7.7.6 Difficulties in Hiring Qualified Staff

NHRIs frequently have difficulties in attracting and retaining qualified staff: these are recurrent and common problems and should be anticipated even before the institution is established.

In developing countries, salary and benefits levels should at a minimum be comparable to the public sector jobs.12 However, pubic sector salaries are low in most developing countries: governments will frequently apply the same salary standards of the public sector. While this may not cause problems in attracting and retaining some staff, it will clearly have an impact on others. The main difficulty is that the real comparator group for many positions in an institution will be the NGO sector. Since that sector typically largely draws its financing from donors, the wages it pays are usually substantially higher than those paid in the public sector in developing countries.

Implications for the pre-establishment phase: The easiest way to avert this problem is to anticipate it by giving the NHRI the power in law to set the level of wages for the members and staff, especially professional staff, thus giving the institution greater flexibility to determine the salary level that should apply to any given position and/or by authorising greater flexibility in the design of benefits packages that might serve to off-set lower wage levels.

12 ICC Sub-Committee on Accreditation General Observations (Geneva, June 2009).