All Posts Tagged With: "turnover"
Baldrige Model: What are your workforce-focused results?
Item 7.3 in the Baldrige Criteria asks for key results for your workforce environment and engagement. The following examples from Baldrige Award-winning applications show strong current levels, positive trends, and positive comparisons to key benchmarks. To read the descriptions of these measures and to see a broader range of Item 7.3 measures, go to the Results category responses of Baldrige Award-winner applications here. Chart numbers may not correspond to the Item number because of changes to the Criteria.
What To Do About Turnover
The predominantly right-wing political assault on public employees is having an obvious impact: Public employees are running for the exits. While some may applaud this trend, we will all be worse off when fewer qualified people remain to provide the essential services we all need and expect. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek article, retirement applications from state workers in Wisconsin were up 79% in the first quarter of 2011 over the previous year. Texas expects retirements to be 54% above average this year. In New York, retirements were up 65% in 2010. Ohio saw a 27% annual rise in retirement filings and inquiries in March. Across the country, one-third of state and local workers with specialized skills are up for retirement in the next five years.
The City of Coral
Springs offers a positive path in this difficult situation. As the chart on the left, taken from its Baldrige Award-winning application (available here), shows, a government body that actively supports its employees can retain them—and it can keep them satisfied: Employee satisfaction has exceeded 90% for the last ten years.
How did Coral Springs do it? Here are a few factors mentioned in its application:
- The City fosters a culture conducive to high performance and…
Baldrige Saves Lives
According to Rulon Stacey, president and CEO of Poudre Valley Health System, there are people alive today because of what PVHS has done with Baldrige. PHVS, which won the Baldrige Award in 2008, will receive the Award from President Obama in a ceremony on December 2.
Located in northern Colorado, PVHS has 4,300 employees, 600 physicians, and 900 volunteers. It started integrating Baldrige in 1999. “It was a big time of change for Poudre Valley Health System,” said Pam Brock, vice president of marketing. “We’d gone through five CEOs in four years and we had a 25% turnover rate. The organization was struggling and this was when Rulon first became CEO. He knew we needed something to take the organization to a different place.” (“PVHS goes to Washington—finally,” Steve Porter, Northern Colorado Business Report, November 20, 2009)
Its results point to a very different place. Modern Healthcare magazine named it one of “America’s 100 Best Places to Work in Healthcare” in 2008. Poudre Valley Hospital was recognized as the nation’s number one hospital for sustained nursing excellence in 2007 and 2008. For five consecutive years, Poudre Valley Hospital has been one of seven U.S. hospitals named a Thomson 100 Top Hospital for superior outcomes,…
23Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige and Workforce Results
In earlier articles, we listed some of the world-class financial results and customer results achieved by Baldrige Award recipients. Another area where they excel is in engaging and satisfying their employees.
“Valuing workforce members” is a Baldrige core value defined as “committing to their engagement, satisfaction, development, and well-being.” Whatever your organization’s goals for creating a high-performing workforce, evaluating and improving your management system through regular Baldrige assessments will help you achieve them.
You can test the validity of that statement by considering the workforce-related results of organizations that have received the Baldrige Award:
- Named one of “America’s 100 Best Places to Work in Healthcare” with employee satisfaction ranked in the 97th percentile nationally (Poudre Valley Health System)
- Increased employee engagement from 37% to 65% in four years (Cargill Corn Milling)
- Staff turnover declined from 13.5% to 7.5% in five years (Mercy Health System)
- Employee turnover declined from 7.5% in 1997 to 4.5% in 2006 (City of Coral Springs)
- Turnover rate of less than 2% and never had a layoff (PRO-TEC)
- Teachers receive approximately 300 hours of technology training per year (Jenks Public Schools)
- 0.6 workdays lost due to injury per 200,000 worker hours, compared to the Bureau of Labor Statistics average of 4.8 (DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations Company)
- All employees have career development…
The Only Baldrige City — So Far
In 2007, Coral Springs was the first—and to date, only—city to receive the Baldrige Award. Located on Florida’s east coast near Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale, Coral Springs has a population of 132,000, an annual budget of $135 million, and 770 full-time employees, 300 part-time and temporary employees, and more than 800 volunteers.
The City of Coral Springs started its journey to becoming a high-performing “municipal corporation” in 1993. In 1997, it received the Florida Governor’s Sterling Award, which it earned again in 2003. In 2006, Money magazine named it one of the Best Places to Live.
By the time it won the Baldrige Award, the City of Coral Springs could point to impressive results including:
- Receiving the Government Financial Officers Association’s Distinguished Budget award for the past 16 years
- Having its strategic planning process cited as a best practice by several organizations including the American Productivity and Quality Center
- Cutting the crime rate in half over the last ten years, boasting the lowest crime rate in the state for cities with populations between 100,000 and 499,999 and the fourth lowest crime rate in the country
- Sustaining resident satisfaction with city services in the mid- to upper 90s since 1999
- Raising business satisfaction from 76% in 2004 to…
Employee Satisfaction Pays — Big Time
I’ve seen this story several places and it shows a correlation few understand. In the early 1990s, Sears was losing as much as four billion dollars a year on $50+ billion in sales. It used the employee-customer-profit chain to assert that revenue creation starts with employee attitudes and satisfaction, which affects customer satisfaction, which affects revenue and profits. It made this assertion believing the correlation to be true, and then it set out to prove it.
Nearly three-fourths of its workforce was part-time and turnover among this group was high. To understand why, Sears began surveying employees about their attitudes and satisfaction and correlating the results with customer satisfaction results and financial data. They got their proof.
According to the data, a five-point improvement on their employee attitude scale produced a 1.3% improvement in customer satisfaction, which, in turn, boosted revenue by 0.5%. On sales of $50 billion, that’s an increase of $250 million a year!
And the benefits don’t stop there. More satisfied employees work for Sears longer, which reduces turnover and lowers the costs associated with finding, hiring, and training new employees. More satisfied employees also recommend the company to family and friends, which increases sales.
In other words, Sears discovered that…
13Aug2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
