“80% of Job Satisfaction is Tied to Your Supervisor”: Vermont Department of Health Prioritizes Supervisor Skills-Building
Success StoriesNearly three years of emergency activation during COVID-19 left a mark on the Vermont Department of Health’s workforce, and leadership knew that recovery would require intentional investment. Jae Basiliere, Public Health Workforce Director at the Vermont Department of Health, shares how Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) funding made it possible to invest in workforce development, starting with the people responsible for supporting everyone else: supervisors. To do this, Jae kicked off a virtual, biweekly Lunch and Learn series, creating a collaborative space for supervisors to develop the skills they need most, from building trust and communicating expectations to writing meaningful performance evaluations and onboarding new staff. Many supervisors shared that despite years of experience, they had never been offered this kind of formal support before.
The Lunch and Learn series has been a low-cost but high-impact strategy. Research shows that 80% of an employee’s job satisfaction is tied to their relationship with their frontline supervisor. By investing time in training supervisors, Vermont is improving staff experiences, increasing retention, and ultimately building a workforce that is better equipped to serve Vermonters.
Video Transcript
The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
How have you used PHIG funding?
Prior to PHIG, the state of Vermont — the Vermont Department of Health in particular — was really grappling with the long-term impacts of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We were in an emergency activation state for almost three full years. The ongoing work of managing and responding to an unprecedented global pandemic had really taken a toll on our staff. In response, our department very intentionally invested in workforce development support through PHIG funding to try to help our staff come back from the experiences that they had working during the height of the COVID pandemic.
How are you supporting your workforce?
One of the things that rose to the top for me very quickly as a pressing or more emergent need was the need to have greater support for our staff who supervise other employees. One of the things that we did to try to address the need for better support for people who are supervising was to create a biweekly Lunch and Learn series. We come together digitally every other Wednesday at lunchtime to dig into a specific skill or topic that is relevant to supervision. So that has included work on interpersonal skills, such as building trust, clearly communicating expectations, etc. And it’s also included sessions on specific topics related to navigating human resources processes. So, how do you write a performance evaluation that is meaningful for the staff person who’s receiving it? How do you onboard a new employee? We’ve really tried to create sort of wraparound support structures for supervisors that gives them the tools they need, both to navigate interpersonal challenges but also to navigate the human resources and state-mandated processes that come with supervising staff when you work for the government.
Why is this program so beneficial?
It’s been a very low-cost program that has been very high impact. I think this program has been beneficial on a number of levels. Thinking about this from a staff retention perspective, we know that about 80% of someone’s experience of satisfaction with their job is determined by their relationship with their frontline supervisor. So by supporting our staff in their ability to supervise well, we’re also creating a structure where our staff are having better experiences in the workplace. I would say that this has also been directly beneficial to our supervisors. I’ve received feedback from many supervisors I’ve worked with in the past two years who have shared with me that they’ve been doing the work of supervising, sometimes for a very long time, and never been offered any sort of formal support in what it looks like to do that well. I’m hearing from supervisors that they’re feeling better supported in their work because of professional development opportunities like this Lunch and Learn series. I would also say that strengthening our supervisors’ skills, and by extension, strengthening supervisory relationships, has been a benefit to the people of Vermont. Because all of our staff are able to be better supported in their work, they’re more able to serve Vermonters efficiently and to meet the needs of our state.