Workforce Partnership...

True Partners,  Sarah and Aussie

Sarah and Aussie are dear friends and true partners. Sarah relies on Aussie to help her perform well at horse shows. They enjoy their time together, but when Aussie is off duty, he and Sarah have very different lives, wants, and needs. Sarah spends time with friends, goes to school, acrobats, and shows her independence to mom and dad at every turn.  Aussie, snoozes, stands in cool water, eats grass, swats flies, and moonlights at his security job checking fences to see if he can find a  breach that leads to greener pastures (and does his job very well).

A company's workforce is a partnership too, where administrators, managers, clinicians, and hourly direct service employees work together in a partnership to push forward the agency mission within the limited resources that they have to spend.  

Unfortunately, most business treat their various workforces the same.  Same benefits, policies, pay strategies, retirement options, time-off strategies, same, same, same....all under the mantra of equal treatment.   But they really aren't equal. The pay, of course isn't the same, and exempt staff often get perks and flexibility that hourly, scheduled staff don't. And their lives and needs are often very different too.  

Hourly workers have very different needs.  While you could do a hundred surveys, the most accurate one is annual turnover.  If your direct workforce turnover rate is excessive (they go to greener pastures) then you might need to listen and work harder to decide how you are spending the resources allocated for this workforce and examine what you might otherwise do to make a meaningful difference in their lives. 

Listen to your turnover rate.  It is likely telling you that you got some holes in your fences. The the first thing you need to do is to really analyze all the resources you are spending for your direct service workforce. Add it all up. The direct and indirect costs might astound you.  High turnover costs you dearly in workers compensation claims, liability claims and costs, legal work, unemployment costs, training time and staff replacement costs, vacancy costs, advertising costs, overtime, and most importantly, lost productivity and poor quality outcomes.  

I've actually analyzed direct workforce costs for direct services and found that indirect costs for hourly employees can range upward to over 60%.  Sadly, much of the costs do not benefit either the company or the employee. We will look deeper in a future discussion about how to spend your (and your employee's) money differently and better--and keep a few dollars for your company reserve too.