Since the pandemic, the nursing shortage has been front and center as a major hurdle for healthcare organizations. Competition is fierce, and it’s often difficult to stay ahead of the “other guy”.Burnout has never received so much attention; endless think-tank strategies are addressing recruiting nursing candidates, and contracting travel nurses is a subject of much debate in administrative offices throughout the country. But, throughout all of the strategizing and debating, two questions aren’t examined with enough urgency: why do nurses leave, and why do they stay?
When Nurses Leave
In its most recent study, the website Nurses.org examined turnover rates among nurses. Their findings are eye-opening at the very least, and panic-inducing for many healthcare organizations. They found a whopping 50% of nurses leave within the first two years post-hire. Nearly 24% of those nurses walk away from their new jobs within the first 12 months.
What are the primary factors contributing to these alarming rates? A set of challenges that foster a reconsideration of their career:
- Stress: Many nurses experience intense stress in the first few months of starting their career. Lack of proper onboarding, mentoring, and communication with leadership can cause nurses to feel as though they’re working “without a net”, leading to stress-filled shifts and burnout.
- Scheduling: The new hire typically gets the bottom pick of shifts. If they don’t anticipate a disruption to their schedule, they may become resentful of their workplace and leave for a job that doesn’t impact their work-life balance in such a disruptive way.
- Not Feeling Like Part of the Team: Everyone wants to belong, and nurses in the workplace are no different. Peer support in the first year in a clinical setting can foster a sense of belonging as a team member. Otherwise, some nurses feel out of the loop and are likely to leave.
- Poor Workplace Culture: When the workplace culture makes nurses feel disrespected, unseen, and unheard, it creates a lack of trust. Similarly, when demands like mandatory overtime, covering for no-shows after working a shift, and routinely not approving PTO, nurses feel powerless and won’t just walk out the door; they’ll run.
A Deeper Dive into What Nurses Tell Us
For decades, the prevailing theory on nurse retention focused on compensation. “Pay them enough, and they will stay.” However, the experience of working for a healthcare organization is much more nuanced.
Obviously, what you pay your nurses does matter. If your nursing staff can’t pay their bills, they’ll move on to a job that offers more money. But the primary driver of whether nurses stay long-term isn’t based on salary alone. Healthcare organizations that believe throwing more money at staff as a means of retaining quality nurses are really missing the point of the real reason nurses stay.
Workplace Values that Go Beyond Dollar Signs
As touched on above, studies consistently show that, yes, the money matters, but four factors share nearly equal weight. They are mitigating stress that causes burnout, fostering meaningful relationships, feeling seen, and having a sense of control.
Emotional Well-Being
When healthcare organizations do their best to prevent stress from building to the point of burnout, they not only provide their nurses support for their emotional well-being, but they also demonstrate that they respect the individual nurse and care about them. This alone goes a long way toward a workplace culture that values the whole individual rather than someone qualified to work a shift.
A Tight-Knit Team
Fostering meaningful relationships means creating a team that’s supportive and can work cohesively together. Healthcare facilities are often highly charged and high-pressure environments. When nurses work together, they often form bonds strong enough that they become one another’s anchor when emotions become intense. Additionally, colleagues, nurse managers, and coworkers who listen and offer support are often sounding boards for one another. A meaningful team relationship means a nurse is more likely to want to stay long-term.
Acknowledgement from Leadership
Feeling seen in the workplace tends to be underestimated by healthcare organizations and their facilities. It doesn’t mean having their picture in the employee hall of fame or making grand gestures. To be seen simply requires managers and leadership who consistently notice when someone is struggling, or who recognize excellence in patient care. A workplace culture that consistently acknowledges that the work their nursing staff performs day in and day out is meaningful and matters knows how to retain their nursing staff.
Professional Control
Ensuring your nurses have some agency over their professional lives provides a sense of control. What does that look like to the healthcare organization? Allowing nurses to have input that’s respected when it comes to patient care. After all, they are at the bedside typically more than any other care team members. Honoring scheduling requests and giving your nurses the ability to escalate concerns without dismissing them out of hand also underscores a sense of control for your nurses.
None of these insights are earth-shattering. Honestly, it’s all pretty much common sense. But surprisingly, when retention becomes an issue, most healthcare facilities fail to review their policies and protocols for employees regarding these four areas.
Can Staffing Partners Help?
With everything we now know about the real reason nurses stay, it’s easy to see how staffing partners can help. In fact, it’s surprising more healthcare organizations aren’t partnering with staffing agencies to help retain their permanent staff.
The partnership between staffing agencies and healthcare organizations goes much deeper than simply filling a gap. Your staffing partner understands that the fundamental role of the staffing agency is to support the integrity of your healthcare organization.
At BOS Medical Staffing we view our role as the partner you need to enable retention. Here’s how:
We Prioritize Consistency Over Convenience
As a high-quality staffing partner, we get that consistently placing the same nurses in the same facilities underscores your workplace culture and demonstrates your dedication to the team. A nurse who has worked with your Electronic Health Records system before, who knows the protocols, recognizes the culture, and perhaps even has a relationship with the staff, can walk right into their role. For your permanent staff, this continuity reduces the burden of onboarding and orientation.
Our Nurses Go Beyond Their Credentials
We don’t just match credentials to your open shifts or gaps in coverage. We find the best person to match your workplace culture. Do you need someone who can work in a fast-paced environment? A self-starter who doesn’t need hand-holding? Or someone who prefers collaboration? Our large pool of available nurses to fill your staffing needs means a variety of cultural fits for your workplace.
Transparency in Communicating with Administrative Staff
A partnership between a healthcare organization and a staffing agency is like any other working relationship. If there isn’t transparency or clear communication between the two parties, problems soon surface. A nurse who struggles to acclimate or brings tension to the team is a mismatch that has to be corrected. Uncovering these types of situations early and working to correct them is what sets a dynamic staffing agency like BOS apart. We want your trust as well as your partnership.
We Support Your Internal Flexibility
We work with you to build and manage your internal resources while also helping with external placement. Things like per diem programs, cross-training, and helping create a float pool provide more flexibility while we also work to fill gaps in staffing as needed. When your nursing staff feels more control over their scheduling, it addresses one of the core issues in retention.
Feedback and Accountability
Retention data isn’t simply an HR metric, nor is it an HR issue. Nursing retention ultimately reflects the integrity and success of your healthcare organization, your dedication to patient care, and your reputation as a dedicated place to work. We bring the feedback that many facilities need, those factors that they wouldn’t normally see or hear about from their permanent nursing staff. This information provides healthcare organizations with the ability to be accountable and make better staffing decisions.
Why Healthcare Organizations Can’t Afford to Get It Wrong
Staffing partners don’t just help your facilities operate efficiently and within compliance; we keep your bottom line in mind, too. Recruiting, hiring, interviewing, and onboarding are costly endeavors, especially with nearly 24% of those new hires walking out the door within a year. And that doesn’t take your facility’s reputation into account. When patient care suffers, so does your reputation.
Another problem borne of poor retention is the impact on the remaining staff. They notice. They take on the additional workload and watch as administrative and leadership staff scramble to cover the shifts left open. Thus begins a vicious cycle; staff leave, additional work is forced on remaining staff, stress begins to build, and more staff leave. You need a staffing partner to help address the open shifts and find ways to prevent a mass exodus.
How Staffing Partners Help You Get it Right
Your staffing partner must be seen as a tool that protects your permanent nurses. One that you engage because you respect them. Your staffing partner provides nurses when there is a shortage due to a census spike, medical leave, or vacation season. These nurses are here to support your permanent staff, not undermine or take over.
Listen to your nurses when they express concerns regarding flexible scheduling, stress from feeling overworked, or control over their careers. Help them feel seen and understood when they bring up short staffing or mandatory overtime. Let them know you understand and that you are working with a staffing partner to help them maintain a sustainable workload.
This shows your staff that their voice is heard and their concerns are valid. By letting your nursing staff share their concerns and addressing them, your staff feels slightly more invested. That’s good news for everyone, as nurses who feel invested in the company and like their concerns matter are more likely to stay long-term.
What it All Means
The real reason nurses stay is that they feel a sense of control, a bond with their colleagues, that they are seen and heard, and, ultimately, genuinely valued. But remember, while a staffing partner helps you slow the flow of nurses out the door, it isn’t the entire solution.
BOS Medical Staffing removes many of the conditions that lead to nurses leaving. Chronic understaffing, workloads that simply are not sustainable, and the constant interruption to the team due to onboarding new nurses cause strife and strain to an already overworked nursing staff.
As your staffing partner, we aren’t simply a patch on a leaking tire. We provide enough time so that leadership can do the work they need to reverse the trend. Find out what is causing your nurses to leave and work on that. Build the kind of workplace culture that demonstrates respect for the hard and meaningful work your nurses do every day. Give them a real reason to stay long-term.
A Staffing Partner that Brings Real Results
A staffing partner like BOS Medical Staffing provides your healthcare organization the breathing room it needs to strategize and focus on what you can change to help retain your nursing staff. We’re also experts in HR and helping you build an effective long-term retention culture.
Let us help you. Please reach out to the experts at BOS Medical Staffing for real, holistic results.
