Current status of human resource management and the capacity of leaders in several Community-Based Organizations operating in HIV/AIDS prevention and control across nine provinces/Cities in 2025

Objective: To describe the current status of human resource management and the capacity of leaders in several community-based organizations (CBOs) operating in HIV/AIDS prevention and control across 9 provinces/cities in 2025.

Methods: A cross-sectional study combining quantitative and qualitative methods was conducted in 9 provinces/cities from August to December 2025. The quantitative study used self-administered questionnaires combined with a review of available documents and records at 35 CBOs. The qualitative study involved 14 in-depth interviews with team leaders.

Results: The study on 35 Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) showed that the workforce mainly consisted of part-time labor (an average of 7.7 people/organization) and volunteers (4.1 people/organization). The level of institutionalization in human resource management was very low: 82.9% of organizations had no written regulations on recruitment, 80.0% lacked regulations on developing core personnel, and 65.7% had no clear income policies. Regarding the leaders' management capacity, the greatest strength was their role as "spiritual leaders" in managing internal relationships (information confidentiality reached 3.94/5 points; maintaining a respectful work environment reached 3.91/5 points). However, systemic governance capacity still had many gaps, especially the ability to retain personnel when funding is limited (2.26/5 points), organizing training (2.60/5 points), and long-term HR planning (2.94/5 points).

Conclusions: The current status of human resource management at CBOs is spontaneous, flexible according to each project, and lacks written standardization. Team leaders perform excellently in their community connection roles but are limited in strategic governance skills. To move towards sustainable development, organizations need to urgently "semi-professionalize" their apparatus by documenting HR regulations, while also focusing on training systemic governance capacity for the leadership team.

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