Assessing employee satisfaction to drive workforce initiatives and increase employee retention

A critical success factor for every organization is the ability to attract and retain key talent. Regardless of mission and public health focus, organizations must continually strive to understand and meet the needs of their workforce to ensure that they can achieve their key objectives in the midst of a talent shortage and high demand for skilled workers in every industry. Using a case study of the impact of a comprehensive employee assessment for a federal health agency, we will provide insight into best practices for helping organizations identify critical workforce needs that must be addressed in order to retain key talent and the impact of employee satisfaction and engagement on an organization's programmatic functions. The comprehensive approach we will highlight includes incorporating stakeholder input during the development phase, a focus on mission critical and actionable topics, the integration of best practice information, conducting segmentation analyses of results to provide results specific to demographic criteria, and developing analysis reports with specificity to highlight actionable areas for improvement. Employees and organizations alike, of any type, size, or mission can employ these same methods within their organizations and benefit from the lessons learned from the five year history of this initiative.