When Cheryl Achilles joined the
Vermont Agriculture and Environmental Laboratory 18 months ago as laboratory director, she was impressed with not only the facility, but also the experienced staff that she would be leading.
“Most everyone has been here a minimum of 10 years,” she said. “The assistant laboratory director is approaching 45 years of service, and the inorganic chemistry supervisor has more than 30 years.” With a staff of 15 full-time employees (FTEs), there is not much room for advancement, or having the budget for bringing new staff on board. And once they are there, keeping their expertise and allowing them to grow and acquire new knowledge while satisfying their desires for balance between work and personal lives has grown even more challenging.
As staffing is a critical part of public health infrastructure, Achilles is only one of many laboratory leaders who is thinking seriously about the growing challenges in staff retention. Because staff retention drives laboratory innovation, and public health laboratories must innovate to meet changing mandates within their communities.
Weathering A Changing Landscape
In March 2025, the
US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it will terminate more than $11 billion in COVID funding that was awarded to state and local health departments. Much of that funding supported testing and pandemic response, but it also provided critical investments in public health infrastructure—including funding for public health laboratories to strengthen testing capacity, modernize facilities and more—to prepare for future health threats.
An additional blow came soon after, with the announcement that HHS would streamline its operations with a reduction in force of 10,000. The hardest hit was laboratory services among HHS departments, including at the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) a primary supporter of many public health laboratories.
For public health laboratory directors, the funding seesaw is nothing new—in the 1980s there was a similar drastic contraction in healthcare and public health industries, and after the events around September 11, 2001, there was a large funding infusion into readiness and response activities. But having just weathered a pandemic and with the (re)emergence of mpox, tuberculosis, polio and bird flu, among other diseases, the recent funding claw backs, recissions and staffing reductions feel ill-timed.
While many long-time public health laboratorians may be used to the ebb and flow of funding, newer scientists have found it hard to adjust to the changes. Many laboratories around the country have had a lot of departures since the COVID-19 pandemic, which came at a price: loss of knowledge about processes, procedures and partner relationships that allow public health laboratories to meet testing and response challenges. To provide some stability, especially for newer laboratorians, directors are changing their way of thinking about how their laboratories operate. Taking a page from corporate industry, some public health laboratories are bringing a more business-like approach to recruiting and retention.
“For many of the challenges we face, the public health laboratory is already very well positioned to respond to evolving needs,” said Luke Short, PhD, director of the
Dallas County Health and Human Services Public Health Laboratory. “I don’t view our laboratory as a nonprofit agency; we are a business, our shareholders are the community we operate in, our customers are the clinics and the people they serve, and our profit is going to be helping the community in whatever way we can.”
Short emphasizes that looking at change as opportunities that are on the horizon rather than restrictions can also help prepare laboratories for adaptation and staff retention, ensuring that laboratorians remain agile enough to respond to new situations within their communities. Approaching new projects and innovations using return on investment (ROI) practices can benefit not only the laboratory, but funders as well.
“Once you quantify a project and restructure your arguments to numbers and people that are helped, that becomes less anecdotal and more concrete for funders to evaluate,” he said. In addition, by providing the type of data and information for day-to-day activities, that leaves room for the endeavors that ordinarily would not be funded.
“Create room for those aspirational projects and you can create a roadmap for being able to do the innovative work,” said Short.
Gathering Data to Strengthen Retention
An important part of tracking employment trends, especially in laboratories, is to gather data through workforce surveys. In spring 2024, APHL fielded a new workforce profile survey of its members, and received over 1,900 responses to questions about demographics, job satisfaction and factors influencing decisions to stay or leave their current position. Like surveys fielded in 2016 and 2022, responses were anonymous, all questions were optional, and the data were collected with convenience sampling. The data showed a slight drop in those intending to leave within four years, from 42% in 2022 to 38.6% in 2024. Short-term retention has improved, with fewer respondents planning to leave the laboratory within one year, but the three-to four-year range for departure remains steady.
“We work very closely with our HR department and the Arizona Department of Health to follow data and trends for our workforce,” he says. “If there are any areas that are showing a higher turnover, we act quickly to investigate those reasons.” After becoming laboratory director in 2014, Waddell started focusing on developing career path programs within the laboratory. In 2018, the program became a reality, enabling early and mid-year career laboratorians to have an avenue to promotion as well as cross training in areas of interest. Even though the focus is ensuring that the laboratory’s operational mandates are fulfilled, it also gives laboratorians a concrete progression for their careers.
“If a position opens up for a Scientist II and there is a Scientist I who has satisfied the career track requirements, they have the opportunity to apply for the position non-competitively,” Waddell said. “If there is an opportunity to promote from within, we are very interested in taking it.”
For individuals being recruited to join a laboratory, the top three most important factors they consider are job security, work/life balance and benefits. For those deciding whether to remain at their laboratory, the top three factors are work/life balance, job security and a safe/secure work environment. While balance and security are important in both stages, benefits play a bigger role in recruitment and retention.
In addition to annual, sick and vacation leave, newer perks for laboratorians may include flexible work schedules, mental health resources in addition to standard health benefits, and additional wellness benefits that were not available even five years ago.
In Vermont, the agriculture and environmental laboratory is almost in the geographic heart of the state and is adjacent to a small local university. While there are a few laboratorians who live 5–10 miles away, other staff are commuting 30–120 miles round trip. So, in addition to the distance, there is also the isolation of the physical location which could be an impediment to retention. But Achilles is aware of how invested her colleagues are in the mission of the laboratory.
“People are in the laboratory because they want to be there,” she said. “And as a leader, it is my responsibility to listen to my people when they have an issue, idea or suggestion. We will never be able to compete with private laboratories as far as income or cost of living adjustments, so we have to meet our colleagues where they are and provide what we can.”
The Importance of Mentors
Every laboratorian at some point in their career was just starting out at the bench, looking at their first agar plate, loading their first molecular diagnostic test into an instrument, visiting a site to do soil testing, or pulling a water sample from a private well. Even if it was 10-20 years ago, relating those experiences inside and outside the laboratory to new and rising laboratorians is integral to career growth.
“Our members and colleagues have more formal career resources available to them than ever,” said APHL Chief Learning Officer Christine Bean, PhD, MBA, MLS(ASCP), who also served as director of the
New Hampshire Public Health Laboratory. “But those early career stories passed down from mentor to fellow, from supervisor to bench scientist, even from a legacy director to a new director, are really important.” Having fellows and interns in the laboratory, even for a temporary assignment can not only lift some of the programmatic burden from FTEs, but it can also reinvigorate their love of public health through teaching and mentoring.
“By continuing to develop public health laboratory staff starting with the Fellowship and Internship programs all the way up to
APHL’s Laboratory Leaders of Today program and the APHL Retention Scorecard, we are continuing to support our members whenever possible and help them with some of their tougher conversations with their scientists, like if the position is still ideal for their career growth,” Bean said.
In Arizona, where the laboratory is located in the heart of the Phoenix city center, the laboratory has taken advantage of the Public Health Laboratory Fellowship and Internship Programs: an APHL-CDC Initiative to jump start developing the next generation of laboratorians.
“Giving scientists not only the opportunity to try different directions as they are starting their careers, but to work on projects that they are professionally invested in is a sure way to build their enthusiasm in a public health laboratory career,” Waddell said. “And with the ways technology connects staff to their laboratory, it ensures that they have the freedom and responsibility for forging their career their way.”
Giving laboratorians the opportunity to step into roles that are outside of their experience, especially leadership roles is also critical to retention efforts.
“My first mentor when I joined the laboratory was the agency director and really opened my eyes to the business portion of operating a laboratory,” Short said. “But he also gave me some very good advice, “Do the best for your staff, and train them with the assumption that they will take your job someday.’ As a director you are training your staff to be the next generation of leaders wherever they go. And it’s important to have the mindset that it is inevitable that some staff will leave in a few years; that is a totally normal occurrence. As a leader, I will continue to do my best for you and answer your questions to give you the best foundation for your career journey.”
Short’s way of thinking is not just seen in Dallas County, a laboratory that serves a broad community of urban and rural settings. Other laboratory directors also see a change in the relationships between scientists and administrators. In APHL’s survey, relationships to peers, relationships to supervisors and a career path for growth and promotion all appeared in the top 10 reasons for staying at a laboratory.
“The nice thing about public health laboratories is that you are always learning, regardless of where you are in the org chart,” said Achilles. “And the more open communication and transparency you have with your colleagues and staff, the better for the communities that we serve and for our laboratory as a whole.”