DiGennaro Reed, Florence DHarbison, Matthew James2024-11-262024-11-262022-12-312022http://dissertations.umi.com/ku:18701https://hdl.handle.net/1808/35732The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with other environmental variables, has caused a staffing crisis across the U.S. workforce. Companies attempt to increase employee compensation to keep personnel from leaving thereby contributing to the labor shortage. Human-service settings that employ Direct Support Professionals face these challenges, which are exacerbated by the stressful conditions characteristic of working in human-service settings. One approach to address this issue is to adopt various pay strategies used by other industries (e.g., nursing). This retrospective analysis attempted to identify the effects of various pay strategies on several staffing metrics provided by a human-service organization. Findings reveal improvements in average hourly wage with simultaneous reductions in overtime hours, stable average hours worked at approximately 37 hrs/week across pay strategies, and a general increase in missed shifts. Although no definitive conclusions can be drawn about the effects of the pay strategies, several beneficial outcomes are identified and discussed.39 pagesenCopyright held by the author.Organizational behaviorBehavioral sciencesManagementCOVID-19human servicepay scaleretrospective analysisstaffing crisiswagesThesis