Employee Retention and Turnover at CSI

Why Employees Stay

In short, inertia
- Employees generally stay with a company until something causes them to leave

What factors cause them to leave?
- Job satisfaction
- Perceived opportunities (advancement)
- Financial pressures
- Work environment

The Question(s)

What are factors that lead to longer or shorter employee retention?

Can we predict who will be more likely to leave?

What are the characteristics or patterns among “bad hires” ?

Some Terminology

CSI positions were broadly combined into 4 categories:
1. AIC: Alternatives in the Community and Day Programs
2. Therapists: FFT,MST¹, and other therapists
3. Residential: Community residential programs
4. Other: Admin, support, and managerial staff

Separation: Voluntary or involuntary leaving of CSI
Bad Hire: Individual employed by CSI for 6 months or less

The Data

Employee HR data from 1,462 individuals hired by CSI from 2010 through 2021

Cumulative Employees Hired, by Position (2010-2021)

The Model

A statistical model was used to determine which variables are predictive of employee retention¹.

Estimates from this model can be used to isolate factors relating to turnover, net of other factors.

# Final Model
fit1 <-
  gam(
    total_time_hired ~ sex + race + status + position +
      admin_category + exempt + city +
      s(salary, by = status) + s(age_at_hire, by = sex),
    weights = terminated,
    family = cox.ph(),
    data = gam_data
  )

Median Time Employed

CSI Position Types

The median time employed in CSI was just under 2 years for those in the AICs, compared to about 1 year for therapists, and less than 1 year for residential employees.

	Time Employed
Other	1.91
Aic	1.77
Therapist	1.15
Residential	0.85

What Factors are Most Important?

The top two most important factors were salary and site location.

	ChiSq	Importance
Salary, Full-time	161.94	0.43
Site Location	102.61	0.27
Salary, Part-time	35.36	0.09
Admin Status	19.01	0.05
Age at Hire, female	17.28	0.05
Race	12.70	0.03
Position Type	11.39	0.03
Exception Status	8.65	0.02
Age at Hire, male	6.93	0.02
Sex	0.35	0.00
Full-Time, Part-Time Status	0.02	0.00

Salary and Age at Hire

Probability of Separation, Model Estimates

Site Location

Probability of Separation, by Site Location (2010-2021)

What are “bad hires” ?

A “bad hire” doesn’t imply a “bad” employee!

There can be a number of factors that lead to quick turnover
- Not a good match for the position
- Not ready for the specific demands
- Not fully aware of the needs of the position

“Bad Hires” by Position

Position Types

Just over 50% of all “bad hires” were individuals in residential positions.
About 20% were in therapist positions.
Less than 1% were in the AICs.

Position Type	Position	N	Prop.
Service	Residential	143	0.43
Professionals	Therapist	65	0.19
Professionals	Residential	27	0.08
Professionals	Other	23	0.07
Service	Other	23	0.07
Managerial	Other	13	0.04
Other	Residential	13	0.04
Managerial	Residential	12	0.04
Other	Other	8	0.02
Service	Aic	4	0.01

“Bad Hires” by Position and Year

Proportion of “Bad Hires” (2010 - 2021)

Employee Retention at CSI

What we know

Salary is important, especially for those at the lower end of the scale.

There are substantial differences in turnover based on the site location

Certain positions (residential) are more prone to short-term “bad” hires

What we need to know

Determine what programs with low turnover are doing right.

Find incentives and improve onboarding for high-turnover positions

Use data and organizational knowledge to select “good fits”