are spelled out in the document and anybody joining us will read this. They will understand and follow this. Okay so let me pause here. Any questions so far? There's a lot more to talk about but any questions so far in just how we hire somebody into the church. It seems very complicated but actually it's very important that we do all those things so that people are very clear what it means to work for the church and the minister. Any questions? The interview process would typically be spread out over a couple of weeks. So that means initially there's a, I mean they send us, it's an example, they receive a resume. So example today I received a very interesting resume from somebody who's part of the church. She is applied for one of the opening positions there. So what will happen is they will check, like I said, they will check everything. Then now because I know this person it might go a little faster but if they don't know the person then we have to do the phone screening then do the detailed interview with schedule a day. So if we do the phone screening today, we have to ask them when are you available for a detailed interview. So based on their time, our time. So they're not available this week, maybe next week they'll schedule it and they're available. Then if all of that is okay then a group interview. So that could happen the same week or that may happen following week. So everything goes well. So we would say, I would say generally could be weeks. Sometimes it could be faster if everything goes quickly or it may take a little longer also based on their availability. But I would say not more than four weeks. Within two to four weeks we can finish everything and we will make the decision. So within a month. Any questions? Yeah. So the question is after we hire somebody then we see, you know, something wrong in their behavior or on the throat. So how do we deal with that? And I will talk a little bit on this later and give some examples but generally what we do is we have a three strike policy. That means we give two chances. If the third time it repeats then they will be dismissed. So example, first time something that, you know, I'm not talking about performance. Performance we deal with differently but I'm talking about let's say they get into conflict with somebody or they, you know, they don't tweak somebody properly. I mean they will get into quarrel or something. So anything that's bad. So first we give them a warning one time. Say, hey, please don't do this. We can't fall. So that's one one. If they repeat it, second one is third time same thing is repeated three times. So two times plus one. So three strikes. So let me follow that because they've given two warnings that if they're still repeating it then we'll have to dismiss. And we tell them that look, this is how we work. I will give you two on. Two times we're okay but third time we're repeating it then we have to dismiss. If it has to do with performance then we see okay what is the problem and why they're not able to do the work. Sometimes they don't have the skill. Then can they go and acquire this skill? So tell them, hey, you need to work on this. Sometimes for example, it's as simple as English. I'll say, hey, you need to improve your English. Please do these courses. If they don't do it, I'll wait for them to do it. Maybe give them six months. If they don't improve the English then they cannot have that role. We'll have to move them through some other role where that is not very important. They can do a work without that too. That's clear. See how they do over there. So when it's performance we try to help them but if they are still not able to perform then again we follow the same thing. So there are two strikes but each time we are actually helping them to develop that skill or sometimes we will reposition and give them a different role. If they have different skills they can maybe be good at something else. We'll be trying. If none of that works out then we have to release them. So what we do, the question is what about the employee provident fund return and fund? So that starts from the beginning. So from the time somebody joins as a full-time staff, if they are on probation we don't do it but once they pass the probation they finish their three-month period. They become a full-time staff. Every month the PF is already paid into their account. So that's a government rule. So we will credit the PF to all their accounts. Then they leave. Again we follow the government rule. If somebody has to work for us for at least five years then we have to also give them gratitude. That means that in addition to the PF they have to be paid an extra amount. There's a calculation the government has given us. The government has given that for every year of service they have to get so much money, so much percentage of their salary. So we'll also calculate the gratuity and give it to them either when they leave or when we dismiss. Either way we have to do it. So we follow the government rules when the staff leaves. Okay let's pause here. We'll continue this and feel free to ask your questions. Thank you. We'll come back in 10 minutes.