Staff retention and succession planning refers to the efforts, plans, strategies, policies, and procedures in which a VR agency engages to retain current staff and to ensure qualified personnel have been trained to fill leadership positions resulting from attrition.
Resources / Articles
- What Stops People on Your Team from Leaving? (hbr.org)
- 2021 Gallup Report: What's Causing High Employee Turnover (getlighthouse.com)
- Leading Off: What motivates employees to stay? A leader’s guide (mckinsey.com)
- Governments can deliver exceptional customer experiences—here’s how
- Investing in Middle Managers Pays Off-Literally
- You Need Two Leadership Gears
- Leading with Compassion Hs Research-Backed Benefits
- The Results are in: The UK's Four-Day Week Pilot
- IRI on Recruitment and Retention:
Strategies
- Assess your agency’s overall environmental factors, current practices, and culture.
- Look at what is and is not within your control for impact. Determine approaches for handling both.
- Develop a multi-step- multi-year approach based on your findings.
- Conduct employee engagement surveys regularly and develop actions based on staff feedback.
- Survey Examples:
- Conduct stay interviews.
- The Power of Stay Interviews and Engagement and Retention (Finnegan, 2nd ed. 2017): This book provides research to support engagement and stay interviews. It also describes how to use and conduct the stay interviews in conjunction with engagement surveys.
- Question 1. What do you look forward to each day when you come to work?
- Question 2. What are you learning here, and what do you want to learn?
- Question 3. Why do you stay here?
- Question 4. When was the last time you thought about leaving us, and what prompted it?
- Question 5. What can I do to make your job better for you?
- Example-Wisconsin-Combined Stay Interview Report Results
- Example- Wisconsin-Combined Stay Interview one pager
- The Power of Stay Interviews and Engagement and Retention (Finnegan, 2nd ed. 2017): This book provides research to support engagement and stay interviews. It also describes how to use and conduct the stay interviews in conjunction with engagement surveys.
- Communicate! Keep staff informed and welcome a two-way conversation about the agency culture.
- Examples include email blasts, newsletters, fireside chats from the director, video addresses from leadership, monthly all-staff teams meetings to inform, etc.
- Give staff access to leadership. Hold listening sessions with staff from across the state-really hear what they have to say and make plans to address issues.
- Implement exit interviews and learn from the results.
- Review VR staff rates of pay and develop a strategy for wage increases where needed.
- Review the CSAVR SVRA Salary Repository.
- Talk to state directors who have been successful with this.
- Review organizational structure and advancement opportunities.
- Create different levels when possible.
- Review job duties and make changes accordingly.
- Consider caseloads and assignments based on staff strengths and demands of the caseload.
- Create VR Counselor specializations (e.g., VR Intake/Eligibility counselors, youth counselors, postsecondary counselors, TBI).
- Look at manageable caseload sizes.
- Provide opportunities for special projects.
- Move case management duties to another position.
- Create roving counselors that cover when people are on leave or leave the agency.
- Provide work schedule flexibility. This includes days and hours worked.
- Consider compressed schedules (e.g., four 10-hour days).
- Provide telework, hybrid opportunities.
- Survey customers to see how they want to be served. This provides a solid foundation for determining hybrid work schedules.
- Analyze internal hiring processes for gaps and process improvements.
- Explore if there are unnecessary steps or approval levels to streamline.
- Review your onboarding process. Make improvements based on feedback.
- Invest in staff development.
- Hire a dedicated staff person for training and staff development.
- Provide opportunities for continued learning and development.
- Provide supervisor training on leadership principles.
- Consider “growing your own” for positions that are difficult to fill. This includes providing tuition reimbursement and time off to study.
- Build opportunities for staff to develop into professional positions.
- Make the discussion part of the performance review process.
- Offer opportunities to get more engaged in agency initiatives.
- Provide mentoring opportunities.
- Provide tuition reimbursement.
- Build opportunities for staff to develop into professional positions.
- Explore achievement awards and recognition for staff.
- Be clear on the criteria for achievement awards.
- Present annual staff awards (could be based on CPM metrics, other items- “above and beyond”).
- Create recognition-highlight in newsletters and social media.
- Start every meeting off with recognition of staff (personal or professional).
- Managers send personalized notes to staff to recognize efforts.
- Ask staff how they like to be recognized and what they would consider a reward (e.g., create a cafeteria-style menu of nonmonetary rewards from which staff can select when they are recognized to account for the individuality of staff and how they are motivated).
- Empower Workplace Culture through Recognition (Gallup).