The goals of our practices were to:
1) Incorporate a system of staff discovery, utilizing a series of question prompts to explore, evaluate, and promote the work-life balance of LCDHE staff.
2) Create a new employee orientation and onboarding process.
3) Offer ongoing workforce development and secure a budgetary line item for department-wide staff capacity and staff development funding.
Incorporate a system of staff discovery, utilizing a series of question prompts to explore, evaluate, and promote work-life balance of LCDHE staff.
Since this approach is focused on investing in staff, we started by creating opportunities for supervisors to listen to their staff and to hear what challenges they are facing when it comes to work-life balance. This was a year-long project that started in January 2021. Interviews were conducted in September and October, and results were shared with staff in December. Our management team, which is composed of supervisors who support at least two staff members and manage a program budget, was tasked with organizing this effort. In collaboration with the Human Resources Department, they created a set of questions and created training for supervisors on how to effectively conduct an informational interview. The questions asked are provided below:
1. How would you describe a healthy work-life balance?
2. How would you rank your current work-life balance on a scale of 1 to 5? (1 = Work completely overburdens my personal life. 5 = I have a very healthy and fulfilling balance of work and personal responsibility.)
3. Do you feel pressure, either self-imposed or from others, to work outside of your daily scheduled work hours, or beyond your allotted hours per pay period? What, if any, are the expectations or norms around email/voicemail after-hours for your position?
4. Do you find yourself thinking about work-related things frequently while away from work? Do thoughts about work impact your ability to sleep or relax?
5. Is there any specific resource, such as professional training or access to additional information, tools, or staff/team, that would help to improve your success and efficiency with your workload, and in turn, reduce your after-hours work?
6. Would your close family/friends likely say that your job is family-friendly” and supportive/conducive to a healthy work-life balance?
7. Do you feel your work schedule and work environment allow you the ability to accomplish both work-related and personal goals?
8. What ideas do you have for ways that you could create/maintain a healthy balance of work responsibilities and personal life? As your supervisor, how can I support you in moving towards one or more of those throughout this next year?
After the interviews, we also asked staff to fill out an anonymous survey so that they had the opportunity to share their experience as an interviewee and let us know if they had any final thoughts. The management team then read through all of the feedback and determined themes. Additionally, in the survey, staff mentioned how much they appreciated having the time to have these conversations with their supervisors and how it opened the door to future conversations. This feedback was then incorporated into our strategic work plan for 2022.
Create a new employee orientation and onboarding process
Through this process, our goal has always been to improve employee retention by making them feel included, welcomed, and valued from the moment they walk through the door on their first day. Before we started creating the new employee orientation, we had no structured onboarding process. We wanted to create something that made employees feel engaged and gave them a strong sense of our company culture and values, and a strong understanding of the vast and varied work public health encompasses.
Our Strategic Plan Initiatives Supervisor worked with the Executive Assistant and began work in December 2021. Our first iteration of the presentation was provided to our Leadership team in January 2022 and our first orientation was delivered in February 2022. One thing that made our orientation unique is that our Leadership Team members agreed to present relevant information during the event. This was an important strategy because it allowed staff to meet the people who were making decisions for the organization. It also allowed leadership to get to know new staff.
The orientation schedule includes:
Welcome & Introductions
Mission, Vision, Values
Organizational Chart/Roles & Responsibilities
What is Public Health?
Program Scavenger Hunt
Financial Overview
Communication
Strategic Plan Overview & Values
Emergency Preparation & Procedures
Websites & Applications
Starting in February 2022, we held an orientation once a month through October and required all staff to attend, no matter the length of time they worked for the department. We wanted to ensure that everyone was on the same page with understanding our values, the culture we were creating, and how they fit into the organization. Additionally, it added to a sense of community at work. Staff hired during the pandemic had never met anyone outside of their team. This allowed them to mix and mingle and learn about others in the department. We also collected pre and post-data on the orientation and used that feedback to make appropriate adjustments.
Teamwork was the main reason we were so successful in delivering this orientation. Since we decided that the members of the Leadership Team would be the main presenters, the Strategic Plan Initiatives Supervisor worked closely with all of them to create the presentation.
At this point, we then needed to get buy-in from all the supervisors to have them and their staff attend. Since we wanted to reorient all staff to the department we needed the supervisor's permission to have their staff spend a full day of work away from their assigned duties and tasks. All the supervisors immediately opted in and encouraged their staff to attend one of our sessions throughout the year. It was especially complex to plan for staff who had appointments booked out months in advance and for clerical or front desk staff to attend since it required them to move appointments or to find coverage. The ability to coordinate this was made possible by scheduling out orientations through the end of the year to allow staff to plan ahead. This endeavor was such a success, that we decided to adapt the presentation to create an orientation for new members of our Board of Health. This again required collaboration to develop and update the presentation and involve all relevant team members.
Other than the staff time associated with planning and attending the orientation, the costs were relatively low. We provided lunch and light refreshments for everyone in attendance. This ends up costing us about $20.00/per person. In addition to the orientation, we also created an onboarding checklist for supervisors to use when they hired a new employee. This ensures that all staff receives the same crucial information on their first day and during the first weeks. Both attendance at orientation and the completion of the onboarding checklist were monitored using our learning management system.
Offering ongoing workforce development and instituting a budget item for department-wide staff capacity and staff development funding.
The next step in our innovative employee retention journey was to invest in workforce development. Like many health departments, we started with a core competency assessment based on the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals published by The Council on Linkages. From there, we took a non-traditional and unique approach to help staff use their results and find meaningful professional development opportunities.
We started with setting up two different training funds for staff. The first was set up so that each employee at LCDHE had $300 to spend on their own professional development. The second fund allowed teams or groups of staff to use funds for group training opportunities. This, again, was a teamwide effort and required cooperation and investment from everyone in the department. Initially, we had to get the budget approved for this fund. In 2022, we had a budget of $38,700. This covered both the $300 individual funds for staff and group-based funds to bring in training for teams.
The process for utilizing these funds came out of our Invest in our People workgroup. This group is made up of staff from across the department and at all levels of the organization who work on specific initiatives and decision-making for staff growth, development, and satisfaction. The group helped to create an application form, formulated a group to review the applications, and assisted in the development of department-wide materials to promote the funds to staff. This fund was launched in April of 2022 and continues today.
In addition to the funding, the Strategic Plan Initiatives Supervisor and Health Equity Initiatives Coordinator are meeting with every team in the department to review their results and help brainstorm and identify training opportunities. We wanted staff to feel empowered to take their professional development into their own hands and find training that interests them to further their career goals. Through this process, we have supported teams in finding cultural humility training, offered verbal judo training to all staff, and saw persons sign up and participate in breastfeeding conferences, writing workshops, Crucial Conversations training, language development opportunities, and other training.
In addition to paying for staff to attend training, we are also implementing a Lunch & Learn series so that staff can bring back what they have learned and share it with their colleagues. This gives staff yet another opportunity to connect and share about their programs and has deeper conversations about how they apply what they learned with their colleagues.