In an industry that revolves around the care of others, the well-being and satisfaction of healthcare workers often fall by the wayside.
With employee turnover rates on the rise, it’s important for healthcare leaders and administrators to consider the needs of healthcare workers to prevent burnout and job dissatisfaction. Shortages of qualified healthcare employees linger following the COVID-19 pandemic. These changes to the labor market make healthcare employee retention a more pressing issue than ever before.
Understanding and responding to the conditions that lead to employee turnover in the healthcare industries is one easy way to ensure staff members are successful and happy.
Factors of employee retention in healthcare industry
There are many variables and circumstances that affect employee retention in healthcare and as a result employee turnover rate in the healthcare industry. However, here are the three most common factors affecting employee retention in healthcare. Luckily, these problems come with solutions, too.
How professional development opportunities affect healthcare staff retention
Professional development opportunities are defined as “chances to expand or refine professional knowledge or skills, learn something new or deepen existing knowledge.” These opportunities significantly contribute to an employee's job satisfaction.
Likewise, if professional development opportunities are few and far between or poorly implemented, it can lead to high rates of dissatisfaction.
A lack of development opportunities can lead to feelings of stagnation, frustration and eventually disengagement at work. This in turn can lead to a variety of negative outcomes including burnout and increased employee turnover rates.
Experts agree that professional development opportunities allow healthcare workers to see both potential for career advancement and become more competent in their existing roles. In the long run, it offers healthcare systems a qualified candidate pool to work with, while developing competencies that ultimately make employees more productive.
This, in turn, leads to reduced burnout, fewer medical errors and higher patient satisfaction, too.
Unclear performance expectations and staff retention in healthcare
Communication breakdowns occur relatively frequently in healthcare, both between leaders and their teams and among team members. It can lead to a lack of clarity surrounding day-to-day tasks like patient intake, care procedures or billing and aftercare.
Combined, these factors lead to staff inefficiencies and poor performance. If these conditions are consistently present amongst staff members, it can lead to frustration and resentment, a recipe for low morale and potential disengagement from the workplace. Not only this, but it can impact patient outcomes and satisfaction.
When staff members feel unequipped to perform and are unsupported, engagement decreases with spikes in turnover soon to follow.
Amongst other factors, clear communication that offers consistent guidance is a crucial part of creating an effective healthcare employee retention program. It can ease the tension of occasional uncertainty and makes it that much easier to implement new procedures. Making a direct line of communication readily available boosts morale, too.
Simple strategies for enhanced communication, like signposting, are easy ways to reduce turnover rates and improve staff retention in healthcare establishments. It can increase competencies and can help make patients happier and healthier.
Lack of reward and recognition and employee retention in healthcare
It’s an unfortunate truth that burnout is prevalent in the healthcare industry.
Between caring for patients in fast-paced, high-stress environments and handling administrative tasks, it’s common that healthcare employees’ feelings are an afterthought.
These challenges aren’t insignificant, they can add to feelings of everyday stress and frustration, especially when hard work goes unnoticed. Healthcare professionals who do not feel their hard work is appreciated have low morale, which often turns into disengagement.
Recognition is important, even if it involves non-monetary rewards. It can encourage staff members and create a team culture. Research shows that these two factors can reduce healthcare employee turnover rates and other factors that impact performance, like absenteeism.
How to increase employee retention in healthcare with digital signage
The screens in healthcare offices and hospitals are invaluable tools leaders and administrators can use to overcome industry barriers and increase healthcare staff retention. Easy to set up and use, screens equipped with the right software can transform how space is used to keep healthcare employees engaged.
Using employee recognition and satisfaction surveys to improve employee retention in healthcare
Creating opportunities for feedback shows healthcare staff that communication is not just top-down. This not only offers space for staff members to develop a sense of agency but expresses an interest in hearing out their needs as well.
Digital signage makes it easy to make this an ongoing and consistent practice in your office or clinic. UPshow Connect, for example, features an integrated QR code generator that makes surveys accessible right from a smart device. It’s an effortless way to create opportunities for staff to share their experiences anonymously, too.
This technology is also a useful tool for recognition purposes.
Shared digital surveys can be used to collect patient feedback, an excellent opportunity to celebrate healthcare workers’ dedication to patient care. UPshow’s in-app Canva integration makes it easy to incorporate this information in a unique display that recognizes each of your employees.
With dozens of free, customizable templates, your office can use screens to recognize all of your staff members for their performance, on special occasions and to celebrate milestones.
These simple practices can create an environment of appreciation and open communication, all with just a screen and robust signage software.
Better communication can reduce employee turnover rate in healthcare industry
UPshow is designed to effortlessly integrate with the screens in your office.
Whether it’s at nurses' stations or in a breakroom, you can use UPshow to make communication easy and accessible for all of your staff members.
Keep your staff up to date on procedures and processes that are necessary parts of patient care. It’s an easy way to bolster your training practices, making it possible to share a broad range of communication tools including videos and other graphics. This also makes it easy to track training completion and increase operational task completion.
This can streamline employee learning on the job and share other pertinent information, like opportunities for professional development and human resource announcements. Content scheduling makes it easy to share relevant information for each shift so that no one skips a beat.
Making this information easily accessible reduces the stress of recalling new processes as they are being implemented, can make staff more competent and can cut down on miscommunication.
Use UPshow to put your retention strategies for healthcare in place
When it comes to digital signage solutions that help healthcare systems succeed, there's only one you can trust. You need the right solution to put in place your recruitment and retention strategies in healthcare.
UPshow is the digital signage solution trusted by healthcare leaders to create robust content that is easy to deploy. It’s easy to create and share announcements, recognize employees and make staff learning an ongoing process. Want to learn more about how UPshow can help you reduce turnover rates and boost your healthcare employee retention? Schedule a free demo today!
