If you or someone you know is currently or at risk of experiencing homelessness, call 2-1-1 or go to lahsa.org/gethelp.

Workforce Analysis

Why is the United Way conducting a Homeless Sector Workforce Analysis?

United Way of Greater Los Angeles, in partnership with KPMG, conducted a 2024 analysis to identify strengths and opportunities in recruiting and onboarding processes that the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Sector. The objective is to identify what is working well and areas of improvement regarding the Homelessness Services Sector’s recruitment and onboarding strategies, improve the end-to-end recruiting and onboarding process and the candidate experience, and identify strategies to boost recruitment of next generation workers.

Los Angeles cannot make progress on homelessness without a capable and adequate workforce. Today, there are over 8,000 positions in the local homeless services sector, but it is a sector in crisis. In any given quarter, there are over 800 vacant positions in the sector. The vast majority of those vacancies are in direct service/front line positions, which are critical to getting clients assessed, document ready, housed, and stabilized. The remaining vacancies are in administration and management positions which are critical to guiding this complex system through an unprecedented period of resource expansion.

Since our inception in 2010, the Home for Good initiative has been rooted in an understanding that it will take a unified, collective effort—of every individual, community, and organization—and an unwavering commitment to our values to end homelessness in L.A. County. That commitment includes a continuous investment in the evolving capacity needs of the homeless sector workforce, and our values demand those investments be person-centered, equitable, ethical, and scalable. To that end, we are partnering with KPMG to deepen our collective understanding of the workforce challenges in the homeless services sector and then using that understanding to make smarter, more impactful investments in the organizations and workforce that make homelessness rare, brief, non-recurring, and less dangerous.

How are we deepening our collective understanding?

Home for Good partnered with KPMG to conduct a multi-faceted analysis of the homeless services sector in LA County. This will be accomplished by scraping publicly-available data about hiring and workforce trends across Los Angeles County, collecting workforce data from a representative sample of organizations in the sector, asking over 200 employees about the experiences they are having in the workforce through 18 focus groups and electronic surveys. The goal of all this data collection is to have a better understanding of the patterns in attracting, recruiting and onboarding the sector’s workforce.

General Data Collection

The KPMG team is scraping publicly available data about the local homeless sector from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, local area unemployment statistics, EMSI labor market modeling, and job posting data from organizations like LinkedIn to analyze historic migration trends and the workforce retention patterns. That data, along with KPMG’s proprietary Signals Repository database, is revealing key sector-wide hiring and retention patterns in the context of wider economic trends. In addition, 40 organizations in the sector submitted de-identified data about their workforce demographics, their current workforce, and the workforce they are planning for with the resources they’ve been provided to date. All participants were compensated for their time in focus groups, completing surveys, and/or submitting organizational data.

Focus Groups

Overall, the KPMG team dialogued with stakeholders from 40 organizations in the sector and held focus group sessions to learn about their experiences, hopes, and concerns about the sector overall. These focus groups were segmented by experience and roles to understand how culture and experience differs across affinity groups.

FOCUS GROUPS:
Affinity Groups for Focus Groups:

  • BIPOC
  • Contract Funding Staff
  • DEI Staff
  • Gen Z
  • HR Representatives
  • Hiring Managers
  • Housing Navigators/ Case Managers
  • Mental Health & Outreach Staff
  • New Hires
  • Onboarding and Training Staff
  • People with Lived Experience
  • Recruiters

Employee Survey

A 15-minute employee survey evaluates the viewpoints of employees and is designed to gather diverse worker sentiment on culture, employee experience, employer brand, employee value proposition, etc. Roughly 230 employees in 40 organizations completed an anonymous electronic survey. Employees answered questions about learning and development, inclusion and culture, expertise and experience, well-being, and retention.

RESULTS

All of this analysis has been consolidated into a Current State Assessment Report, which highlights the sector’s strengths and workforce challenges that are hindering the LA Homeless Sector’s ability to attract, recruit, and onboard talent.

Based on the analysis of the current state, KPMG also developed a prioritized matrix of Opportunities for Improvement for sector-wide and agency-level consideration.

KPMG also created a toolkit for providers which elevates the Voices of Employees in the homeless services sector. This toolkit includes 11 personas (listed below) and is helpful to understand common motivations, sentiments, unmet needs, insights, pain points, and key levers for attraction, recruitment, and growth in the sector for each role.

VOICES OF THE EMPLOYEE

(1) Gen Z Employee
(2) Hiring Manager
(3) Recruiter
(4) Program Manager
(5) Case Managers
(6) Onboarding and Training Specialist
(7) HR Representative
(8) DEI Coordinator
(9) Mental Health Specialists
(10) Employees with Lived Expertise
(11) BIPOC Employees