Ep. 106 - How This IDD Agency Keeps Staff Year After Year w/ Core Services

You can’t pay people to stay. You also can’t write them up into caring.

So how does one IDD agency keep its direct support staff year after year, with wages above its competitors and health insurance costs held steady for over a decade?

Nick, Susan, and Jessie of Core Services didn’t start with a raise. They started by flipping the org chart: the people on the front line matter more than the office. Then they backed it up with a shadowing program, new promotional roles, a night-shift support role, and a habit of looking at data they didn’t always want to see.

If you lead an IDD organization and you’re tired of watching good people walk out the door, this conversation shows what it looks like when retention is a leadership decision instead of a hiring problem. You’ll hear where they invested, what they learned the hard way, and the one move they’d tell any executive to make first.

Learn more about Core Services: https://www.coreservicestn.com/

Free resource: 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: https://iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 "You can't pay"
01:39 The annual report and the key decisions behind it
02:25 Why DSPs matter more than the office
03:37 You can’t pay people to stay
04:36 Wages, and insurance costs absorbed for over a decade
05:35 The internship and shadowing program
06:33 The remote support specialist role
08:33 The data they didn’t want to see: “All the time”
10:06 Where they want to be in five years
14:41 Change before you have to
15:50 Push decisions to the front line
18:01 Humor and the office puppy
21:10 “I never said we were functional”
25:11 The one move to make

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Quick Question:

Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout