Today, the senior care, home care, and assisted living communities face many challenges that will not go away any time soon. Of those, staff turnover is a major contributor. Senior care providers face four main obstacles when recruiting, hiring, and retaining skilled and dedicated staff.
1. Wages. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual pay for Nursing Assistants was $28,540 in 2018. For orderlies the median pay was $28,060.
2. Recruiting. The need for these positions will face a 9% increase through 2028. Competition to fill these positions will also increase.
3. The reality is that these jobs are stressful physically and emotionally leading to high burnout rates.
4. Team cohesion. When people work together over time, they develop a sort of symbiotic relationship. They get to know each other’s work ethics, communication styles, and personal and professional preferences. Staff turnover prohibits this bonding.
So, what is a senior care facility, for example, to do?
Team cohesion, while not automatic, is much easier with a retained work force. To be sure, every team needs maintenance; like an effective complaint protocol, personal communication, and tools to prevent, manage, and resolve disputes. But first, the staff needs to be there.
The physically and emotionally challenging aspects of these jobs will most likely not go away. Yet, what can be done is to not add more stress for the staff. They have enough on their minds. This can be done in a variety of ways. One way is to improve the communications among staff, with management, and with patients and their families, who are also stressed. When people are stressed, they tend to make errors in judgement and take things out on others—nurse assistants and orderlies for starters. Improved communication skills can lessen the impact of stressed exchanges.
Stress isn’t only at work, though. Staff members have families and families have their own dynamics, which can be stressful. Providing your staff with external resources to address, reduce, and alleviate these centers of stress can help your retention rates.
This can, in turn, help recruiting. If your facility offers external resources to help with staffs’ families, then that just may be enough to keep them from leaving. The caveat is that the staff must be aware of these resources, how to use them, and then to use them.
Finally, we come to pay. It could work out that the money saved from not having to train new employees can be used to increase wages. And if those external resources can be provided to patients and their families, then that can increase your customer base, which increases your revenue. And that can help increase wage levels.
All of this leads to maintaining a more cohesive and efficient team, which must be maintained, that will enhance your overall bottom line and business.