Contract nurses are valuable employees, even though they are part of your non-permanent staff. A contract nurse is a temporary addition to your nursing staff whose services are secured through a contractual arrangement. There’s typically a start and end date to their employment, usually about 13 weeks.
Contract nurses are often referred to as travel nurses or agency nurses. Their value is found in their ability to fill a gap in staff in healthcare facilities, almost instantaneously, so that when your healthcare organization is faced with an urgent staffing need, that need can be resolved seamlessly.
Why Hire Contract Nurses
Although healthcare organizations appreciate contract nurses for their ability to jump in and hit the ground running, there are other instances when your healthcare facility could benefit from contract nurses. In addition to filling immediate gaps, here are some of the primary reasons healthcare organizations hire contract nurses:
- Flexible Staff Adjustments: By incorporating the use of contract nurses, healthcare facilities can scale their staff in either direction, up or down, depending on the patient load. Seasonal demands like cold and flu season are easily resolved with contract nurses. And when unexpected surges occur, you can bring in contract nurses without hiring permanent or long-term employees.
- Fill a Need for Specialized Skills: If you find you need staff to fill in areas such as emergency care, ICU, surgery, wound care, infection control, and geriatrics, and you don’t have adequate time to recruit candidates, interview, and hire contract nurses are the answer.
- Budget Management: Although the hourly rates for contract nurses are typically higher than for your permanent staff, your healthcare organization saves on the long-term costs of benefits such as retirement contributions, paid time off, health insurance, as well as payroll taxes.
- Reduction in Staff Burnout: When you deal with short staffing, high patient volumes, and no-shows, it can really create a strain on your permanent employees. Filling gaps and supplementing your existing staff with contract nurses prevents the stress and strain that leads to burnout among your permanent nursing staff. Contract nurses help reduce turnover rates in your healthcare organization.
- Support in Emergencies: Natural disasters and public health crises can drain in-place healthcare workers, including nurses. Contract nurses provide the critical support necessary to deal with these situations and rapidly deploy to hard-hit areas.
By hiring contract nurses, your healthcare organization can strategically manage those crucial staffing needs while maintaining the highest standards of care for your patients. Contract nurses provide an invaluable service. When you engage a contract nurse through BOS Medical Staffing, you’re ensuring the integrity of your organization and the care of your patients is uninterrupted, come what may.
A Career of Choice
It’s nearly impossible for a healthcare facility to predict when it will need additional nursing staff. Vacancies caused by a sudden resignation, staff illnesses, or family leave can and do place a burden on existing staff. More importantly, it can place your nurse-to-patient ratio in a precarious state. That’s when you need to call on contract nurses.
Adding to the need for loyal contract nurses is the current nursing crisis in the US. Once upon a time, contract nurses were the solution for short staffing, and your permanent staff was central to the operation of your healthcare organization. Now, contract nursing is a career path for many nurses. The freedom, the pay differentials, and the opportunity to expand their experience and develop new skills are much more appealing in this post-COVID era than a permanent job with a benefits package.
Because of all of these factors, and more, healthcare organizations are in a difficult spot. Reliable nurses are critical to your operations. The skill and experience they bring ensure your patients are well-cared for. Their professionalism and dedication to the job are priceless.
The New Way of Staffing
Unfortunately, retaining contract nurses is nearly impossible in the traditional way: by offering them a full-time position. Is there a way to build loyalty with your contract nurses without securing them full-time?
There is! But you will need to employ certain strategies to build that loyalty. The first thing you’ll need to do is shift your mindset and stop seeing your contract nurses as a temporary resource.
These nurses are professionals and should be treated as part of the team, no matter the length of the contract.
By incorporating these strategies, you won’t simply have nurses who work the term of their contract and then leave. You’ll have a nurse who’ll jump at the chance to return to your healthcare organization time and again. They’ll care because you care. They’ll refer their colleagues and go that extra mile because they feel connected.
Strategies to Build Loyalty with Contract Nurses
You need to remember, first and foremost, contract nursing is a deliberate choice and not a “consolation prize” or “less than”. These nurses are just as skilled, knowledgeable, credentialed, and often better experienced than your full-time permanent nurses. Building loyalty means having nurses available who understand how your organization works, need very little hand-holding, and are eager to step in and help when you need them. Here’s how you can build that loyalty.
Respect The Path They Chose
Before you can build the kind of loyalty that you want from your contract nurses, you must identify just what you’re building toward. These nurses are professionals who’ve made a clear choice in regard to their career. They are experienced clinicians and deserve to be treated with all the respect that goes with the job.
Why have they opted for contract work over full-time permanent employment with a healthcare organization? The motivations vary. It could be the higher pay that entices them, or the ability to travel and see different parts of the country. Some want to test out an area before committing to relocate. The flexibility and autonomy that come with contract nursing are appealing to many, especially those with family obligations. And some nurses simply thrive on change. New colleagues, new systems to learn, and diverse patient populations are challenges that these nurses desire.
Get to know where your contract nurses’ motivations lie. Ask them directly why they’ve chosen this path. It isn’t always money. They may have a different reason. Take an interest in the nurse and tailor your onboarding and day-to-day management accordingly.
Onboarding-Start Off on The Right Foot
Of all the things that motivate contract nurses, chaos certainly isn’t one of them. Seemingly small annoyances like a badge that doesn’t work, a login that isn’t set up, or a preceptor who wasn’t aware that a contract nurse was set to arrive, can derail any loyalty strategies before they’re even in place. The communication is loud and clear: “We didn’t prepare for you because you are not a priority.”
Honestly, like any relationship, loyal contract relationships are won or lost within the first 72 hours. If your contract nurse spends their entire first shift chasing down basic access while getting no help, or worse, warily side-eyed by your permanent staff, they’ll look forward to the end of their contract and never return. Worse, they will never advocate for your healthcare organization and may even warn colleagues away from your contracts.
Strong onboarding can cement that loyal relationship from the beginning. Activate system access from the beginning. Make sure the contract nurse has access to electronic medical records, medication administration, and any organization- or facility-specific software from day one. Also, make sure badges work. Inform your staff that the nurse will arrive that day and tell them some basic background information and what duties they’ll be fulfilling. Also, designate a member of your nursing staff to make the new nurse feel welcome, help them adjust, and be available for questions.
If you want to go the extra mile, a written guide that’s specifically tailored to your facility and how you do things is a great way to welcome a new nurse. Include things like certain protocols, common but unwritten rules, and even the location of the supply closet. Give them insight into your workplace culture so they may adapt with ease.
Communicate Transparently and Proactively
While some uncertainty is expected and acceptable in contract nursing, late-in-the-game changes like extending the contract or changing shift schedules can induce anxiety in the most adaptable nurse. Not only does it create confusion, but it also reflects poorly on your organization. You appear disorganized-a real turnoff for a contract nurse.
Communicate contract extensions as soon as possible, preferably as soon as you know about them. If your patient census is expected to remain high two weeks from the end of their term, let your contract nurse know. Even if things change, it’s better to let them see you’re transparently proactive about the situation and not simply stringing them along.
Provide your contract nurse with feedback regarding job performance. These nurses seldom receive meaningful feedback during their contract term, and it means a lot. Knowing they’ve gone above and beyond, in your eyes, means they will likely be eager to return.
Make sure you have some brief, but structured, check-ins with your contract nurse, just as you would with your permanent staff. Find out from your nurse manager how things are going. Is there an area where your contract nurse needs help? What would help them do a better job? This prevents future issues and shows that you respect the job your contract nurse does and you’re looking out for their professional development.
Offer Professional Value
Very often, a nurse chooses this path to hone some skills and broaden their knowledge and experience. Consider where the contract nurse is coming from and what your healthcare organization can offer in terms of professional value. Provide access to continuing education hours or credentialing requirements. Provide training to broaden the scope of their skills and knowledge. Mentorship is another way to forge loyalty with contract nurses.
If you provide some tangible value in the way of education, credentialing, and professional development, you will automatically build loyalty with your contract nurses. They will be only too eager to rejoin your staff the next time you need their help.
Build Your Preferred Roster
To ensure a sense of loyalty with your contract nurses, stop treating them like one-off contractors and begin building a system of preferred contract nurses and staffing agencies. Here’s how.
Implement a preferred nurse program with your contract nurses. Let them know you value them and, when they complete their contract in good standing, they receive priority placement for any future contracts. Also, let them know the next time onboarding will be streamlined as there is no need to repeat the orientation. You could offer a loyalty incentive to your preferred nurses, such as a bonus upon completion of their contract, an increase in housing stipend, or scheduling preferences.
This strategy is two-fold. First, you’re telling the contract nurse that you value them and their return to your organization is worth their while. In building your talent pool, you will have a ready roster of staffing agency contract nurses who can literally hit the floor running. They’ve “been there, done that” and are eager to return.
Respect the Boundaries
As with any healthy relationship, especially a professional one, you must respect the boundaries set by your employee, especially a contract employee. Let the nurse define those boundaries, not simply the contract.
Never pressure the nurse to stay past the term of their contract. They may already be looking forward to their next assignment, and putting pressure on them damages trust. Assuming they are available without regard and treating their exit as a personal betrayal (it happens!) breeds resentment. They will shut down any future contracts with you.
Conversely, a contract nurse who feels respected at the end of the assignment is more likely to come back the next time. Bidding them goodbye with a genuine thank you goes a long way toward building loyalty. This isn’t them abandoning you, but rather the conclusion of a specific term in a professional partnership.
BOS Medical Staffing Builds Loyal Relationships
Building loyalty with contract nurses doesn’t require an offer of full-time employment. It actually requires something much more: genuine respect, an offer of professional investment, communication they can trust, and treatment that’s fair and equitable, no matter how short the term of the contract. Nurses who feel those things will come back eager and ready to do the job.
For more on how loyal contract nurses can improve your healthcare organization without the need for full-time offers, please contact BOS Medical Staffing.
