Designed for leaders in public human services organizations, this full-day program will take place on February 10 and will focus on learnings from the Children’s Bureau Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD). Participants will learn steps in a process to assess workforce needs in order to gain an understanding of the root causes of turnover within their organizations. Common pitfalls in the configuration and analysis of workforce data will be discussed, along with ways to overcome them. The assessment includes identification of where in the workforce continuum or organization challenges are occurring, how to conduct a root cause analysis, and how to identify barriers as facilitators to address the causes of problems, so as to develop a theory of change.
The four major reasons for staff turnover include:
- Poor fit between staff and the job,
- Job challenges and stressors,
- Poor quality of supervision and
- Problematic organizational culture and climate (Groto, Hyland, Caputo & Semedo, 2017)
Each will be described in depth with examples from other jurisdictions. Participants are welcome to bring information about their own systems to the workshop to use as examples. We’ll also examine in-depth descriptions of potential interventions to meet key causes of turnover in child welfare as well as how to match causes to interventions. In particular, we will cover details of the eight interventions being studied by the QIC-WD and early results from the implementation and outcome evaluations. Finally, we’ll lay out a CQI approach for the workforce to enhance understanding, accountability, enhanced retention and improved child outcomes.