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 Recruitment and Retention

Taking steps to address your VR agency recruitment and retention needs takes various strategies implemented over time to achieve the outcomes you seek. The following is a collection of strategies from across the country and resources that can help you on your journey.

 Strategies

Overall

  1. Assess your agency’s overall environmental factors, current practices, and culture.

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    • VRTAC-QM Guided Assessment Tool
    • Look at what is and is not within your control for impact-determine approaches for handling both.
    • Develop a multi-step- multi-year approach based on your findings
  2. Conduct employee engagement surveys regularly and develop actions based on staff feedback.
  3. Conduct stay interviews
    • The Power of Stay Interviews and Engagement and Retention (Finnegan, 2nd ed. 2017)
      • Short book of about 100 pages, but worth the read. The book provides excellent research to support engagement and stay interviews. It also describes how to use and conduct the stay interviews in conjunction with engagement surveys.
        • Question 1. What do you look forward to each day when you come to work?
        • Question 2. What are you learning here, and what do you want to learn?
        • Question 3. Why do you stay here?
        • Question 4. When was the last time you thought about leaving us, and what prompted it?
        • Question 5. What can I do to make your job better for you?
      • Example-Wisconsin-Combined Stay Interview Report Results
      • Example- Wisconsin-Combined Stay Interview one pager
  4. Communicate Communicate Communicate- keep staff informed and welcome a two-way conversation about the agency culture.

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    • Some ideas include email blasts, newsletters, fireside chats from the director, video addresses from leadership, monthly all-staff teams meetings to inform, etc.
  5. Give staff access to leadership. Hold listening sessions with staff from across the state-really hear what they have to say and make plans to address issues.
  6. Implement exit interviews and learn from the results
  7. Review VR staff rates of pay and develop a strategy for wage increases where needed.
  8. Review organizational structure and advancement opportunities
    • Create different levels when possible
  9. Review job duties and make changes accordingly
    • Consider caseloads and assignments based on staff strengths and demands of the caseload
    • VR Counselor specializations (e.g., VR Intake/Eligibility counselors, youth counselors, postsecondary counselors, TBI, etc.)
    • Look at manageable caseload sizes
    • Provide opportunities for special projects
    • Move case management duties to another position
    • Create roving counselors that cover when people are on leave or leave the agency
  10. Provide work schedule flexibility- this includes days and hours worked

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    • Compressed schedules (4- tens, 4-eights and a four-hour day, other)
    • Telework, hybrid
  11. Survey customers to see how they want to be served. This provides a solid foundation for determining hybrid work schedules.
  12. Analyze internal hiring processes for gaps and process improvements.
    • Explore if there are unnecessary steps or approval levels to streamline
  13. Review current recruitment methods.

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  14. Review your onboarding process- make improvements based on feedback
  15. Invest in staff development
    • Hire a dedicated staff person for training and staff development
    • Provide opportunities for continued learning and development
    • Provide supervisor training on leadership principles
  16. Consider “growing your own” for positions that are hard to fill. This includes providing tuition reimbursement and time off to study.
    • Build opportunities for staff to develop into professional positions.
      • Make the discussion part of the performance review process
      • Offer opportunities to get more engaged in agency initiatives
      • Mentoring opportunities
      • Tuition reimbursement
    • Build opportunities to recruit and promote career opportunities in VR with VR participants.
      • Explore all the various career opportunities, including the VR counselor profession, with VR participants
      • Offer career exploration workshops, informational interviews, and other opportunities to market careers within the VR profession to VR participants and potentially eligible SWD.
    • Market the VR profession to University counseling programs, and participate in recruitment fairs at HS and Universities.
  17. Explore achievement awards and recognition for staff
    • Be clear on the criteria for achievement awards
    • Annual staff awards (could be based on CPM metrics, other items- “above and beyond”)
    • Regular recognition-highlight in newsletters and social media
      • Start every meeting off with recognition of staff (personal or professional)
      • Managers send personalized notes to staff to recognize efforts
      • Ask staff how they like to be recognized and what they would consider a reward (i.e., nonmonetary - create a cafeteria-style menu of nonmonetary rewards staff can select from when they are recognized to account for the individuality of staff and how they are motivated).
  18. Empowering Workplace Culture through Recognition (Gallup)
  19. Use the PIMS Job board to post openings

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 Articles

Retention

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Recruitment

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Recruitment Retention Together

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