Best Practices in Retention
Developing a comprehensive retention strategy requires an agency to take a look at their current and future workforce needs, business performance, current policies and procedures, strategic goals, and diversity initiatives.
Best Practices in Employee Retention Including Individuals with Disabilities
- Strive to make every aspect of the agency employment experience accessible to employees with disabilities. This includes facilities, programs, technology, websites, and the benefits and privileges of employment.
- Set targets, measure progress, and evaluate efforts. Employee engagement surveys can often provide useful information about the effectiveness of diversity, inclusion, and retention strategies.
- Ensure employees with disabilities are provided training opportunities at the beginning and throughout their careers. Agencies must provide reasonable accommodations in a timely manner to ensure all training programs are accessible.
- Use and publicize workplace flexibility strategies such as telework and include the availability of these flexible work options for employees requiring reasonable accommodations.
- Agency leadership should encourage and participate in agency-wide events that publicize successful efforts to recruit and hire people with disabilities.
- Promote the formation of an employee resource group for employees with disabilities. Regular meetings with this group will provide leadership with the information they need to address issues impacting this community in the workplace.
- Engage in an interactive process to determine the availability and appropriateness of reasonable accommodations.
- Conduct appropriate succession planning that includes a strategy to recruit and retain individuals with disabilities for positions and career paths in which they are interested.
- When employee input is sought, provide employees with disabilities an opportunity to be included in workgroups, strategic planning sessions, and meetings regarding the agency's future management and leadership.
Additional Resources
The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) produced a comprehensive study that provides specific tips for conducting turnover analysis, developing a retention plan, managing turnover paths, and more.
People Management
What is People Management?
People management is really just as it sounds... managing people. This could include:
- Leveraging diversity
- Coaching and providing feedback
- Evaluating staff performance or work output
- Inspiring and motivating others
- Setting expectations
- Recognizing achievements
- Managing and resolving conflict
- Aligning performance goals with agency goals and priorities
- Delegating work assignments
- Providing career development opportunities for staff
Career Development as a Retention Strategy
Career development is an important retention strategy. Particularity, training and professional development opportunities provide agencies with an opportunity to improve job performance, increase workplace engagement, recognize the skills and talents of individuals, promote career advancement, develop emerging leaders, and act on succession plans.
Agencies must ensure that employees with disabilities have equal opportunities for promotion and to employment benefits offered to other employees, such as training and professional development. In addition, agencies may need to provide reasonable accommodations to ensure that employees with disabilities can fully participate in training opportunities.
Examples of accommodations include:
- Modifying training schedules to allow for extra breaks.
- Using sign language interpreters or note-takers for employees who are deaf.
- Providing materials in a variety of formats such as large print.
- Ensuring that online training systems are accessible.
Getting Started with Workforce Planning
A healthy and productive organization needs to make sure that its employees and business goals are in alignment. This alignment does not happen automatically; it needs to be planned for and cultivated. Planning for future employment needs is one of the greatest challenges facing state government.
Four phases of workforce planning
- Scanning for understanding: Where is the agency now and where is it headed in the future? How will future business plans impact the workforce?
- Analyze and interpret: What does the current workforce look like? Where are areas of workforce risk? What gaps may prevent us from reaching future business goals? What skills are still needed?
- Action and implementation: What workforce strategies will help the organization achieve its goals? Will internal talent needs be met by internal development, external hires, or by using other strategies?
- Evaluate and monitor: Is the plan working? Is the plan producing needed talent? Are business goals being met?
For more information on each of the four phases of workforce planning, including worksheets and assessment tools, contact Emily Paoli Johnson, Workforce Planning Consultant with MMB, at
emily.johnson@state.mn.us.
Creating a Succession Plan
Succession planning is a part of an ongoing workforce plan which assesses and identifies internal staff for mission-critical and/or leadership roles within the agency. The process of succession planning allows an agency to look critically at their workforce to anticipate future needs both in new skills needed as well as in future vacancy risks. For many state agencies, this work will need to happen when looking at upcoming retirements of the baby boomer generation.
In the development of a succession plan, agencies will need to identify strategies to find talent to fill these positions. If internal candidates are not available, a succession planning strategy may include recruitment of external qualified staff (buy strategy), development of internal talent (build) or restructuring the position to meet future agency goals.
To determine a strategy consider the following:
- Identify high impact positions: Which positions need successors? As the agency's workforce changes, some positions will have a greater impact on an agency's goals.
- Succession Management Strategy: What needs to be done differently? The types of action that an agency takes in planning for successors vary. Can the agencies develop internal staff or will external talent be needed?
- Create a Plan: How can the agency prepare for succession? How will the agency develop staff? What recruitment strategies need to be improved? Who will take action? What are the timelines?
- Monitor and Evaluate: Is the plan working? What type of system can be used to monitor results, make changes to the model, and evaluate what is working?
To request additional support, facilitation, or consultation, contact Emily Paoli Johnson, Workforce Planning Consultant with MMB, at
emily.johnson@state.mn.us.
