Smooth Staff Transitions: Train & Retain Employees to Build a Leadership Pipeline

Transitions create disruption whether it is the role of a development director, executive director, program, or communications staff. Staff changes are a constant in organization from entry level, manager, coordinator or director level staff. Some positions the average length of employee is 6 month, 18 months or 3-5 years. How does length of employment in a position preserve institutional memory of program and donor management?

When hiring new employees, we need to provide adequate training to ensure role clarity, enough time to understand the role and goals of the position, organizational workflow, systems and processes. How effective is your organization at training new staff? How does your organization differentiate between staff orientation versus onboarding for a role? How much time do you give employees to get trained before expecting them to know what to do in their role?

Your organization needs to be prepared for smooth staff transitions and onboarding, whether it is the role of a development director, executive director, program or communications staff. Smooth transitions and onboarding are key to the continued successful delivery of programs and services. In this workshop, we will dive into what goes into orientation and onboarding from entry level, coordinator, manager and senior leadership positions. We will also analyze how to use these systems to train employees to build a leadership pipeline to retain employees. The costs of hiring and training employees is significant. What strategies could your organization implement to build a leadership pipeline to retain employees and develop talent from within the organization.