Introduction and Research Approach -- Findings -- Management Profile for Maintaining a Qualified Workforce -- Conclusions and Suggested Research.

TRB¿s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 127, Employee Compensation Guidelines for Transit Providers in Rural and Small Urban Areas explores salary and benefit characteristics of transit systems in rural and small urban areas. An interactive computer tool, produced as part of this project, is available online and is designed to allow transit managers to quickly and easily obtain compensation and benefit data from comparable transit systems.

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 685: Strategies to Attract and Retain a Capable Transportation Workforce includes straight-forward, implementable practices that transportation Human Resources (HR) managers and hiring professionals can use to help improve the recruitment and retention of qualified employees in their organizations. The report provides information on workforce challenges, industry strategies, and detailed descriptions of noteworthy practices within each of 15 recruitment and retention categories. Volume II: Supplemental Material is available online as an ISO image, which can be used to produce a CD-ROM. Volume II includes an introductory document summarizing the content of the supplemental materials and provides full case studies and summaries of other example practices related to the recruitment and retention practices. Links to the ISO image and instructions for burning a CD-ROM from an ISO image are provided.

TRB Special Report 275 - The Workforce Challenge: Recruiting, Training, and Retaining Qualified Workers for Transportation and Transit Agencies calls upon surface transportation agencies, the private sector, educational institutions, unions, and employees, to establish training as a key priority. The report recommends that this broad coalition work to expand existing federal and academic resources, create an institutional focus for the issue, and establish human resources management as a strategic function within the transportation community.Special Report 275 Summary

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 139: Guidebook for Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Transit Managers for Fixed-Route Bus and Paratransit Systems explores resources for fixed-route bus, general public demand response, and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) paratransit systems resources to assist in the recruitment, development, and retention of managers. The Guidebook is accompanied by CRP-CD-77, which provides Model Job Descriptions for 32 broad job titles that indicate the structure and content for job descriptions for manager jobs. The CD-ROM is also available for download from TRB's website as an ISO image. A separate report presenting the research methodology, the results of a literature review, and the results from focus groups held with 15 other non-transit public and private sector organizations used in production of TRCP Report 139 is available online.

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 148: Practical Resources for Recruiting Minorities for Chief Executive Officers at Public Transportation Agencies provides strategies to recruit minorities for chief executive officer (CEO) positions and offers resources to assist governing boards of public transportation agencies in the recruitment of minority CEOs. The report also assesses the transit industry's recruitment processes for CEOs and provides a case for diversity that documents the benefits of minorities in public transportation leadership positions. The report also describes strategies for retaining CEOs at public transportation agencies.

This report of the Transportation Research Board will be of interest to transit staff interested in implementing leadership development initiatives at their agencies. Current practices, major issues, trends, and innovations related to the use of corporate culture as the driver in hiring, developing, evaluating, and retaining a leadership team, within and outside the transit industry were documented for this synthesis. The report discusses the state of the practice in leadership recruitment, development, evaluation, and retention. It reports on innovative approaches to the problems faced in todays work environment in transit and other industries. This synthesis also covers the manner in which corporate culture affects the hiring, development, evaluation, and retention of the top management team.

[This is] "a guidebook that addresses contemporary issues in workforce development, retention, and attraction, and public transportation image management. [It] is separated into modules that may be used independently or together [...]. Information across the modules is in the form of example successful programs, state-of-the-art initiatives, industry effective practices, and directions to implement and measure those practices. The results of this research may be used by human resource professionals and transportation policy makers in implementing more effective human resource business-planning processes"--Foreword.

The report documents current information on prevention and intervention strategies and resources that can be used by transit agencies. It offers survey information obtained from individuals with the responsibility for managing health and wellness programs. This synthesis covers the state of the practice at 14 U.S. transit agencies of various sizes, operating different modes, in diverse locales around the nation.