BACKGROUND

The transit industry has recognized and acted on workforce recruitment and retention issues for decades. However, little attention has been paid to identifying and reforming components of organizational culture that strongly influence recruitment and retention. The current workplace research and literature have focused on various new concepts designed to address retention and employee well-being, safety, mental health, productivity, and creativity. Transit agencies can increase the retention and recruitment of workers by building organizational cultures that support employees’ psychological health and safety. The transit industry would benefit from research examining how this industry and others have begun implementing psychological health and safety, mindfulness-based practices, and similar initiatives. The results of this project need to align with scalable, actionable products.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this research is to produce a guide for public transit agencies on building an inclusive, transparent, and responsive organizational culture that supports employees’ psychological health and safety and leads to improved workforce recruitment and retention.

RESEARCH PLAN

This research will produce practical information and interactive products to help transit agencies and other stakeholders implement the study results. Examples of products are fact sheets, toolkits, checklists, a resource guide, training curricula, interactive products and other information-sharing methods. A sustainability plan for the ongoing use of the products should be included. The research should, at a minimum:

• Define organizational culture and explain its importance to the success of the transit industry and how that impacts employee well-being, recruitment, and retention efforts.
• Review literature summarizing current practices to support culture transformation leading to improved employee well-being. These practices may include efforts to improve psychological safety, collective and social engagement, inclusion, values and principles alignment, mental health wellness, and emotional well-being.
• Identify, define, and quantify (if applicable) the relationship between psychological safety and an organization’s culture.
• Identify and evaluate innovative approaches and best practices from transit and other industries that have resulted in an organization’s cultural changes supporting employee well-being, recruitment, and retention. Based on the findings, make recommendations. 

The research plan shall be divided into tasks that detail the work proposed in each task. The research plan shall describe appropriate deliverables (which also represent key project milestones) including, at a minimum:

• Interim report and panel meeting. The interim report should include the analyses and results of completed tasks, an update of the remaining tasks, and a detailed outline of the final research product(s). The panel meeting will occur after the panel review of the interim report. The interim report and panel meeting should occur after the expenditure of no more than 40 percent of the project budget.
• Draft report
• Final report
• Technical memorandum titled “Implementation of Research Findings and Products”.

STATUS: Proposals have been received in response to the RFP. The project panel will meet to select a contractor to perform the work.