It isn’t news that entry-level hiring in 2024 is difficult. Healthcare systems need valuable non-clinical workers to fill positions like CNAs, environmental, nutrition, patient services, aides and tech roles. Workers are expecting starting wages that are high. Then once they are trained could jump ship to a better paying job in a competitor hospital, or to hospitality or retail sectors with similar job skills required. The cost of turnover is high. How can health systems do a better job keeping these crucial staff?
Lower skilled workers, especially younger ones, may have had a few dead-end jobs that have left them unaware that career advancement is possible. What your health system may envision as a training period that could lead to a long-term relationship, workers may see it as just the same old thing. A career ladder for the employer can be a mystery to a young employee. Make it clear that you see a long-term relationship to keep workers from leaving prematurely.
If employers want talented employees to stick around, they should strive to know their goals and challenges, and help employees overcome them. Organizations can gather the necessary information for these initiatives through one-on-one discussions, surveys, or assessments. Then, after learning about their employee pool, create a plan of action for implementing new programs that directly address goals.
Catalyst Learning’s CareerCare® is a program that helps frontline workers and their HR leads to identify career paths and assess workers behavioral and aptitude skills for better roles. Using CareerCare as an assessment tool helps communicate opportunities available at your system and unlocks worker potential. It offers personalized job recommendations and career options. This assessment helps employees prepare for a chosen career with a comprehensive career roadmap, and helps address obstacles, finds learning modules needed, and outlines goals to progress.
Manage for Retention – Coaching Managers, Not Bosses
Leadership teams should be coaches to employees, and work to uplift them through challenges and recognize strengths. Providing recognition where it’s due decreases “feelings of low engagement” that can lead to turnover. Recognizing the successes of employees strengthens their confidence and ability to work through challenges as they look forward to a possible reward and the recognition of their peers.
Finding a manager that is great at coaching isn’t as easy as you might think, it may not be a natural talent. Managers could think they’re coaching when they are just directing or telling an associate what to do. To better retain frontline employees, consider coaching training for your managers. Let these coach-managers know that employees may do well with functional on-the-job skills, but they could be coaches on better communication or time management for example. Teach managers to assist employees with their own goal setting, listening, questioning, showing empathy, and giving feedback.
Explain and Communicate Expectations
Every workplace has both formal and informal rules around expectations and on-job behaviors. Sometimes employees grasp these rules by following more tenured co-workers and observing on their first days on the job. Some rules may seem self-evident to managers and supervisors, but workers may not quickly grasp them. For example, do not use cell phones while working or near patients or their families. To better retain workers who do not want to get in trouble at work, clearly communicate that it is rude to check cell phones in patient areas or while working. Explain why it makes sense to stay off phones instead of “just do it.”
Managers should focus on keeping talent within the organization, and not just on their specific team. Harvard Business Review explains that “the people managers most want to retain” on their immediate team “feel constrained and become more likely to leave,” risking the performance of the team and organization as a whole [3]. To combat this risk, managers should focus career conversations on progression, not just promotion. HBR explains “managers play an important role in prompting employees to have career conversations,” and therefore should be making career exploration and experimentation easy to attain [4]. This practice may include employees periodically swapping roles for a day, then sharing their experiences post experiment.
Assign New Hires a Mentor
New employees will learn about work culture as they go, but a tenured work mentor can help prepare young employees, and help you retain them. Mentors can help with employee integration and help adapt them to the workplace. If lower paid employees are matched with mentors that worked their way up in your system, it can help with envisioning themselves growing and advancing at your health system. A mentor may be able to identify with challenges an employee may face and show how they themselves overcame that challenge.
Conclusion
Successful retention programs can help healthcare organizations to create fair and equitable opportunities, and retain employees. Your dietary, housekeeping, admissions staff, and aides/techs are imperative to the operations of the health system. Building a culture where employees want to come to work will not happen overnight, but investing in retention programs and practices with the staff that interacts with your patients will pay off.
“15 Employee Retention Strategies to Help You Be a Magnet for Talent,” Quantum Workplace, September 4, 2023. Kristin Ryba.
“Recruitment and Retention in Health Care,” Columbia Southern University, January 22, 2022.
“Tips on Employee Retention,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“The Rise of Corporate Wellness to Support Employee Retention,” Forbes, November 4, 2022. Victoria Franca.
“How to Recognize When It’s Time for an Employee to Move On,” Forbes, October 27, 2022. Steve Haase.
Did his original have an HBR reference?