By Meredith Garrett, CAPP:
Five years later we are still feeling the effects that COVID-19 had on our staffing. Prior to the pandemic our operation had about fifteen full-time and part-time employees. Due to attrition and turnover, we are just barely functioning today with ten full-time and part-time employees. We’ve learned to function very lean, but it is not the standard we have come to pride ourselves on. It is also eating our current dedicated employees alive. We’ve hired several people to try and bring our numbers back up, but we are experiencing turnover at an unprecedented rate. Prior to the pandemic, turnover was very uncommon for our department. So, what has changed and why have we been unable to retain who we’ve hired?
We currently have two full-time positions we are actively recruiting for, and we are reflecting on this very question, so the constant cycle of recruiting and hiring can hopefully end for a period of time and our service delivery can become stable once again.
Here are a few thoughts we’ve had on our retention issues and how we are planning to solve those issues moving forward. Money. As a public servant, salary is expectedly lower than the private sector, but since the pandemic the gap became a chasm. We have lost several employees due to the below average wages. For the two positions we are currently recruiting for we knew we needed to pivot our compensation strategy to be competitive in today’s market. We were able to work with our compensation department to change the job titles to reflect the current needs of our operation and to compensate fairly.
Expectations. We’ve had a few employees leave due to a lack of understanding of job duties. During the interview process and initial onboarding, we plan to take the approach of verbally explaining our job expectations and providing written documentation outlining the job duties and expectations.
While this may not solve our retention issues, we’re hoping this will help alleviate them.
Meredith Garrett, CAPP, is the Assistant Director of Public Safety, Parking & Transit Services for Kent State University. Meredith can be reached at mgarre12@kent.edu.
Forum Question: How can onboarding be redesigned to better reflect the realities of the role?