State trying to entice behavioral health workers to go west

Last year, Badlands Human Service Center in Dickinson had the highest turnover rate in the state. With Badlands being understaffed, the North Dakota Department of Human Services is creating ways to entice workers into filling the nine positions it has vacant.

Bradley Brown, regional director for Badlands, thinks the majority of the turnover came from retirements and relocation, as Badlands had the lowest rate in the state only three years ago.

"Over the last two years, we've offered a voluntary separation program called VSIP — Voluntary Separation Incentive Program," he said. "What that allows people to do is if they're close to retirement or wanting to retire, they were giving them several options to where they could kind of take a buy-out early. Several staff took advantage of that, so we may have had some staff retire a little bit earlier than we had planned on them retiring."

The problem

One of the reasons why Badlands may have a harder time finding people than the human service centers in the eastern part of the state, Brown said, is due to a lack of feeder schools.

Read more: https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/education/4624453-state-trying-entice-behavioral-health-workers-go-west