Leadership Roles on Employee Retaining Practice in Nongovernment Organizations (NGOs): The Case of Thailand
Chanchai Bunchapattanasakda, Supachok Wiriyakosol, Matchakarn Ya-anan

Abstract
Most nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in Thailand focus their job responsible on community services such as human rights, education for less opportunity people, healthcare, and rescue services. In the country, almost all organizations are also not-for-profit organizations where many of them do not pay wage for their employees; some may pay but very little amount. General information from media presents that majority of employees (both full-time and volunteers) who work in the NGOs claim they do not really working for money, but they work for other objectives. This study aims to investigate how leadership roles are related to employees retaining practice 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 at managerial functions in the NGOs. The results found managers’ leadership skills played important roles in the NGOs employees’ retention in addition to other job satisfaction factors in most organizations. All managers in the sample NGOs determined high value of their employees. The managers stated that they would find the best way to retain their employees to work long-term in the organizations. In practices, the managers would first collected information related to factors impacted on the employees’ satisfactory in working. If they found the problem, they would work together with the employees to help them resolve it. Some organizations found their working philosophy (sacrifice and contribution) helped them be able to screen people who wanted to join working with the organizations. The employees who like to work with the organizations would agree and accept the philosophies (charity jobs) before joining to work in the organizations. Finally, the results found leadership played more importance roles than other factors such as 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.

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