News from the Public Health Foundation - Original Date: August 15, 2006
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Skilled people are at the heart of our public health infrastructure. Without an adequate supply of competent workers, almost nothing else matters. Emergency protocols and policies can’t protect us without trained people to implement them. And a state-of-the-art laboratory system can’t run itself, no matter how much money you have.
Here are five actions to develop the workforce you need to succeed.
- Make retaining your best workers a priority.
- Keep your own skills sharp.
- Offer learning opportunities matched to the competencies that are most needed.
- Start pumping tomorrow’s workforce supply lines.
- Look at the big picture: assess your entire system for workforce development.
Why do people leave? “In many cases, it’s not about the money,” says Chris Day, lead staff to the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice. “Our work examining other industries for the Council found that most workers leave because their managers aren’t good supervisors or because the organization isn’t a good place to work.”
Although most public health groups believe low pay is a big issue affecting retention, many professions like teaching and nursing have learned that improving the work environment often can make up for lower pay. And a poor place to work can send even well paid workers running.
“The good news is that many things affecting employee retention are within the direct control of individual supervisors, teams, and leaders,” says Stacy Baker, PHF’s head of performance improvement. So even if a pay-scale change will take a year, you can improve the working environment and slow down turnover in a matter of months.
For example, consider how the Orange County, Florida STD program virtually halted turnover in just nine months. Faced with a growing syphilis epidemic in their community, the health department team knew they could not hope to control disease until they first curbed their employee turnover. Constant turnover had drained the team of the expertise, community trust, morale, experience, and staffing levels needed to be effective. In response, the team made retention a priority and examined all the things that contributed to the revolving door. With guidance from a PHF-provided consultant, a mixed team analyzed root causes using simple quality improvement tools such as fishbone and affinity diagrams.
One-by-one, the team tackled causes ranging from poor hiring and training practices to supervisor-employee relationships, vehicle policies, and office gossip. “It was great to stop talking about problems we had, and actually do something about them,” said team member Raj Hiralal.
The team’s improvement efforts have resulted in a dramatic turnaround. Although the team lost 6 people in 2005, zero employees left in 2006 through July, and the unit is now fully staffed for the first time in the group’s memory. Employee surveys and interviews with team members show that morale and teamwork have improved. As for salary increases, they have been requested too, and are in the works for next year.
Tips:
- Assign a team to identify and address root causes of turnover in your workplace.
- Focus on what you can control to make your unit a great place to work.
- Measure employee satisfaction and turnover to track your success.
- Offer supervisory training to all new managers and offer coaching, continuing education, or mentoring to help existing managers be most effective.
- Check out other workforce retention strategies from the Council.
