Early-career nurses should be provided with emotional and social support to cope with the high demands of the job. An effective support network will sustain new nurses as they settle into the rigors of the profession. Even the best nursing school cannot fully prepare a new nurse for the diverse, day-to-day challenges that nurses face. New nurses benefit from having a group of peers who can relate to their experience, help with problem solving, suggest strategies for coping, and provide emotional support.

Sample tactics to create a safe and supportive work environment for early-career nurses are outlined below:

Mentorship programs

These unit-based programs pair up a mentor with a group of new nurses for two years. The goal is to ensure staff have effective emotional support to help them cope with their workload.

Monthly cohort debriefs

These monthly sessions allow new nurses to open up about their challenges, celebrate their successes, and learn from each other’s experiences. The goal is to fast-track loyalty by ensuring new nurses have the support of a bonded mentee cohort.

Nursing leaders can help young nurses tap into their ambition, energy, and creativity and help them envision a career path at their organization. Many organizations assume that the first year of employment is too early to begin long-term career pathing conversations. However, nurses today have an unprecedented number of job options. To retain new nurses, leaders must proactively provide career pathing even within the first year on the job.

Sample tactics to create a safe and supportive work environment for early-career nurses are outlined below:

Speed mentoring

Nursing leaders answer questions from frontline staff about their professional experiences and career paths. The goal is to improve millennial retention by exposing early-tenure staff to longer-term career paths within the organization.

On-call career coach

A dedicated career coach meets with staff to help them identify and pursue their career goals. The goal is to improve retention by providing staff with a go-to resource with the time and expertise to support career planning.

Stay interview

This tool helps nursing leaders understand how individual staff members are feeling about their current job. The goal in using it is to better support staff members—and spot potential retention risks.

Stretch opportunities

This tool will help nursing leaders brainstorm opportunities to help staff members develop specific skills and “stretch” beyond their current capabilities. The goal is to use this list as inspiration when working with early-career nurses to build a development plan.

Early-tenure nurses have a lot to learn in their first year on the job. They often benefit from having a range of experiences to help gain confidence and a sense of accomplishment. Nursing leaders can play an important role in fostering skill development and early mastery of some aspects of the role by providing hands-on clinical training, delivering actionable performance feedback, and supporting preceptors more effectively.

Sample tactics to create a safe and supportive work environment for early-career nurses are outlined below:

Nurse residency programs

Nurse residency programs can improve new graduate confidence and competence—and boost retention rates. The goal is to help non-nursing executives understand that the potential benefits of residency programs can outweigh the costs.

Deliver actionable feedback

This tool aims to equip preceptors, managers, and mentors to provide feedback to new nurses in a way that pinpoints specific improvement opportunities while at the same time, bolsters their confidence as new clinicians.

Cross-unit draft day

Managers facilitate nurse transfers between units using quarterly “Draft Day” meetings to review staff preferences, evaluate staff readiness, and establish next steps. The goal is to improve retention by following through on all staff transfer requests while giving managers input regarding who can transfer and when the transfer will take place.

Blended RN roles

Frontline nurses split their time between two units or sites of care; the goal is to enable staff to expand their breadth of experience without altogether leaving their role—or the organization.

Targeted transitions

Leaders follow a system-wide process for internally sourcing and training nurses for new or hard-to-fill specialty positions, while simultaneously backfilling roles with new hires. The goal is to fill key roles with staff looking for growth opportunities while minimizing the strain on managers losing nurses to these roles.

The reality of a competitive labor market is that staff will naturally wonder if the grass is greener elsewhere, so leaders need processes in place to identify and redirect millennials who are thinking about leaving. Equipping managers with the knowledge to identify staff at high risk of leaving and track employee data to identify flight risk can help reverse resignations.

Sample tactics to create a safe and supportive work environment for early-career nurses are outlined below:

30-, 60-, 90-day check-ins

HR regularly emails managers a list of their new hires with upcoming 30-, 60-, and 90-day anniversaries and gives managers specific questions to ask during check-ins; the goal is to help managers identify signs of potential flight risk and intervene before a new hire resigns.

Manager-led flight-risk assessments

HR equips managers with brief tool to assess the presence (or absence) of specific indicators likely to suggest an employee might be considering resignation; the goal is to identify critical staff at high risk of turnover—and proactively intervene to keep them at the organization.

Alumni return campaigns 

Frontline nurses partner with HR to reach out to former employees to share updates from the organization and gauge interest in returning; the goal is to ideally rehire former employees and, at a minimum, maintain relationships with former employees who could be rehired in the future.

Exit interviews

Organization identifies employees who have recently reduced their hours and interviews these staff to assess reasons for the change in hours; the goal is to understand what is driving this decision (because it could be a sign of future turnover) and uncover any trends that could be addressed.