If you Can't Lick 'em, Join 'em
Thoughts on the Recruitment and Retention
of Quality Employees
By Bob Niemiec, Director of Training, Kaposia, Inc.
Last year, my co-worker, Jon Alexander, and I wrote a series of articles for the Association for Persons in Supported Employment (APSE) newsletter, The Advance, discussing recruitment and retention of quality staff. We talked about the experiences of Kaposia, inc. where we are employed. The articles listed a variety of steps we took to attract new employees and keep experienced employees. We discussed how this was a total effort by the entire organization to take a critical look at ourselves and make the necessary changes to improve our effectiveness when it came to hiring, training, and retraining good people. This article will touch on some of what we learned, the steps we took, and how it's turned out so far.
The Issue at Hand
The first step in the process was to realize that we were fighting a national trend in employment. I have read labor reports that indicate the average American changes jobs every 2-3 years. Human service organizations have been mired in turnover for as long as I have been in the field (over 20 years). So we needed to embrace the fact that people were going to come and go in our field more than they would stay. If we could have a positive influence on people that would encourage them to remain in the field or perhaps choose this as a career, we would be ahead of the game. To that effect, we examined whom we were recruiting, how we trained them, and what we could do to keep them around.
A Group Effort
Kaposia uses teams to identify an issue or problem, study the situation, and make recommendations to improve the process or solve the problem. In the case of our employment situation, the team was called "The Recruitment, Training, and Retention Group" or RTR for short.
Problem solving can be a frustrating experience if you don't really know the problem you are trying to solve. The first order of business for the RTR was to define or state the problem. In our case, we defined our issue as a lack of skilled, trained applicants for open positions at Kaposia. Along with stating the problem, we also recognized three core areas that needed our attention. Those areas were:
- Individual Issues (qualifications, personality [essence], and a willingness to work);
- Leadership Issues (management and supervision = mentoring and training) and;
- Organizational Issues (structure, functions, etc.).
The RTR discussed Kaposia and our culture. What made us different from other organizations? What would make someone want to work for Kaposia? We looked at ways to change the job. What is the best way to get what we need to get done accomplished? Finally, we identified the characteristics we wanted from an employee. Those characteristics include:
- Reliability (comes to work everyday and on time);
- Positive Interactions (working well with the people we support as well as with other staff employees) and;
- Good Customer Service (communication, attention to detail, etc.).
From the discussions the RTR began exploring the issues and took tangible steps to solve our employment needs.
Contract Employees
At one time, Kaposia had 22 open positions. In order to get the work done, and to continue to provide quality services to the people we support, we had to rely on contract employees (commonly referred to as "temps") to fill our staffing needs. Kaposia took positive action to assure that temporary employees were performing as well as regular Kaposia employees. The first step was changing our language. We made a concerted effort to remind our regular employees that contract employees are Kaposia employees. The only difference was that someone else was paying the contract employees.
We made efforts to include contract employees in team and company meetings. We included them in our regular training sessions and other company functions. This was a commitment by Kaposia because it meant we were paying them to be at these functions and events. The common practice is to send contract employees home when the service day is over and support to people is no longer required.
Our commitment was to assure that contract employees received the same training and attention as those employees paid by Kaposia. We also committed to funding training provided to contract employees in medication administration and other specific skills. The result was that performance improved, contract employees and regular Kaposia employees had a better understanding of one another, and some contract employees joined Kaposia as regular employees paid by us.
Recruitment
Recruiting new employees was becoming an ongoing and constant fact of life. Kaposia used the traditional methods to attract new employees. What we discovered was that our return on investment just wasn't paying off.
We made a decision to stop placing newspaper ads and explore alternative ways to recruit. Kaposia had been in the process of developing a web page about our company. We devoted a link on the web page to employment announcements and contact information. That strategy paid off in that we received several inquiries and a few actual hires. We continue to get inquiries through this path today.
Another strategy we used was personal referrals. Kaposia offered to pay a bonus to employees who referred someone to apply for employment that was hired and stayed employed. Again, this strategy paid off as we did acquire new employees and current Kaposia employees who made the referrals were a few dollars richer for it.
The RTR believed we needed a way to show a prospective employee our company. We wanted to shorten the interviewing and hiring process. To that effect, the RTR recommended that we produce a short video about Kaposia. The video would feature different people supported by Kaposia that were doing a variety of things. This way, a prospective employee could get the flavor of the array of services and people we support in order to make an informed choice about accepting an employment offer from us. One of our senior employees has used the video to make a CD ROM version complete with music and titles.
Training and Orientation
When our need was high, we just couldn't help ourselves from throwing new employees into the field right now. We fell victim to letting our urgency outweigh our better judgment. The RTR spawned another team to deal with the orientation process. Prior to this team being formed, we would hire a new employee, start them on a Monday, and begin the process of overloading them with information.
We would do mandatory policy training like the Minnesota Vulnerable Adult (VA) Act. In other words, we would get someone on board, then we bored them with a lot of policy stuff, isolated them, and then scare them with the VA Act letting them know how they can go to jail if they're not careful. We needed a change.
We honored no sacred cows, and came up with a totally revamped orientation process. One of the principles in the new orientation process was that we would limit the amount of time a person spent alone. We made sure the team coordinators were actively involved in meeting, introducing, and training their new member. We instituted shadowing, whereby the new employees would spend time with other, valued employees from across the entire company. Kaposia is a team-based organization scattered throughout the Twin Cities, so it is difficult to get a true picture of who we are both as a company and as individuals. A new employee would shadow someone from every service team and the team coordinator of the team would be the person who arranged the shadow experience. The team coordinator would also meet the new employee, escort and introduce him/her to the employee who would be shadowed. Also within the first week the new employee would meet each director and everyone who is in a support role or works at the main office. It was important to make sure the new employee felt like a part of our company within the first few days of employment with us.
The orientation team made a distinction between orientation and training. Orientation was more about becoming one of us and training would be about learning how to do what we do. Training comes to employees at Kaposia via many formats and styles. A principle of the newly revamped orientation process was "just in time" training. The idea is that a new employee would learn how to do something when it needed to be done. We discovered that in the old way, we overloaded people with a lot of processes and procedures only to learn that they weren't retaining the information. The "just in time method" allowed an experienced Kaposia employee to coach the new employee in much the same way as we do with supported employees. We wanted to be sure people knew how to do things before we "cut them loose." In most cases the new employee spends two weeks in the orientation process before they actually begin to perform their jobs on their own.
Mentoring and coaching became a cornerstone of "just in time" training. Mentoring and coaching also addressed the fact that not everyone learns the same way in the same amount of time. We began to recruit and train mentors who could show new employees what it meant to be a Kaposia employee.
Kaposia mentors and coaches are carefully selected and trained. A new employee is assigned a mentor prior to their start date, and introduced on the first or second day of employment. They may continue the mentor relationship as long as necessary.
Organizational Issues
Changing recruiting practices, developing new tools, revamping the orientation process, and the other steps we took would not be effective unless we also made some organizational changes. Along with changing some structural issues we needed to overhaul some of our most beloved practices and procedures. We needed to review how people were managed. W. Edwards Demming believed that over 85% of performance problems were the result of the structure while less than 15% were caused by people. In other words, the structure and organization in which people are expected to perform cause most of the problems. Kaposia committed to finding the parts of our structure that prevented peak performance, and changing them.
The Bottom Line
Despite our best efforts, creative approaches, and determination, we still experience turnover. What organizations like ours need to realize is that we all exist in volatile employment times. Turnover is a fact of employment. People are mobile and regularly move between jobs.
It is doubtful we will completely solve the employment issues in our field. Money isn't the answer. Degrees and certifications aren't. Completely changing the way we do business won't solve it. We must come to grips with the employment facts of life. Embrace the idea that people are mobile. Get the best from them while they are here. Maybe a few will be struck with the passion and stay for a long time. Others will leave because it's just their time to go. If we can make positive changes, treat employees well, and understand that fluid employment is going to be here for a while, we can continue to provide quality service to our customers.