Workforce issues continue to be top of mind for healthcare leaders. Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Patrick Ryan, CEO of Press Ganey, and Thomas Lee, CMO at Press Ganey, outline what makes healthcare workers stay in their jobs.

What makes healthcare workers stay in their jobs

According to data Ryan and Lee have gathered in their research on thousands of physicians, nurses, and other providers in the United States, pride in their work and loyalty to their colleagues provided the strongest correlations to a person's readiness to stay at their organization.

While competitive pay and support options are essential to recruiting workers, "organizational culture, including a commitment to excellence, is what makes them stay," Ryan and Lee write.

Ryan and Lee analyzed the drivers of loyalty among 410,000 healthcare employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, looking at the factors that most correlated with employees expressing strong agreement with the statements "I would stay with this organization if offered a similar position elsewhere" and "I would like to be working at this organization three years from now." They found that both metrics had declined nationwide between 2020 and 2022.

But they also found that leadership is exceptionally important to retain workers, both at the C-suite level and at the frontline level "where managers really determine how organizational culture feels for employees."

Specifically, Ryan and Lee found that for all types of healthcare employees, their organization's commitment to quality and patient-centered care was one of the most important factors driving their likelihood to stay. When employees gave low ratings on those issues, they were more than six times as likely to say they were preparing to leave the company.

Commentary

One hospital executive told Ryan and Lee those findings made "perfect sense."

"When patients feel mistreated, they don't yell at the doctor very often; they take it out on the clerks and security guards," the executive said. "But when patients have a great experience, the clerks and security guards get to bask in the glow — and that makes them want to stay."

Meanwhile, Ryan and Lee found the top factors among physicians that correlated with their likelihood to stay with their organization were whether the liked their work, felt their organization was making good use of their skills, and the organizational culture.

For example, Ryan and Lee found that if physicians felt their organization did not have an inclusive culture, their risk of considering leaving increased by 5.5 times.

What this means for healthcare leaders

Ryan and Lee write that their findings show that healthcare leaders need to "listen carefully to grasp what issues are causing employees' pain and fear and try to address them" while also listening "to understand their employees' hopes for what their work means to them and reinforce the aspirations that brought their employees to healthcare to begin with."

For leaders to be able to do that, they have to "be clear about their values, their commitment to safety, the reduction of suffering, and a culture of respect and inclusion," Ryan and Lee write. "They must prove their authenticity by committing to measuring how things are going on these issues, being transparent with the findings, and using them to improve. The result will be greater workforce loyalty and resilience, which will translate to better performance of all types." (Ryan/Lee, Harvard Business Review, 3/2)