The healthcare industry is facing a huge challenge: retention. Healthcare workers are burning out faster, retiring sooner, and switching careers more often. According to a 2024 survey done by Statista, 20% of US healthcare workers reported having serious intentions of leaving their profession within the next two years. Offering valuable benefits, reducing workload, providing a structured onboarding process, and offering continued education opportunities can all go a long way in retaining your staff.
With an unbalanced patient-to-staff ratio and work-life balance being pushed to the side, nurses, physicians, and other healthcare professionals are burning out faster and more intensely than ever before. A survey from 2022 shows that nearly 1.7 million people quit their healthcare jobs in that year alone—that’s almost 3% of the healthcare workforce each month.
Experienced staff get burnt out and retire early, leaving the remaining team with heavier workloads, accelerating their burnout, and causing more staff to leave the industry. The longer burnout continues to fester, the more the system implodes.
Those who work in the healthcare industry are bogged down by crushing student debt, high costs of living, and the physical and emotional demands of the job—and their pay just isn’t cutting it, particularly for those in entry-level or rural positions. According to an article by Chief Healthcare Executive, 63% of surveyed nurses said they would reconsider leaving if they received better pay and benefits.
Healthcare professionals face increasing safety concerns during their shifts, including workplace violence, exposure to contagious diseases, and mental health stressors from an increasingly demanding work environment. According to an article by Chief Healthcare Executive, only 47% of surveyed nurses felt their organization valued their health and safety at work. Workplace violence is increasing and dealing with difficult or dangerous patients and families has become an unfortunate reality of the job—leaving many healthcare professionals to make the difficult decision to leave.
Many healthcare professionals feel called to join the industry—and it isn’t so they can sit behind a computer. One study from Science Insights found that physicians spend only about 53% of their time doing face-to-face patient care. Another study from The American Association of Critical- Care Nurses found that nurses spend about 40% of their shift working on documentation. The administrative burden they face leads them to spend less time with patients, and more time doing paperwork—both during their shift, and after they go home. All that, coupled with how they often have no say in policies that affect patient care, leaves more and more healthcare professionals feeling overworked and undervalued.
Reliable leadership is what helps your staff pull through the worst days—but what if your leaders are less reliable? One study found that effective healthcare leaders possess a blend of personal integrity, emotional intelligence, and the ability to inspire and guide diverse teams—qualities that are crucial to creating a positive work environment, improving patient care, and ensuring organizational success.
However, reports from The American Association for Physician Leadership indicate that toxic leaders make up roughly 20-30% of leadership in healthcare organizations. The lack of good leaders can lead to dysfunctional teams, loss of productivity, low morale, and a high burnout rate.
When staff members leave, those remaining are forced to take on additional workloads, causing faster burnout. Once it becomes unbearable, they leave too. The awful cycle then continues, placing the weight on those who choose to stay, and those just entering the healthcare industry.
So, what can you do in the face of all these reasons to leave? These retention strategies can help you boost morale, improve working conditions, and reduce turnover rates at your healthcare or caregiving facility.
Even if your staff loves what they do, they still need to be able to provide for themselves and their families. There’s a strong connection between financial incentives and quality benefits and employee retention. Offer retention bonuses for current employees. Performance-based raises can be a great way to motivate employees, but you should also consider offering quarterly raises or incentive bonuses to keep up with inflation and the cost of living in your area. Other options would be to include sign-up bonuses for new hires or offer competitive overtime rates.
A well-rounded benefits package is another way to increase job satisfaction and entice prospective hires, with one study indicating that 88% of job seekers say that having quality health, dental, and vision insurance is a key factor in influencing their decisions to apply to a new job. Consider other benefits, including paid time off, a 401(k) match, paid family leave, and flexible benefits options.
No matter what benefits you decide to offer, ensure that your employees are aware of all benefits available to them, so that they can make the most of the perks you have to offer.
When your organization is understaffed, it’s costing you—in more ways than one. Understaffing leads to an increase in errors, as well as a decrease in the quality of patient care and safety, and is one of the main factors contributing to burnout for healthcare professionals.
A great way to start is to focus on hiring more staff to help lessen the load, as well as considering outsourcing processes like appointment scheduling or medical billing to new technologies or software programs to get your employees back to doing what they do best: working with patients.
A structured onboarding process that continues to foster safety, transparency, and support beyond their initial training can help with retention. Hospitals with strong support programs retained 86% of new nurses after one year, versus 80% at hospitals with weaker programs. That may not sound like much of a difference, but that adds up to dozens of additional, experienced staff members thereby saving tens of thousands of dollars in replacement costs. Additionally, fostering a culture of support and flexible scheduling may also be an appealing strategy during recruitment.
Supporting your new hires doesn’t end when they finish their onboarding—a strong mentorship program can help guide your new hires through that transition period and measurably improve retention. One study noted by Science Insights found that 91% of mentored nurses stayed in their positions, versus 66% of those without mentors.
Training doesn’t stop once general orientation is complete. Providing continued education, in-services, annual education, and annual skills training to include resources and feedback from hot topics related to safety concerns would help support employees’ concerns.
“Reductions in turnover may be obtained with a loyal leadership team that provides transparent communication and employee support,” says Christina Boyle, Director of Glatfelter Healthcare Risk Control & Education.
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather a starting point for you to find the strategy that works best for your organization. Developing a culture of communication and support can go a long way towards retaining your staff. By better understanding why healthcare employees are leaving, you can work to implement changes that will actually address their needs and concerns.
For more resources and risk management solutions tailored to hospice and palliative care providers, visit Glatfelter Healthcare today.