Traditional onboarding can come across as an administrative checklist; a task that must be done before your nursing staff can fully perform their job with confidence. But, beginning on day one, if your onboarding isn’t supporting your recent hires, then it can work against you and make it difficult to retain that staff.
The nursing shortage is real, and the competition for quality nursing staff is fierce. Healthcare organizations across the country often hire and lose their nursing staff within a year. What causes this revolving door scenario? The belief that the onboarding program offered to new hires is strong enough to retain them. It’s a terrible miscalculation to consider your onboarding program sufficient to keep your nurses engaged, supported, and committed for the long haul.
The primary mistake made by healthcare organizations is in confusing retention, which is culture, with onboarding, a brief period. This is a costly mistake. Between recruiting nurses, salaries, and the cost of training new nurses, along with lost productivity, coverage gaps that pose risks to patient care, and the hit your organization takes to its reputation among the nursing community, the results can be devastating.
Why Onboarding Isn’t Enough
For new hires, a few days of paperwork, review of policies and protocols, and some haphazard and rushed shadowing, all part of the traditional onboarding program, can actually drive turnover. If your nurses feel unseen or insignificant because of mediocre onboarding, they’ll leave. There are three primary reasons onboarding fails:
- Lack of communication between your new hire accepting the job and their first shift.
- Immediate information overload. Hitting your new hire with policies, compliance, and medical records training on day one overwhelms and stresses them out.
- Disconnection and feeling like the process, paperwork, and administrative minutiae take precedence over the actual job. When this is seen as part of the culture, nurses feel isolated and unsupported, working against the healthcare organization’s goal for retaining the new hire.
Retention Begins Day One
Truly engaging with your new nurses, making them feel supported and driving their commitment to stay, relies on culture. Through a supportive culture, beginning with their acceptance of the job, your organization can forge a connection, a relationship, before a nurse steps onto the floor. This is considered the preboarding phase and is a reliable indicator of whether or not a nurse stays with your healthcare organization long term.
Begin with a preboarding window that marks the critical period between accepting the job and the first shift. Employees who receive pertinent information, such as welcome materials, team introductions, parking information, and a map of your facility, before the first day, are more likely to feel part of the team and commit.
Additionally, setting realistic expectations during the interview shapes their vision for the long haul. Once your newly hired nurses grasp your organization as a good fit culturally as well as professionally, they are more likely to see themselves staying there.
Retention Takes Daily Practice
Retention starts on day one, but it needs to continue on day 100, 175, 365, and so on. That type of practice falls on leadership. You must ensure your leadership team is as visible and accessible not only during onboarding but on a random Thursday evening shift in mid-June. This not only establishes communication, but confidence in leadership, which goes a very long way toward job satisfaction.
Also, preceptor/mentee relationships shouldn’t simply end with the closure of onboarding. While it’s hoped that your new hire and their preceptor build a relationship over the onboarding period, it’s better to structure 30-, 60-, 90, and even 120-day check-ins. That way, the preceptor can answer any specific questions as well as address any concerns before they turn into resignation letters.
Workplace Culture: The Heart of Retention
Retaining your newly hired nurses relies on a workplace culture in which they feel seen, heard, and appreciated. New hires shouldn’t simply be tolerated until they “get with the program”, but rather genuinely welcomed and valued for their contributions.
For more on how you can reimagine your onboarding and retention programs, contact BOS Medical Staffing.
