Some Thoughts from the Field on Staff Retention – by Thomas “Tom” Woll, BBI Consultant
If you ask executives to list the three most important areas of concern within their organization over the last year, you might hear them say: “Retention, retention and retention.” The biggest question, they might say, is, “What should we be doing to help us to retain our staff?”
That question is explored in the research study by Tom Woll. He interviewed 350 direct care staff from across the country over three years and asked them all, “What would it take for you to commit to staying with your current organization for at least two years?” The interviewed staff identified ten job satisfiers that we should all work to maximize and ten job dissatisfiers that we should all work to minimize. The study offers twenty specific recommendations that we should all consider.
Thomas Woll, M.Ed.
Tom Woll is a national consultant who is currently assisting child and family-serving agencies in Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa, and Maryland to identify and respond to strategic change challenges. He is the Facilitator of The Strategic Change Initiative. The Strategic Change Initiative was borne out of the challenges that Tom experienced as leader of a merger of 20 separate Catholic Charities agencies in Northeast Ohio, into a single Catholic Charities Services Corporation. Twenty separate and competing entities learned how to operate as an integrated service delivery system operating out of 42 different sites in eight counties, covering 3,500 square miles. Tom’s projections and principles are based on more than 38 years of experience in the field and more than 800 interviews with public sector leaders, private agency executives and public and private sector family service practitioners, families receiving services, and elected public officials and their staff members.