Currently, the average cost of turnover for a staff RN is $52,350 up from the average cost of $46,100 in 2021. This is the cost that a facility must incur to replace an employee who is no longer with them (source). Healthcare facilities with a high turnover rate risk a loss of profit while reducing this number has positive effects on productivity. Long story short, no one wants costly turnover.
Also, the RN recruitment difficulty index ranges from 61 to 120 days. This means that it can take between two to four months to successfully recruit a registered nurse. This long wait has immeasurable impacts on patient care, nurse shortage challenges, and further perpetuates burnout rates.
In this blog, we provide you a key infographic of the ‘10 Numbers Hospital Administrators Need to Know’ along with the key steps to reduce registered nurse turnover costs.
This infographic enforces the data shared within the introduction of this post and leans into the importance of having a discussion as it relates to costly issues impacting healthcare facilities.
What are the components of turnover cost?
Components of turnover cost include tangible and intangible costs. Tangible turnover cost includes the amount of money and time the company must spend due to the employee leaving. It consists of advertisements for the position and final settlement of previous employees. Also, it includes time spent interviewing, screening, and onboarding new candidates.
Intangible turnover cost includes the effect on productivity and workload of team members due to the departure of a member of their team. This consists of higher production time, delays in product releases, training discrepancies, and a drop in team morale.
Key ways to reduce turnover cost and maximize staff output
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Refine hiring practices :
The selection and screening process of registered nurses can affect your turnover rate. Thus, you must ensure that you do a complete background check on them. This includes their work history, education and certification, and other professional achievements. Also, you must ask questions related to their personal life and what made them switch jobs in the past. By selecting nurses who are more likely to stay long-term, you can minimize employee turnover costs.SkillGigs is a health and talent marketplace that allows you to browse different registered nurse profiles with ease. Here you can choose nurses based on work experience and expected salary. Also, you can schedule interviews, chat with candidates directly and enter contract negotiations. SkillGigs takes care of document credentialing and profile verification for you so that you make the best hire.
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Address employee concerns:
Another reason for high employee turnover is when employees do not feel heard. In a stressful setting, even the best nurses can feel like a failure. Thus, hospitals and healthcare facilities must create an open and safe environment. By doing this, they can encourage nurses to share their concerns. When an employee shares his or her concerns, listen attentively, offer support, and validate their feelings. So, you can show that you have a clear grasp of the situation and can solve their problem. Also, you must follow up after taking immediate action to show that you really care.
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Provide good compensation and timely rewards:
Employee turnover costs remain high when the hard work employees put in goes unrewarded. Thus, hospitals and healthcare facilities today need to be wary of competitors. They are always looking to prize away your best nurses with a higher salary. Thus, good compensation should be the right of all your employees. Additionally, you must reward your best-performing nurses in a timely manner. You can do this by reviewing the monthly achievements of different registered nurses.
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Provide up-skilling opportunities:
Often nurses feel that their work is repetitive, and does not add anything new to their skill set. This realization can make them think about their career growth and look for new opportunities. So, to prevent a high turnover rate, you must identify skills that existing nurses can learn for organizational and individual benefit. Set clear goals for up-skilling initiatives like identifying training resources, developing a training strategy, knowledge-sharing sessions, etc. Performing new tasks based on new learnings can help boost employee satisfaction and reduce the workload on small teams.
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Conduct performance review:
A performance review helps employees understand how well they were able to hit company goals and what they need to improve. Therefore, hospitals and healthcare facilities must plan performance reviews regularly to ensure registered nurses get constant feedback. Also, you can offer constructive feedback by using specific examples to emphasize your points. Be open to what employees say and factor that into the final feedback. Above all, you can summarize the discussion in case you or the employee needs to refer to it again.
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Monitor turnover:
Monitoring turnover is a good practice to know how many nurses left. Also, you must consider the factors which lead to the nurse parting ways with the hospital or healthcare facility. By doing this, you can learn whether it was due to performance, personal reasons, or work environment. If your employee turnover rate is high, then you need to assess your work environment. After the assessment, you must make it more welcoming and supportive toward employees.
Conclusion
Employee turnover costs can significantly affect the working of a hospital or healthcare facility. Thus, you must continuously monitor the condition of their nurses and other employees. By doing this, you are always aware of the ground situation and know what you need to do in periods of stress and high workload.
Apart from providing support to your registered nurses, you must always recruit from a reliable platform. Thus, it can help you reduce turnover costs as you hire qualified candidates who can grow with your hospital or healthcare facility.
How can SkillGigs help?
If you are looking for a trustworthy partner to find the best-registered nurses, SkillGigs can help you. Skill Gigs is a direct sourcing talent marketplace that organizes a candidate’s information in an efficient manner including pay expectations, preferred location, and personal details. Also, the marketplace manages the credentialing of their key documentation, skillsets, and certification.
If the concept of direct sourcing for your facility is new, and you would like to learn more — no worries, it is why we built SkillGigs.com. Contact us to learn more. And get to using SkillGigs by posting your open jobs for free.
