Best Practices: Dallas Area Rapid Transit Reimagines Recruitment and Retention

As the chief human resources officer at Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), it is my responsibility to ensure we attract and retain top talent at our agency. The last few years have taught us many hard lessons about recruitment and retention, but like most agencies across the country, we adapted and have now reimagined how we recruit and retain our talent.  In my role, I’ve helped DART implement several best practices and have identified a few key elements for successful recruitment and retention. 

Back to the basics with in-person recruitment 

On the recruitment side, one of the most significant enhancements to our process was getting back to good, old-fashioned outreach.  We designated a staff person to return to the community and re-establish connections with trade schools, community colleges and any other local agency interested in learning about careers at DART. Those partnerships were lost over the years, and our agency relied heavily on social media and internet job advertising. While this method might work well with some job postings, it does not work well with others, such as front-line positions. Re-establishing those community connections was critical in filling essential front-line positions such as bus and rail operators. We combined our outreach with same day hiring events, which led to 100 percent operator staffing at a time when our agency implemented a new bus redesign plan.   

Decreasing attrition by increasing workforce development  

On the retention side, workforce development, specifically training our People Leaders, has cut our total overall attrition rate in half since 2021—from 22 percent in fiscal year (FY) 2021 to 11 percent so far in FY25. In 2020, DART offered its employees a voluntary retirement incentive plan and saw over 10 percent of its employees exit the agency simultaneously.  We were unprepared for the subject matter knowledge that walked out the door.  

As other employees were promoted to those vacancies left behind, we quickly noticed that we had not adequately trained them for the positions they assumed.  Attrition rates reached record highs. Front-line employees were leaving in significant numbers and over minor disagreements with their front-line supervisors.  

To address the skill gaps, we developed a People Leader Training Program. The training focused not only on the required agency policies and procedures, but also the soft skills supervisors need in their roles. It quickly became human resources' most popular development course. As attrition began to slow down, requests for additional People Leader courses started coming in.                

Currently in our human resources department, our talent and organization development teams are continually at work, reimagining other areas of the recruitment and retention process.  With these lessons learned, we are excited about our DART HR future.