Tools and Resources

• New National Direct Service Workforce Resource Center - The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is pleased to announce the opening of the National Direct Service Workforce Resource Center. The Resource Center provides information and technical assistance to state and local governments, non-profit organizations, employers, and professionals who want to pursue initiatives to improve the recruitment and retention of direct care workers. The Resource Center brings together the nation's premier resources on the topic of the Direct Support Workforce. These resources, which include web-based clearinghouses, technical experts, training tools and more, cover the full range of Direct Service Worker consumer populations.
• Direct Support Professional Recruitment Toolkit (brochure) - The Direct Support Professional Recruitment Toolkit arms individuals, families, consortiums, and organizations with the marketing tools they need to attract and recruit quality staff into direct support roles. Traditional sources for employee recruitment including newspaper ads, brochures, and flyers, have frequently been generic and flat. This tool changes that approach into a dynamic and targeted recruitment campaign for human service agencies and those who direct their own supports.
• Workforce Status and Outcomes Assessment - Helps to determine your success in recruitment and retention efforts.
• Assessing Retention Outcomes - This document and form will help you to determine your turnover and vacancy rates to choose strategies for retention, identify reasons your agency experiences turnover, and provide a benchmark for how well current interventions are working.
• Training Needs Assessment - DSP Version - This survey lists each of the competency areas and specific skills from the Residential Version of the Community Supports Skill Standards and asks DSPs to prioritize their most important training needs.
• New Staff Survey - This survey assesses the extent to which a new employee's experiences matched his or her expectations. Averages scores of less than 4 on the five point scales identify areas in which better information should be provided during the hiring process.
• Staff Satisfaction Survey - The first page of this survey is a general satisfaction survey for staff. Items on which fewer than 80% of the respondents say the organization is good or excellent are areas where changes may be needed. The second page of this survey summarizes opinions about the best aspect of organizations, what organizations can do differently to help people in their jobs, factors that make people want to leave and factors that make employees want to stay at the organization. The response choices were developed based on open ended responses to these questions from several hundred direct support professionals in several studies.
• Exit Survey - This is an adaptation of the staff satisfaction survey specifically designed to learn the opinions of staff who are leaving. Because the questions are parallel, scores can be compared to those for staff who are current employees.
• Agency Plan Hints and Sample - Agency Plan Hints and Sample is a tool to use when completing your agency plans. We have also included a sample plan in this docment for review. It will help you think about many of the things you need to include or at least think about when preparing your specific agency plan.
• Direct Support Professional Self-Assessment - This assessment tool is designed to help Direct Support Professionals identify their current level of skill in the Community Support Competency Skills Standards, and to serve as a basis for a self-development plan in these areas.
• Training Needs Assessment - FLS version - This survey lists each of the competency areas and specific skills from the Minnesota Frontline Supervisor Competencies and Performance Indicators and asks frontline supervisors to prioritize their most important training needs.
• Frontline Supervisor Self-Assessment - This assessment tool is designed to help Frontline Supervisors identify their current level of skill in the Minnesota Frontline Supervisor Competencies and Performance Indicators, and to serve as a basis for a self-development plan in these areas.
• Market Analysis Survey - This survey can be used to learn about the demographic and work characteristics of employees in an organization, county, or state. It was devleoped for use in Ohio for a recruitment campaign.
• Recruitment Source Effectiveness - This chart can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of recruitment strategies. Use this form to calculate which recruitment source yielded the highest percentage of actual hires.
• Effect of Recruitment Sources on Retention - This chart can be used to determine which recruitment sources yielded the greatest percentage of new hires who stayed in the organization for at least a year.
• Effectiveness of Recruitment and Hiring Bonuses - This chart can be used to calculate whether people who received a bonus were more likely to stay than people who did not receive a bonus.
• Checklist of Effective Recruitment Strategies - This chart can be used to assess how many creative strategies this organization is using now, the extent to which those strategies are working, and whether the organization would like to start using the strategy in the future.
• Cost Per Hire Worksheet - This worksheet will help you to estimate the real cost of hiring new employees.
• Training Experiences Satisfaction Survey - This survey focuses specifically on satisfaction with training.
• Structured Interview Questions - Sample questions for personnel reviews based on the Community Support Skill Standards.