Post-Employment Retention and Wraparound Supports
Expert TheoryReview
Newly hired non-traditional workers and employees of color frequently face workplace friction, implicit supervisor bias, or external personal shocks that lead to premature turnover and derail long-term employment advancement.
Picture this
Post-employment retention services act like a safety net and coaching system attached to newly placed workers. Career coaches and case managers maintain ongoing communication with participants and employers post-hire, helping resolve workplace misunderstandings, addressing supervisor bias, and providing emergency financial or logistics support before life shocks cause job loss.
What the evidence says
Retention and case management supports enabled sectoral program trainees to work 1.3 months longer (a 9.6% increase, p < 0.01) over two years and achieve a 10 percentage point increase in jobs offering benefits (57% vs 47%, p < 0.01) relative to control group members.
- Who was studied
- Human non-traditional low-income adult workers and partner employers across RCT-evaluated sectoral employment initiatives (e.g., JVS Boston, WRTP, Towards Employment, St. Nick's Alliance).
- How
- Synthesis of post-hire retention interventions evaluated within multi-site randomized controlled trials (Maguire et al. 2010; Hendra et al. 2016).
What to do
Establish structured post-placement outreach where career coaches contact placed employees and supervisors multiple times per week to navigate workplace challenges and provide emergency retention support.
From the source
"Through retention services that occur after the program has been completed, program staff continue to communicate and connect with previous participants. This outreach may better allow participants to overcome problems of supervisor implicit bias and discrimination against minority and non-traditional employees in the workplace."
Evidence-Review_Sectoral-Employment_2222022_0.pdf