Why Your Best People Leave

AFTER COMPLETING THIS COURSE, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO:

• Spot the patterns that quietly push strong employees toward burnout and exit
• Build trust so staff speak up earlier instead of checking out
• See where work is actually uneven and make smarter decisions about what to rebalance or stop
• Step in earlier when someone is disengaging and shift the trajectory
• Set clearer expectations and boundaries that reduce overextension
• Build retention into everyday leadership, not just when someone leaves
• Make staying feel like a real option for the people you want to keep

You’ll walk away with practical ways to reduce burnout, rebalance workload, and create a workplace people don’t feel the need to leave.

This course is especially helpful for:

• Library directors, branch managers, and department heads responsible for team culture, workload decisions, and staff retention
• Supervisors who can feel morale slipping and want to step in before burnout or disengagement turns into turnover
• Leaders managing high-capacity employees who keep taking on more and may be paying for it quietly
• Managers trying to create clearer expectations, healthier boundaries, and more trust across their teams
• Anyone in a leadership role who is tired of losing good people and wants a more sustainable way to lead

If that sounds like your role, you will probably see yourself in this course.

This course will feel especially relevant if you:

• Keep wondering why the people you most want to keep seem the most exhausted
• Have staff who are dependable and capable, but clearly carrying too much
• Know some parts of your culture or workflow are wearing people down, even if no one is saying it outright
• Want better ways to handle disengagement, repair trust, and make workload decisions with more clarity
• Would love to stop hearing the real truth only after someone has already decided to leave

This course was built for leaders who want to make staying possible, not just react after the damage is done.

LIVE SESSION | 2:00–3:30 pm ET

Understanding The Big Picture: A Systems Approach for Making Staying Possible

What would it cost you if one of your best performers left tomorrow? Do your most capable people know they’re your most capable? What does your institution reward when it comes to workload and style? This live opening session sets the foundation for the remaining self-paced modules. We will examine systems of burnout and retention and explore how to create an effective, productive workplace culture. Participants will leave with practical ideas for becoming the type of leader who makes people want to stay.

SELF-PACED MODULES

Module 1
Burnout and Trust-Building: How to Encourage Retention

What contributes to cycles of burnout, and what can you do to prevent it in your team? How can you both learn to trust your team and help them learn to trust you as their leader? This module takes a deep dive into burnout, focusing on proactive approaches to stop it before it starts. Leave with effective techniques to create a work culture that encourages trust, transparency, and retention.

Module 2
Analyzing and Redistributing Workloads: A Data-Centered Approach

In what areas do you notice your team over-giving their time or energy? Are workloads distributed fairly and balanced? This module introduces a step-by-step framework for conducting a comprehensive data analysis. You will leave with actionable strategies for redistributing, pausing, or canceling tasks based on clear data you can use with leadership.

Module 3
From Checked Out to Invested: Supporting Disengaged Team Members

What do you do if a team member is already showing signs of burnout and disengagement? This module focuses on practical strategies to address disengagement, initiate meaningful repair, and support your team before valued employees decide to leave.

Module 4
Retention as an Ongoing Practice: Small Changes, Large Outcomes

Retention should not only be addressed as employees leave. This module explores how to embed retention practices into your everyday leadership processes, including boundaries and structural guardrails to promote employee well-being, "staying conversations" and other feedback structures that go beyond exit interviews, and other ongoing retention-supporting habits to apply to your leadership practice.

COURSE ADVISOR & INSTRUCTOR

Helen Rimmer, Leadership Coach, Facilitator, and Founder

Helen Rimmer is a UK-based leadership coach, facilitator, and former senior library leader with over 20 years’ experience in libraries and higher education. She is the founder of The Kind Brave Leader and Empower: The Library Skills Collective, where she supports librarians, managers, and organisations to build kinder, healthier, and more sustainable workplaces.

Helen specialises in kindness-led leadership, burnout prevention, and strengths-based development. She holds a PGCert in the Psychology of Kindness and Wellbeing at Work and is a certified systemic team coach. Her work blends evidence-based practice with real-world experience, helping library professionals lead with courage, compassion, and clarity in challenging times.

COURSE INSTRUCTORS

Jennie Garner, Library Director, North Liberty Library

Jennie Garner is the library director at the North Liberty Library in Iowa where she has served in a variety of roles for more than 30 years. Her professional work is grounded in a deep commitment to leadership, policy development, and advancing equity and access in libraries, with particular attention to creating healthy, sustainable organizational cultures.

Jennie has presented nationally and internationally on positive leadership, civic engagement and bridging, library advocacy, and inclusive policy development. She prioritizes staff involvement at all levels of organizational planning and encourages staff development and community engagement as essential elements to resilience and well-being.

A dedicated advocate for rural and small libraries, Jennie served as the 2023 President of the Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL) and continues to promote collaboration across libraries of all sizes. She is currently a member of the National Civic Collaboratory. At the local level, she serves on the board of Inside Out Reentry Community and the ThriveLib Advisory Board.

Amy Stubbing, University Librarian, Solent University

Amy Stubbing, University Librarian at Solent University in Southampton, brings a wealth of experience across library leadership, collection management, and customer services. Amy is passionate about data literacy and integrating data practices into decision-making, and she has significant experience supporting librarians to gain the skills they need to succeed in this area.

As the author of the Data-Driven Decisions Toolkit for Libraries, she has worked with libraries across the globe to implement these practices and offers bespoke training in a variety of settings.

Beth Wahler, Consultant and Researcher

Dr. Beth Wahler is a consultant, researcher, trainer, and experienced administrator with a primary focus on helping library workers respond effectively to the complex challenges of serving the public while also prioritizing their own well-being and supporting one another in the workplace. She specializes in addressing the needs of individuals experiencing mental health challenges, substance use, homelessness, poverty, and trauma, and in equipping staff with practical, trauma-informed strategies to navigate these interactions with confidence and care.

As the author of the Data-Driven Decisions Toolkit for Libraries, she has worked with libraries across the globe to implement these practices and offers bespoke training in a variety of settings.

Tarida Anantachai, Director, Talent Management, NC State University Libraries

Tarida Anantachai (she/her) is the Director, Talent Management at the NC State University Libraries, where she oversees the recruitment, hiring, and ongoing support of library faculty and staff; co-leads strategic organizational initiatives; and coordinates the Libraries Fellows Program. Her research and professional interests include topics around belonging; organizational and career development; leadership; and outreach programming.

Losing a strong employee is rarely a surprise. In most cases, the signs were there: uneven workloads, quiet burnout, disengagement, or a sense that the work environment was taking more than it was giving. The challenge is that these patterns are often hard to see clearly while you’re in them, and even harder to interrupt once they’ve taken hold.

This course takes a practical, systems-based look at why retention breaks down and what leaders can do differently. You’ll work through how burnout develops, how trust erodes, and how workload and expectations shape whether people stay or leave. From there, you’ll build concrete strategies to rebalance work, support disengaged staff, and create structures that make staying more realistic over time. The goal is not just to react better when someone is struggling, but to create a workplace where fewer people reach that point in the first place.

SESSIONS AND PRICING

This course begins with a live online session. If you can’t attend in real time, you will receive access to the recording, along with the full workshop materials.

COURSE FORMAT

This is a blended course that starts with a live 1.5-hour session and continues with a 4-module, self-paced workshop you can complete on your own schedule.

EXPECTED TIME COMMITMENT

This course is designed to take approximately 16 hours to complete in total. That includes the live session and the four self-paced modules. Because the workshop portion is self-paced, you can move through it as quickly or gradually as your schedule allows.

COURSE ACCESS

You will have access to the live session recording and all course materials for six months after the course start date, or for six months from your enrollment date if you register after the course begins.

CREDIT & CERTIFICATE

You will receive 16 professional development credit hours and a Library Journal certificate of completion.