Hospitals, individual practices and health systems cannot serve patients, their families and the community without qualified, caring employees. As our population ages, the supply of health care workers is shrinking as significant numbers of employees retire or reduce their working hours. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a deficit of up to 3.2 million health care workers by 2026, which could jeopardize access to care in urban, rural and suburban communities across the U.S.

Developing an effective employee retention strategy is a challenge that must be addressed, as the shortage of health care workers, including essential non-clinical staff and allied health care professionals, grows. For the second consecutive time in 19 years, personnel shortages at all levels were rated as the top concern for hospital CEOs.

To understand the underlying causes of the health care staffing crisis and possible ways to address it, Ultimate Medical Academy recently commissioned The Allied Health Workforce Retention study, conducted by ACUPOLL® Precision Research, Inc. Respondents included medical billers and coders, accounting clerks, medical scribes, health care information technology (IT) specialists, patient relations coordinators, patient care technicians, patient transporters and lab assistants. The study revealed that health care employers can effectively retain talent by focusing on training and career pathing.

Onboarding Is Just the Beginning

Retaining employees starts from their onboarding. According to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the health care industry leads the country in the number of employees voluntarily quitting, so it’s very important to form a solid working relationship right off the bat.

Training is essential at every stage of the employment cycle — not just onboarding. Training can aid in motivating employees, boosting morale and increasing productivity, career satisfaction and performance toward meeting organizational goals.  Experienced employees are a valuable resource who can provide guidance and support while demonstrating what a career with your organization can look like.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, employees are more likely to be more committed and engaged with an organization when it supports their career development and well-being. Continuous L&D and well-being for health care workers can mean better service and care for patients.

Create a Culture of Learning

Health care workplaces across America need to rethink retention before employees start walking out the door, and this entails taking more strategic and deliberate approaches to training. The Allied Health Workforce Retention study presented five opportunities worth considering, outlined below.

1. Training is key to retaining health care workers. Design and deliver training experiences to improve employees’ skills and capabilities as well as give them opportunities for career advancement. According to the study, 75% of health care workers say they’d stay longer if their employer offered a clear career pathway inside the company. And 80% of millennials and 78% of minorities and workers from underrepresented groups rated this as a top reason to stay.
2. Ongoing is important. Employees surveyed say they’d be more likely to stay if their company offered training based on their function, career interests and level of patient interaction: 54% of workers would like their company to offer certificate programs to help them advance in their field and 49% want training so they can do better/perform at a higher level.
3. Newer employees are interested in a variety of training options. Employees who’ve worked in health care for less than two years are significantly more interested in on-the-job training (50% of new employees versus 37% of workers with two to five years’ experience and 34% of workers with over six years’ experience). Newer employees are often more interested in peer-to-peer learning and mentorship programs compared to seasoned employees (22% versus 15%, respectively).
4. Upskilling helps employees perform better in their current roles. Upskilling can include both soft skills and technical knowledge. Investing in upskilling meets the changing demands of today’s health care workplace by developing a culture of continuous learning.  According to the Society of Human Resource Management, employers can retain employees with opportunities to use new skills and abilities in their role.
5. Reskilling promotes lifelong careers with advancement and new experiences. Reskilling focuses on retraining your present staff to learn new skills in order to perform new roles within the organization. Employees get to perform new tasks with experienced trainers and pick up the necessary skills for later independent applications. With effective reskilling programs, employers can promptly spread relevant knowledge to fit flexible situations based on internal expertise.

While training is essential to any health care employee retention strategy, providing a robust selection of training programs and activities is not enough without ensuring that the right training opportunities are offered to the employees who may be most interested. In addition, even the best training offerings are not effective if employees are not aware of them or able to benefit from them. Communicating the benefits of training can entice employees to stay.

Many employers believe they’re already offering appropriate training or say they would if they had the support. The problem may not be with the training programs, but the articulation of the significance of its benefits.  Employers must communicate what they offer to employees and how they can participate. They must also ensure to fit training into employee work schedules, and clearly communicate the connection between training and career progression.