Employee retention is a concern in every industry because employee turnover is costly and disruptive for organizations, teams, and clients. According to a report compiled by Nursing Solutions, Inc., the turnover rate in hospitals right now is 16.2%, with the average cost of turnover for a bedside RN ranging from $38,900 to $59,700, costing hospitals an average of $5.13M to $7.86M each year. When you consider that each percent change in turnover will cost or save a hospital $410,500 annually, it’s clear that employee retention strategies in healthcare are worthy of serious consideration.

However, the healthcare industry as a whole is not sufficiently addressing employee retention. The same report indicates that 85.7% of hospitals see employee retention as a key strategic imperative, but only 43.4% have a formal retention strategy. Additionally, a Leaders for Today survey showed that 37% of healthcare professionals plan to leave their current hospital within the next two years, and 68.6% plan to leave within five years, reinforcing the seriousness of this continuing problem.

5 Employee Retention Strategies in Healthcare

That being said, addressing employee retention with an ongoing strategy can help reduce turnover, increase patient satisfaction, and improve the overall experience of your employees. Consider these five approaches as you develop or update your retention strategy.

1. Improve Engagement

Low employee engagement in the healthcare industry can be the result of many factors, including unpredictable schedules, excessive overtime, heavy workloads, and a lack of flexibility in the workplace. Though some of these contributing factors may be unavoidable, leadership has the power to play a role in improving hospital staff engagement. Some examples of specific actions leadership can take include:

• Recognizing excellence in patient care
• Celebrating teamwork
• Conducting surveys to learn about the most pressing issues to employees
• Taking action on the results of the surveys
• Doing informal check-ins with staff
• Communicating and managing change effectively and in a timely manner

2. Foster Teamwork and Communication

Teamwork among healthcare workers is an essential element in creating a positive patient experience. Rarely do individual healthcare providers deliver service entirely on their own. Most of the time they operate in teams, and providing excellent patient service requires having the skills to do this effectively. Developing communication skills among team members is essential for reducing errors, resolving conflicts, and creating clarity around task assignments. Good communication between leadership and teams is also important. When leadership is able to clearly communicate expectations and organizational goals, teams are better able to prioritize tasks and understand how their roles fit into the larger hospital strategy. Clear lines of communication also give employees points of contact, where they know they can get answers to their questions.

3. Provide Competitive Compensation

Retaining good employees requires maintaining job satisfaction and engagement among your staff, and compensation is a primary driver in this area. As the healthcare industry continues to grow and the demand for quality employees increases, competitive salaries, bonuses, and other benefits are becoming more important for staff retention.  Given the high cost of turnover, it is the responsibility of leadership to weigh it against the cost of competitive compensation.

4. Give Recognition Where Recognition Is Due

In addition to competitive compensation, there are other ways to reward healthcare professionals for the valuable work they do. Although they may receive positive feedback from patients, it’s also important for them to feel appreciated by their leaders and peers. Ideas for recognizing good work include:

• Annual recognition dinners
• Awards for exceptional service
• Extra time off
• “Shout-outs” or other informal but public communications that recognize exceptional efforts and explain why they are worthy of recognition

Reward and recognition can help drive engagement and contribute to better staff retention. However, rewards can only go so far, especially when an employee feels that they are already compensated appropriately and performing at their highest level. Healthcare professionals want to feel that they are making a difference. For many, this is why they chose this particular career path. Recognizing healthcare staff for their contributions to the patient experience and the organizational goals can go a long way toward keeping them engaged and motivated.

5. Invest in Education and Continual Learning

Ongoing education and professional development can help healthcare professionals improve both their technical and people skills, both of which are essential for providing an exceptional patient experience, improving productivity, and increasing employee satisfaction. Here are two ways to promote continual learning at your organization:

1. Demonstrate a clear growth path: According to the Leaders for Today survey, the lowest-ranked parameter for workplace satisfaction is having the opportunity for career advancement. Having an employee development plan will help keep valuable staff engaged with your organization because they know there will be opportunities for growth in their future.
2. Provide training opportunities: The second-lowest-ranked parameter is having the opportunity to learn and develop new skills. Having a training program in place ensures that employees are being given the tools to help them achieve their career goals, improve the patient experience, and support the organization as a whole.

Healthcare employee retention is a significant challenge to the industry, and employee turnover is not good for anyone involved. It is expensive for organizations, worrying for employees who want a stable work environment, and does not create a positive environment for patients. Addressing some of the largest gaps with these five recommended strategies can help your hospital or healthcare organization reduce employee turnover and attract new, qualified candidates, because your employees, current and potential, will feel valued and excited about being part of the organization. It’s also important to include all employees in these opportunities—encourage everyone in the organization equally to seek improvement opportunities, and ensure they know they have your support.

Even with the right strategy, the necessary budget, and the most efficient systems in place, achieving the desired results comes down to a company’s most important resource: people. Keeping a team engaged and excited about their work can be a challenge for leadership at every level, which is why having a motivation strategy is so important.

Even when people are passionate about their work, it’s easy to get bogged down in the daily grind and lose motivation. Understanding why individuals lose motivation and how to overcome those hurdles will help you develop a motivation strategy that keeps employees enthusiastic and engaged. Use these six strategies to inspire your team to go the extra mile.

1. Communicate the “why”

Understanding what is required to complete a certain task or project is just part of the equation. In order for employees to stay motivated, they must also understand why they are doing it. When leaders clearly communicate the overall vision and keep it at the forefront through consistent communication, employees will have a deeper appreciation for the work they are being asked to do. Even the most mundane task can take on new importance when the reasons behind it are understood and embraced.

2. Create a culture of collaboration

People are much more motivated to complete a task or project if they feel that they have some ownership of it. One way to accomplish this is by inviting participation through a culture of collaboration. When employees know that their ideas and opinions are welcome, expected, and heard, they will become more engaged. Individuals who are able to provide input in the earlier stages of development and throughout the course of a project are more likely to be motivated to see it through to the end and do their best work because they have a sense of ownership and pride in the outcomes.

3. Show your appreciation

Although rewards and incentives can be great motivators, sometimes a few words of gratitude can have a much deeper and longer-lasting impact. Individuals want to know that their efforts are appreciated. When leadership acknowledges their accomplishments, both publicly and privately, this genuine praise can go a long way. Don’t wait until a project is finished to show your gratitude and give credit. Acknowledge the late nights, clever ideas, and other positive moments as they happen.

4. Set challenging but realistic goals

Give teams a challenge that will help them grow as individuals and as a team, offering people an opportunity to do work that extends beyond what they have always done. The occasional special project or urgent push to meet a deadline can help recharge a team that feels stuck in the daily routine. They might find different ways to work together, discover a new sense of camaraderie, or develop new skills that they can use to improve other projects. Make sure the goal is realistic and achievable so that the experience is motivating and not discouraging.

5. Provide development opportunities

People get excited when they learn something new, especially when it helps them do their jobs better. Provide ongoing training and development opportunities for both teams and individuals that enable people to continually improve and hone their skill sets. When teams learn something new together, it helps them bond and build new connections. When individuals bring new skills back to the team environment, it can lift everybody up.

6. Create a positive working environment

No matter what motivation strategy you execute, if the daily working environment is unpleasant, it’s difficult for people to get excited about going to work. Think about how each employee spends their day. Do they have the opportunity to take a break in a comfortable, welcoming space? How do coworkers treat each other? It’s up to leadership to create the type of working environment that sparks inspiration and keeps people motivated. This means that leadership has to create an inviting workspace and model the types of behaviors that contribute to this type of culture.

Conclusion

These are just a few examples of the many ways you can motivate and inspire your team. Think about strategies that will be most effective for your teams and make a plan for executing them. Some approaches, such as expressing appreciation and gratitude, can be implemented immediately and become part of the culture. Others, such as implementing a training and development program, will take more time to fully execute. Remember that people are your organization’s most valuable resource and that investing in them can provide invaluable returns.

When planning corporate events and meetings, you will quickly find a world of possibilities for almost every aspect of your event – venue, decorations, food, activities, and more. Having so many possibilities can easily cause information overload and make it difficult to make decisions. To help ensure that every decision you make during the event planning process is going to help create a cohesive meeting for attendees, having a theme can be a life saver. Establishing an event theme early on and sticking to it throughout the process has a number of benefits, including:

1. Supports Your Event Message

A theme can be a surprisingly effective way to drive home the message of the event and achieve your stakeholders’ objectives. For example, say that the event is focused on kicking off a long term objective, and the event goal is to inspire employees to look forward to the future so they are making decisions today that support success tomorrow. In this case, a future-themed event would be ideal to highlight the message in a way that is fun for attendees. The elements you weave throughout the day can showcase the long term objective that the organization is striving for, while highlighting the importance of keeping the future state top-of-mind.

2. Creates a Cohesive Attendee Experience

From pre-event communication, to event day, to post-event follow up, a theme will help establish a unique and identifiable brand for your event. The human brain processes information by organizing it into categories, so by using a theme, you provide a cohesive experience that ties everything together for your attendees.

Every element that you choose that supports the theme helps unify the event. Choose an experiential activity that supports the theme, select food that fits with it, even pick transportation that is connected to it somehow. For example: you are hosting a company meeting with an established goal of improving productivity and morale among many departments. You have selected an aquatic theme. To create that cohesion:

• The venue is on the ocean or large body of water
• You have ocean-inspired drinks and dishes
• Your color scheme is a mix of blues that are used throughout pre-event communications, the event website, brochures, and event-day materials
• You have a boat scheduled to bring attendees from the airport to the venue
• The experiential activity you selected to drive the message home shares the aquatic theme and supports the goals you wish to achieve

Because a theme was established, all of these components could be selected throughout the planning process to contribute to a cohesive experience for attendees. Whether the theme you choose is whimsical or serious, it ties everything together and makes the event memorable.

3. Contributes to Engagement and Excitement

The event theme is a great way to generate excitement leading up to the event, and keep them engaged while they are there. You can progressively provide hints for attendees about what the theme is using pre-event communication, getting them excited about what’s in store. Then, they will spend the day looking out for those elements and little details that relate back to the theme, making it an engaging and share-worthy experience.

Gamification is not just a way to make your corporate event agenda more fun – it can be a unique way to bring home the key messages, and build useful skills among your attendees. When it’s done effectively, gamification helps attendees to feel fully immersed in the event experience, while passing on tired tactics that attendees expect, like speakers, icebreakers, magicians, or comedians. If you are thinking about adding gamification to an upcoming corporate event, take the time to consider the components in this article so you can make a plan to effectively and successfully gamify your event.

Conclusion

Coming up with just the right theme that ties into event objectives can be a lot of fun – and once you’ve made that initial decision, it’s a lot easier to decide on all kinds of components of your event. Having a solid theme that ties into the event goals not only makes your life easier, it also results in an event that is fun and engaging for attendees while effectively achieving stakeholder objectives.