Success Story

Goodwill Project Demonstrates How Employers Can Retain their Most Valuable Assets

The age-old question that faces many business owners - “With limited resources, how do I inspire good employees to stay?” - might have a simpler answer than you would think. “You don't.” At least not without a commitment to assess how your company treats employees and a willingness to address those issues.

In 2001, Goodwill Industries International began to develop a business model that would help small-to-medium-sized employers retain their employees. Funded by a grant from the Hitachi Foundation's “Making Work Work” initiative, Goodwill's retention pilot project set out to identify strategies that would help companies keep employees and advance their careers.

Three Goodwills that provide services in U.S. cities with high-poverty areas - Huntington, WV; Shreveport, LA; and Somerset, KY - participated in the project. They enlisted their local Chambers of Commerce, to recruit 22 area businesses to serve on advisory councils.

Jim Mabus, Vice President of Workforce Development for the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber quickly recognized that the issues the project addressed were chronic problems for local employers.

“That's why we needed to get involved,” he said. “It fit in closely with the questions we were getting from our local members.”

Working with the advisory councils, Goodwill developed tools and resources for the 22 businesses. After assessing their existing practices that affected retention, the businesses selected one or two new retention strategies and developed action plans for implementing them.

For many of the businesses, time to implement retention and advancement strategies proved to be the biggest hurdle.

“Priorities had to be dealt with,” says Carter Seaton, Marketing Director of Goodwill Industries of KYOWVA (Huntington, WV). “While [the participants] knew the positive impact would be there, the actual implementation of these strategies was difficult for the businesses.”

But those businesses that did carve out the time found it was worth their effort.

Helen Arigan, who serves as Human Resources Director for the Huntington branch of G.C. Services, wanted to find a way to stem her company's 22 percent turnover rate. A financial collections call center with a major telecommunications company as its biggest customer, the branch employs 950 workers.

Arigan chose to focus on three retention strategies, which included developing an effective performance review system and conducting a comprehensive orientation for new employees. The company began evaluating new employees on their four-month, eight-month and one-year anniversaries, offering them incentives and opportunities to increase their pay at each interval. It also extended the employee orientation period from two to five days, and began administering anonymous surveys after employees had been on the job for just one week.

The efforts succeeded in decreasing the company's turnover rate to 15.6 percent, Arigan says. “The idea that we made the effort is important.... When you do things for [employees], I think it helps them appreciate our show of support.”

Mike Tarter participated in the project when he served as General Manager of Clear Channel Radio, which operates five stations in the Somerset area. That company decided to expand its ongoing training of all employees, evaluate its employees every six months, and produce a written job description for nearly every one of its 27 full-time employees.

Although Tarter has since left the company to oversee eight radio markets, he said he'd like to implement many of the same strategies at his new workplace, adding, “It was a great opportunity.”

Goodwill Industries International compiled the project data and documented the findings earlier this year. A resulting Goodwill publication, Making Work Work: Tools for Turnover Reduction, provides an overview of the retention model, profiles of the participating businesses, along with key lessons learned.

In addition to the retention model, the project also developed pre- and post-employment strategies for Goodwill agencies. Eric Olson, Director of Workforce Development at Goodwill Industries International, says, “The 'Making Work Work' project gives us tools and methods to allow people to advance in their careers.”

“The lessons we've learned from this have really moved us to the next level beyond placement. We've created the opportunities not only for dialogue about retention and advancement, but for providing sustainable employment to help move individuals and their families toward independence.”