Healthcare Talent Retention

Challenge

• A leading healthcare system faced significant challenges with healthcare worker staff retention.
• Prior to 2020, staff turnover was low by industry standards, but it more than doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic waned, turnover decreased, but remained persistently 50% higher than historic levels. The situation was approaching a vicious cycle, and hospital operations were at a critical stage.
• Anecdotal reasons for turnover included high employee workload, low job satisfaction, and competition for talent, but there were no data to support those conclusions. Data-rich analyses, problem synthesis, and solution development was the task at hand.

Solution

• SEI worked with the client to move from hunches to data-driven analysis and quantification of the opportunity. This effort revealed the true drivers of employee departure, which included:
  • Underperforming mid-level management.
  • Troublesome on-boarding process, leading to low-satisfaction first-year experience ratings.
  • Unclear path for employee progression and promotion, leading to career frustration.
  • Poorly perceived workplace culture.
• Built consensus on the true cost of turnover, thereby gaining buy-in on the ROI of improvement.
• Developed corporate employee retention strategy and the key initiatives to address the true key drivers of turnover, which included:
  • Leadership tools, including training programs, career development programs, and rigorous on-boarding programs and data collection.
  • Data tools to track trends and identify trouble areas.
  • Cost-control tools and programs

Impact

• Fiscal year turnover reductions:
  • 90-day: 25% decrease, 1st-year: 16% decrease, Overall: 8% decrease, Nursing: 17% decrease, Tech & Specialty: 7% decrease, 38% decrease in turnover across their most critical departments
• Annual cost savings: >$23M
• Improving job satisfaction scores from employee feedback results
• Built a comprehensive roadmap with milestones for strategy execution for the next 1-3 years
• Anecdotal at time of engagement conclusion, but indications (Glassdoor, recruiters, etc.) that potential employees’ perception of the client’s was improving.