Riverside County Parks Dept. — Morning standup, Feb 2026
They didn't join government for the perks.
They stayed because someone finally listened.
Hearth turns disconnected municipal workforces into engaged civic communities — one department at a time, with proof you can take to the city council.
No procurement commitment. Just a conversation.
The cost of disengagement is not abstract
Sources: ICMA 2024 Workforce Report · NASPE Turnover Cost Study · Deloitte Public Sector Survey
A 911 center where half the staff left every year — and no one could explain why.
The problem: Jefferson County Emergency Communications had 47% annual turnover. Dispatchers were burning out after 18 months. Supervisors blamed "the nature of the job." HR directors knew something else was wrong but had no data.
The intervention: Hearth deployed engagement pulse surveys every 21 days — not annual reviews, not suggestion boxes. Peer recognition rituals embedded into shift handoffs. Manager coaching loops that gave supervisors language they didn't have before. Real-time visibility into who was disengaging before they put in notice.
The result: In fourteen months, turnover dropped from 47% to 18%. The department didn't just retain people — it promoted three dispatchers who'd previously been flight risks into supervisor roles.
Measurable Impact
"I've been a dispatcher for eleven years. Last year was the first time my supervisor asked me what would make me want to stay. That question alone changed everything."
Departments Unified
Post-Hearth turnover rates by department
A city of 94,000 where the county clerk and the field inspector had never once spoken.
The problem: Maplewood's City Manager, Denise Okafor, had a Glassdoor rating of 2.8. Four departments were running above 25% turnover. The Permitting Office and Code Enforcement hadn't shared a training session in six years, despite depending on each other daily.
The intervention: Hearth's cross-department cohort model connected 340 employees across six departments through shared mission rituals — a monthly "civic story" session where one employee presents a case where their work changed a resident's life. Peer recognition crossed department lines for the first time.
The result: City-wide turnover dropped from 28% to 11% in two years. Glassdoor climbed to 4.1. Three department heads who'd been planning to retire early stayed on to mentor the next cohort.
"The county clerk in Permitting and my field inspector in Code Enforcement finally sat in the same room and realized they'd been solving each other's problems separately for six years. That's what Hearth did."
When institutional knowledge walks out the door with every retirement, the whole state pays.
The problem: Ohio DOT was losing 22% of its workforce annually — but the real crisis was the 40% of those departures who were retirement-eligible and taking 15–30 years of institutional knowledge with them. New hires were failing their 12-month reviews at twice the national rate.
The intervention: Hearth's knowledge-transfer cohort program paired every pre-retirement employee with two successors in a structured mentorship ritual — not HR-mandated training, but peer-designed knowledge ceremonies. Monthly "what I know that isn't written down" sessions became the most-attended event in the department's calendar.
The result: 12-month retention of new hires improved from 61% to 89%. The department documented 4,200 institutional knowledge assets that had never been captured. Three regional directors who'd planned to retire in 2024 extended their service by 18 months.
First knowledge ceremonies launched across 12 districts
1,400 institutional assets documented; 89 mentor pairs active
New hire 12-month retention: 61% → 79%
Full program: 61% → 89% retention; $7.4M in knowledge transfer value
State-Scale Impact
Three phases. No new software to learn. Just rituals that stick.
Built around what government workers already do — not what they should theoretically do.
Listen Before You Lead
Engagement pulse surveys every 21 days — not annual reviews. We map where disengagement lives in your org before prescribing anything. You get a heat map of your workforce within 30 days.
- 21-day pulse cycles
- Department heat mapping
- Flight-risk early warning
- Anonymous signal capture
Build the Rituals
Peer recognition embedded into existing workflows. Cross-department cohorts that don't require new meetings. Manager coaching loops that give supervisors language they've never had.
- Shift-handoff recognition
- Cross-dept cohort design
- Manager language coaching
- Civic story sessions
Measure What Matters
Real-time dashboards your HR director can bring to the city council. Dollar figures, not just scores. Retention trajectories, not just snapshots.
- Real-time retention dashboard
- Cost savings calculator
- Council-ready reports
- Institutional knowledge index
Implementation Reality
Average time from kickoff to first measurable results: 47 days.
Bring This to Your Agency.
This isn't a software demo. It's a conversation about whether your agency is ready to make engagement a budget line item — and what that would look like in your context.
Agency context review — we read your last employee survey before we talk
45-minute working session, not a sales call
Custom ROI estimate based on your current turnover rate
No procurement commitment required to start
Start the conversation
Tell us about your agency first. We'll do our homework before we talk.
The Public Sector Engagement Playbook
Not ready to start a conversation yet? That's fine. This 28-page guide gives you everything you need to make the case internally — with your own data, your own language, your own city council.
How to calculate your agency's true cost of turnover (template included)
The 5 engagement rituals that work in government contexts — and the 3 that don't
A 90-day roadmap you can present to your department head tomorrow
Case study summaries from 6 agency types (dispatch, parks, permitting, transit, social services, DOT)
Language for your next budget meeting: how to frame engagement as fiscal policy
The Public Sector
Engagement Playbook
28 pages · 6 case studies · 3 templates