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68 Strategies to Attract and Retain a Capable Transportation Workforce Exhibit 9-1 (Continued) Snapshot of Chapter 9 Workforce Pipeline Target Area Target Career Stages Comm. 4 year Graduate Entry-Level Mid-Career Senior K-12 Retirees Colleges Colleges Schools Staff Staff Leaders TRANSPORTATION WORKFORCE PIPELINE Anticipating and Managing Performance Issues Chapter 9 Target Area 9.1 Workforce Challenges. Programs related to "Anticipating and Managing Performance Issues" are typically designed to address challenges associated with managing an organization's current workforce. For example, one common challenge an agency might face is: Poor Employee Performance. Organizations constantly struggle to identify best practices to deal with under-performing employees. Poor employee behavior and unsatisfactory performance are major workforce challenges that limit an organization's potential to achieve its goals. Participants indicated that it is significantly easier to avoid unsatisfactory employee behavior and performance by reducing the number of poor hires and better managing applicants' expectations of the job and its related duties. 9.2 Industry Strategies. Researchers and program managers identified the following programmatic strategies when describing industry efforts in "Anticipating and Managing Performance Issues" (see Exhibit 9-2). While these strategies represent the general direction of human resource (HR) departments across the nation, it is important that the specific needs of your agency are used to guide the development and implementation of a program in your agency. Exhibit 9-2 Industry Strategies: Anticipating and Managing Performance Issues Strategy Strategy Description Provide Meaningful Administrative and developmental performance reviews are an important Performance Feedback component of employee retention because they help the employee respond to expectations of the organization and effectively determine his/her standing in the organization in terms of performance, development, and promotion. Performance feedback also helps to ensure that employees are not terminated due to poor performance and therefore reduces involuntary turnover. Evaluate Organization Recruitment strategies that consider a person's personality fit with the and Job Fit in the organization are linked to reduced turnover and fewer performance issues Recruitment Process (Johnson et al., 2008).

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Anticipating and Managing Performance Issues 69 Exhibit 9-2 (Continued) Industry Strategies: Anticipating and Managing Performance Issues Strategy Strategy Description Implement Workforce While organizations are having senior-level leadership determine the direction Planning and Hire the of the organization and future initiatives, they are also having those leaders Best People determine the skills that will be needed to accomplish future initiatives. When plans for the future are shared throughout the organization, supervisors can begin to prepare and train their employees to be ready when new initiatives are implemented. Knowledge of leadership's strategic plans also allows hiring managers to locate and hire the right candidates to support these initiatives. This knowledge during the hiring process helps to avoid unnecessary layoffs due to uninformed staffing decisions. Utilize Realistic Job When it is time to start hiring, organizations have found that involving Previews (RJPs) incumbents in the selection process results in decreased turnover because they can provide candidates with previews of actual job experiences and use their experience to contribute to the assessment of the candidate's qualifications. It is also positive for the organization if an applicant who would soon come to dislike the working conditions is deterred by the realistic job preview. For example, front-line workers in the oil industry who do not want to be managers are at times promoted into recruiting positions to share their knowledge of the job. Mentor and Coach Organizations indicated that developing a career path and certification program Employees for transportation workers has been successful in retaining their workforce. The intent is to provide a series of goals for career progression and promote lifelong careers. To support these career path initiatives, organizations are having mentors meet one-on-one more than annually with assigned employees to determine the next step in each employee's career, what obstacles stand in the way of reaching that step, and what the mentor can do to remove those obstacles. Organizations are also adding pages to their intranet sites that provide information on the steps that employees of different levels must accomplish to reach the next consecutive level. This transparency is intended to help convey to employees that there are opportunities for advancement within the organization. For "harder-to-retain groups" such as women and minorities, organizations have developed specific mentoring programs where junior employees are paired up with senior employees from the same minority group to periodically discuss their career path and goals. Mentors share their experiences and help mentees find ways to overcome obstacles to their success. During workshops, mentors and mentees solve work-related activities and are involved in large group discussions with other mentors-mentees teams.