Raniqua Wilson Reading -7 Challenges of Recruitment and Retention

Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life – Confucius
The average turnover rate among corrections officers in adult institutions in 2000 was 16.1%, up from 12.65 in 1995. Turnover rates among corrections in 2000 ranged from a low of 3.8% (New York) to a high of 41% (Louisiana). Fifteen states reported states below the national average for all occupations (13.5 %) but 34% of the states reported rates for corrections officers above 20% while 6% fell into a range above 30% (according to A 21st Century Workforce for America’s Correctional Profession) If I were the Sheriff of Henrico County the strategies I would put into place to improve the recruitment and retention of correctional officers would be to focus increasing the inadequate pay for the correctional officers, Finding a way to decrease the demanding and time consuming hours for each shift, and ensure the safety of all staff members with proper training prior to being hired. I believe that most CO’s lack the drive to stay committed to a job that pays poorly but yet wants so much of your time. The risk of being hurt by inmates because of unqualified coworkers is also a reason that it may be hard to keep our employees from quitting. After doing extensive research, my paper will go in details about the poor pay, the hours, lack of training. I hope that I can explain how my workers will stay committed to a job that proves that our employees play a major if not the biggest role in the correction facilities and this is why it is imperative we find ways for them to love the career path they’ve embarked on as opposed to feeling using and regretting their choice of a career. Your career should make you want to get up and go to work every day with hopes ...

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...you can be as alert as you would like to be if you are working for 16 hours straight. Work ethic is important factor and you can’t expect your employees, to be motivated to work if they are forced to work long hours.
In closing, my hopes for improving the and preventing retention would be to make sure that my employees feel that their job is place where they aren’t being cheated, somewhere where the amount of work they put in is worth the pay they are receiving. Working as a correctional officer today, is a hard and time consuming task I would hate for someone to get hurt on the clock due to exhaustion or something of that nature thus the reason I plan to make sure the hour are equally spread amongst my workers. Furthermore I hope that drastic change will cause for more qualified workers to be willing to apply and stay knowing that they aren’t be taking for granted.