I previously discussed turnovers within the Department of
Child Services. I would like to now discuss how the turnovers affect other
employees. Due to a number of recent turnovers, many new employees have
received a considerable amount of child abuse and neglect cases. High turnovers
affect other employees negatively and can cause an enormous amount of employee stress.
It seems like it’s a vicious cycle. For example, employees leave, and cause
extra stress on other employees and then those employees leave and cause even
more stress on the next employees that will inherit the cases.
I believe what needs to happen is that DCS needs to be
evaluated as far as operations and efficiency. Improvements to the current
system and improvements to the current processes should help stabilize employee
turnovers. Right now training for a DCS case manager is 3 weeks field training,
where you mainly observe, and 6 weeks classroom training. I believe new
employees are thrown into case management way too prematurely. Part of the
reason this occurs is because of the high turnover rate. If the turnover rate
decreased, it would give new employees more time to adjust to their current
positions. There are many suggestions that can help DCS improve its approach.
I think it's really interesting to see how turnover rate plays a role in your internship. I would think that because of the nature of DCS and having to deal with child abuse and neglect cases, that the stress from a single case could be quite immense. I can't imagine getting tasked with additional cases and having to manage all of them. I think this position, more than most, should probably allow more time for adjustment because of the fact you're dealing with child abuse. That has to weight very heavily on the minds of all those employees.
ReplyDelete