How Louisville’s Health Dept. Hit an 85% Retention Rate
Success StoriesThe Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness has been using Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) funding to collect, track, and act on data related to workforce needs, preferences, and satisfaction. As a result, the department has attained a retention rate of over 85%. Grant Program Evaluator Cat Lee explains how they got there and why sustaining that progress is so important.
Louisville Metro used PHIG dollars to create and analyze internal engagement surveys, then turned employee feedback into action. Based on survey insights, they developed a popular mental wellness speaker series that tied into workplace wellness. But retention isn’t just about keeping staff happy. It’s about maintaining the relationships that fuel the department’s connections to its communities. For example, their partnership with the Casita Center, which provides monthly vaccination events for Louisville’s Latinx community, depends on consistent, trusted staff relationships.
The benefits of staff retention compound over time. PHIG funding also allowed the department to retain a dedicated grants program coordinator, which led to streamlined procurement processes. The department is now able to pursue new funding opportunities more efficiently. And because staff feel seen, supported, and invested in, the department isn’t losing time, money, and relationships due to high turnover. That means more effective and consistent services for community members.
Video Transcript
The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
How have you used PHIG funding?
We’ve started using PHIG to really track and monitor data. We’re able to use the PHIG dollars to create internal surveys so that we can track and monitor engagement, and then use those surveys to create actionable insights. One of the data points that we’ve been able to track since PHIG kicked off is the retention rate. We’ve tracked it since 2024, and since then, we just hit a retention rate of over 85% because of the work that we’re doing with PHIG.
What kind of data are you tracking, and how are you using it?
We’ve been able to take that data and include questions in the engagement survey about things like employee preferences on mental wellness topics and workplace wellness. We’ve been able to ask questions like: when would you like to attend a seminar, and what would be most useful to you as an employee of Louisville Metro? And then we take that data and turn it into action. For example, our mental wellness speaker series came out of that process — we were able to figure out a schedule that worked well for everyone and choose topics that really resonated with our staff, such as workplace boundaries, which was our most popular topic.
Why is retention so important in public health?
One of the most important things about retaining our staff is that we maintain continuity of care, especially when we’re building partnerships in our community. We have a really amazing partnership with a local organization called Casita Center that supports the Latinx community of Louisville. Because of our partnership with them, we’re able to attend monthly events to vaccinate that vulnerable community. If we did not retain the staff that had those connections, we could easily lose that partnership and lose the opportunity to improve the health of a vulnerable population.
One of the other things we can do with PHIG is retain our grants program coordinator, which has allowed us to improve our processes for seeking out and applying for new funding. We’ve been able to streamline the procurement process because we now have a staff person dedicated to procurement within our department. These are complicated processes that take a long time to learn — it can take up to a year to be fully familiar with the job. By retaining that staff, we are not losing momentum on those improvements.
Why is it important to sustain this work?
Since I’ve been able to be there, and since the workforce team has been able to be a part of the department, we’ve really made tremendous strides in gathering data, sharing that data, and making sure staff see the work that’s happening so they feel supported and invested in — and they want to stay here. If we lose that momentum, we’re going to go right back to where we started, with constant turnover that affects community care, affects the individuals in the community, and costs more to constantly have to train, hire, and recruit new people. We’ve been able to make such good progress, and without continued support and funding, there is a big fear that we’re going to go backwards, and that it’s going to cause harm to our community.