By Laura Raines

For ajcjobs

Photos by LEITA COWART/Special (ENLARGE)

Lucinda Earnest (left) earned a bachelor's degree — and a promotion to nurse manager of outpatient surgery at DeKalb Medical — with support from her supervisors, including Susan Harris, director of surgical, bariatric and endoscopy services.

(ENLARGE)

Katy Owen, vice president of human resources at Taylor Morrison, said that, when two companies merged to create Taylor Morrison, a lot of effort went into finding out what employees valued most.

(ENLARGE)

Peggy Watson

When Lucinda Earnest, an operating room nurse at DeKalb Medical, asked her supervisors about cutting back her hours so she could earn her bachelor's degree in nursing, she didn't know what to expect. She knew that hospitals are constantly short-staffed because of rising demand for care and a shortage of nurses and other workers.

"My nurse manager, Michele McCammon, told me that if I was in school, they'd work around my schedule, and that the hospital would also pay 80 percent of my tuition," Earnest said.

McCammon and Susan Harris, director of surgical, bariatric and endoscopy services, allowed Earnest to choose her schedule each semester and let her switch to weekends when she had to participate in clinical experiences for class on the weekdays.

Earnest earned her BSN from Clayton State University in May 2007, and she since has been promoted to nurse manager of outpatient surgery.

"I'm grateful that God blessed me to be able to do work that I love, and I know I'll retire from DeKalb Medical," she said. "My supervisors have been so supportive and kind. It feels good to be so highly valued."

Tuition reimbursement for all employees and scheduling flexibility are just two tactics that DeKalb Medical uses to attract and retain high-quality staff in a tight labor market. Georgia could face a shortage of as many as 20,000 nurses by 2012, according to a recent report from the Georgia Hospital Association.

"It costs so much in money and time to train someone, and Atlanta has so many competing hospitals, that you have to be creative to recruit and retain the right people. You have to think outside the box," said Sue Dunlap, employment manager at DeKalb Medical.

Her staff promotes the hospital's culture to job-seekers.

"We have the lowest turnover and vacancy rate in the metro area. This is a good place to work. For me, it's like a second family," she said.

The hospital promotes 60 percent from within, stresses service excellence not only to patients but also to one another and offers relocation expenses of $10,000 to out-of-area specialty nurses in exchange for a three-year commitment.

"They don't have to show receipts. We know how stressful it is to move," Dunlap said.

Nurses who choose to work only on weekends get higher salaries and partial benefits. To keep experienced nurses on the job past retirement age, DeKalb Medical allows them to earn the same pay rate at which they retired and to work only the hours that they want. For hard-to-fill nursing slots in the emergency room and oncology, the hospital will pay $2,500 to any employee who makes a referral that results in a satisfactory hire.

One of the best strategies has been to make department managers available at quarterly career fairs.

"Job-seekers can hear firsthand about the clinical needs and cultural environment of departments to better determine how they'd fit in," Dunlap said. At the last career fair, managers identified the applicants who interested them, and recruiters made 10 on-the-spot hires.

"You have to be aggressive and stay on top of changes in this market. You have to take recruiting seriously," Dunlap said.

Re-energizing workers

When home builders and land developers Taylor Woodrow and Morrison Homes merged to become Taylor Morrison, the new company found itself needing to re-recruit its own employees.

"When you have a huge institutional change, you have to handle it right and keep everyone informed, or people start turning negative. Your A players get frustrated and leave, and those are the very ones you don't want to lose," said Katy Owen, vice president of human resources.

Taylor Morrison leaders decided to ask employees what they wanted through a formal survey process.

"Our people had come from two separate legacy companies, and we wanted to know what had made them stay and what they wanted us to protect," Owen said.

From the survey results, Taylor Morrison chose best practices and wrote a commitment document that listed the new company's guiding principles and expectations. The company also defined and articulated a new brand, rolling it out for employees first.

Helping employees understand the new company allowed them to get past the merger distractions and get back to business, Owen said.

"Now when employee groups work together, it's not an 'us/them' situation," she said. "For the most part, everyone is excited by the new entity and how we're differentiated in the market."

Getting people to stay and work hard takes more than a paycheck.

"The compensation has to be right and fair, but, beyond that, people don't join or stay with an organization for the money," Owen said. "They want to understand and share the vision, to know it fits their career development.

"Instead of deciding what the company would be, we asked them [the employees]."

Committed to development

Learning is a hot recruitment tool for LeasePlan USA, the Alpharetta-based North American subsidiary of LeasePlan Corp., a global vehicle-leasing and fleet-management company. The company has 450 employees in the United States.

"We noticed that, while our employee population was 65 percent female, only 11 [percent] to

12 percent of women were found in higher management. That concerned us," said Ann Jordan, director of learning and development.

The company partnered with Pathbuilders, Atlanta consultants who help corporations create gender-diverse leadership teams, to establish a Women's Professional Development Series in 2006.

"The courses allowed our female employees to discover and assess their strengths. It equipped them to manage their careers and look for new opportunities," Jordan said.

Out of the first group of 36 women, 10 have been promoted; others have moved into new jobs in other parts of the company.

Surveys after the programs found the women to be more satisfied in their positions and knowledgeable about the company. There's a waiting list, and men have requested a similar program.

Recruiters tell applicants about the company's required 40 hours of continuing education a year and about all the resources and programs available to meet the requirement, such as the "Walk-A-Mile" program, which lets employees try out one another's jobs.

"Knowledge is power, and, when you cross-train people, they can leverage that knowledge into new opportunities," she said. "Once you hire people, the challenge becomes providing the opportunities to keep growing. We let people know that we're committed to developing them, and we want their careers to be with us."

Satisfaction scores have gone up, and employees often refer friends and family members to the company because they think it's a great place to work.

Offer them the world

Recruiting top engineering, scientific and technical talent for Solvay Advanced Polymers is a competitive venture. Engineers are a limited commodity wanted by an increasing number of industries. They're essential at Solvay, which manufactures innovative, high-

performance plastics needed for the health care, aeronautics and other industries.

"If compensation is your only card, your recruiting success is going to be short-lived. It helps to know what your candidates want," said Peggy Watson, vice president of human resources.

To recruit the best and brightest, the company maintains strong relationships with universities and their engineering students, providing internships and co-op learning agreements and sponsoring research programs.

"They see that we have an open, team environment where ideas are shared; that we're working on some difficult, challenging problems; and that their career could take them around the world," Watson said.

It also could make them Renaissance men and women.

Solvay Advanced Polymers is piloting Renaissance, a career progression and development program that will share best practices across parent company The Solvay Group's pharmaceutical, chemical and plastic sectors. It will expand internships and scholarships and will provide stronger leadership and technical training.

As part of the Renaissance program, the Talent Round Table will identify high-potential employees and help them develop their careers.

They could cut across company sectors and various job functions (such as research, sales and marketing) to take assignments in India, Europe or China — "or wherever their skills lead them," Watson said. "They won't have to go outside the company to stay engaged, expand their careers, find new challenges or network with colleagues around the globe."

Watson said that Solvay employees are passionate about their work. The company has a 98 percent employee retention rate, and employees' average years of service is 14 — attractive statistics to a new pipeline of workers.

Some best practices for recruiting and retaining employees