Missouri Department of Corrections: A Case Study in Management Failure

It is a fact that the quality of your employees is directly connected to how they are treated by management. If an employee is treated as though they are valued and respected, they will give the most to their job.

In terms of staff retention, the key is so simple that it's honestly a bit confusing how so many managers don't understand it. The key to keeping your staff is to give them a job they don't want to leave. Sounds simple right? Well, it's taken many years for employers to realize this concept.

What it comes down to is the way we look at the relationship between employer and employee. Should an employee be thankful for having a job that puts food on the table? Of course, but should the employer be equally thankful to the staff for the work they do? Again, this sounds like an easy yes, but employers often miss this part of the equation.

When thinking of this particular error in management, I am reminded of an Officer who left the Missouri Department of Corrections after around 12 years of service. In her interview with Corrections Voices, she said that on her last day, the Major told her that she was throwing away 12 years with the department. It didn't even cross his mind that the department was throwing away an employee who had given so much time to them.

This is the fundamental problem in DOC right now. The department uses staff with little to no appreciation and when they ultimately drive their good workers away, they take no responsibility for the problem they have created. Let's do a quick comparison.

Netflix is a highly successful company whos CEO holds a 90% approval rating from staff. The company has a high ranking among Linkedin's top companies to work for in 2017 and 2018. Netflix also gives its staff up to 12 months of maternity/paternity time for the birth of a child, stock options, unlimited vacation days and a fully flexible schedule. To most of us, this sounds insane. How could a company turn a profit giving away so much?

The answer is simple. Netflix understands that if they create jobs that employees don't want to lose, they won't have to worry about staff retention and they won't have to pour tons of money into constant hiring and training of new staff. Now, let's look at Corrections.

DOC pours a ridiculous amount of money into training new staff, of which 7 out of 10 won't stay past orientation. Additionally, they are continuously throwing large sums of money at staff for lawsuit settlements rather than fixing the problems of harassment in the department. Most importantly, they give their staff every reason to leave.

Staff up until recently were required to jeopardize their social security number to get time off for medical appointments or to get paid for overtime in direct violation of the Privacy Act of 1974. Staff members who get hurt at work find themselves being harassed and placed on light duty schedules that are essentially a punishment and are not applied evenly to all staff (favoritism.) Staff members are punished for social media posts containing alcohol, while the director poses in DOC attire holding a beer. This taking place at the same event in which a Deputy Director was photographed being too drunk to get out of a golf cart when "representing the department."

Similarly, JCCC had the Sargeant who drank a 12 pack on the way to work every day and the Lieutenant who wrote a COI up for a Facebook post, while all of his posts were about smoking pot. This is the same Lieutenant who was allowed to take time off and return to work because he couldn't pass a drug test. These double standards show that the department cares little if any about the staff that work for them.


If that's not enough, look at the response to the staff shortage. Of course, when you're short, someone has to pick up. However, MODOC almost acts as though it needs to punish the staff that work, with demanding schedules and disregard for the employees themselves. Earlier this year Moberly Correctional Center began a policy of issuing write-ups to staff for not answering their phone outside of their assigned work schedule. So again, there is no appreciation for the employees working 70+ hours a week, but a quick jump to punish the very same employees at the whim of corrupt management.

The above is a very small sampling of the issues in DOC as they pertain to staff morale and retention. But any casual view easily shows clear management failure. So are we saying the Missouri Department of Corrections needs to be like Netflix? No. Sadly, the department strategy of constantly lowering standards and expectations would not allow for a system with that much freedom to succeed at this time, furthermore, they simply could not afford it. What they could do, however, is realize that employees are done being treated like they don't matter and that if the department hopes to avoid the impending implosion, they are going to have to make some real changes.