Case study: Federal government
Improving employee retention and hiring through data analytics and visualization at a federal agency
Table of contents
A large federal health agency depends on investigators to oversee regulated U.S. products, playing an essential part in protecting public health and safety. The agency was facing high turnover rates and challenges with hiring, training, and developing their workforce quickly enough to keep up with operational demands.
With an annual attrition rate exceeding 10%, the agency found itself behind on mission-critical inspections. They were losing seasoned investigators and simultaneously facing long hiring and training timelines. It could take over two years to train a new investigator before they were able to conduct inspections. Replacing vacancies was hard, and new hires lacked the expertise of those who had left. The agency knew they had to address this chronic retention problem, so they called on Eagle Hill to understand why it was happening and find solutions to resolve it.
Goal
Utilize data analytics and visualization to deliver business intelligence insights to improve hiring, retention, and employee development.
Unconventional consulting—breakthrough results
Unique records evaluated using advanced analytical methodologies
Employees assessed across a five-year period
Actionable insights generated
The roadmap to success
When Eagle Hill came on board, we worked with the office to outline a three-phase approach to address its workforce challenges:
- Leverage data analytics and visualization to uncover current workforce challenges and underlying trends.
- Utilize data-driven insights to identify and prioritize actionable solutions that align to the office’s control and resources.
- Create a comprehensive, data-backed series of action plans to implement the recommended solutions, ensuring measurable outcomes.
Our team started by:
Developing an evaluation model. We set the foundation for success by working closely with office subject matter experts (SMEs) to provide structure and alignment for the analysis. This included developing research questions, identifying key data sources, validating methodologies and establishing mitigation plans for potential data gaps. Our methodical approach to data collection was key to our rigorous statistical analysis, which brought disparate data sources together for the first time.
Integrating workforce data with qualitative insights. We looked at all aspects of available data, collecting historical and current workforce datasets from multiple systems for a granular view of turnover rates, time tracking behavior and trends, employee roles and responsibilities, and work plans. One-on-one and small-group interviews and focus groups contextualized the data with experiences and perspectives of investigators, front-line supervisors, and upper management.
Transforming complex data into clear, actionable insights. Using advanced data analytics and visualization techniques, we created interactive dashboards that mapped turnover trends, roles, and time tracking across various departments. Visualizing data in this way enabled stakeholders to quickly identify patterns and gaps and culminated in identifying six key risk themes that informed our improvement recommendations.
The path forward: What visualizing data and analysis can do
Our team provided a series of action plans that did not rely on more funding – but rather – made the most of the resources on-hand to improve efficiency and maximize available resources. To get there we:
Identified 60+ actionable insights to enhance retention and address workforce challenges. The recommendations were feasible and achievable, grounded in the office’s existing resources and control, and designed to deliver both short- and long-term impacts.
Applied a quantitative scoring matrix to prioritize recommendations based on level of impact and level of effort. This matrix enabled us to collaborate with our client to efficiently prioritize solutions for implementation. The prioritized activities were all designed to be achievable within a year. Eagle Hill provided a detailed roadmap for longer-term activities for future implementation.
Developed a series of detailed action plans for prioritized recommendations. These action plans provided the office with an implementation roadmap that informed its Enterprise Risk Management Plan. Each plan was built to be flexible enough to adapt as operating conditions evolve and included a framework for tracking effectiveness through data visualization techniques.
With our partnership, the client made a profound shift from having data locked into workforce systems to having actionable plans and visualizing data to tackle workforce challenges.
