Medical Staffing - 7 Tips for Keeping Your Healthcare Employees Happy

Employee turnover is expensive and frustrating in any industry. However, problems with medical staffing can impact patients and cause them to have a negative opinion about your healthcare practice.

One key to retaining healthcare employees is to keep them happy. Sure, good pay helps, but there is so much more to keeping healthcare employees happy enough to stick around.

Why You Should Care About Keeping Your Healthcare Employees Happy

There are a variety of reasons you should care about keeping your healthcare employees happy. Here are just a couple:

• Replacing employees is expensive. Replacing employees who quit can cost anywhere from 6-9 months of the past employee’s salary up to 150% of their salary. Those costs add up quickly if you can’t retain your staff.
• Fewer employees = increased workload. An overworked staff is more likely to become burned out and quit, causing a domino effect. Overworked and understaffed healthcare workers also impact patient care in a very real way.

Offer Competitive Pay and Benefits

The most obvious solution for keeping your healthcare employees happy is to offer competitive pay and benefits. The fewer places your employees can go and get a raise, the more likely they are to stay with you.

Make sure you don’t focus too much on the pay and neglect the benefits. Occasionally, excellent benefits can make up for a less-than-stellar salary.

Have a Good Work Culture

Do everything you can to make everybody happy to come to work every day. Work culture can spread like wildfire – for the best or the worst. Encourage smiling and good moods, and be an example of how you want your employees to act.

Show Your Appreciation

One common reason that people quit their jobs is that they feel unappreciated. Make it a point to tell your employees every day how much you appreciate them. Recognize them on their birthdays, give them small gifts for going above and beyond in their job, and never ignore an opportunity to show an employee your appreciation and gratitude for their hard work.

Listen and Offer Support

What problems are your healthcare employees struggling with? It may be personal or professional problems.

Offer support when you can. Is there something you can do in the workplace to address their issues? This is especially important if you have multiple employees with the same complaint.

Even if you can’t offer a solution, make it clear that you have heard your employee’s problem. Active listening can have a big impact on showing your employees that you value them.

Empower Your Staff

Do your healthcare employees need to get your approval for every little decision? Empowering your staff to make some decisions on their own can help them feel valued.

Make Sure You Have Enough Staff

Understaffing is one of the greatest problems in healthcare. Being understaffed adds a lot of stress to the employees who stick around. Fill open positions as quickly as you can, and focus on keeping your current employees happy so they’re less likely to quit.

Did you know you can use a medical staffing agency to get help in a hurry? That can be one place to turn to prevent chronic understaffing.

Limit Overtime

This is difficult, but important. More understaffing can lead to more overtime, which leads to burned-out employees. Those burned-out employees quit, causing more understaffing, and the cycle continues.

Do everything you can to limit overtime. Even if your healthcare employees work overtime willingly because they want the money, it’s still best to set limits.

The best way to limit overtime is to keep your employees happy and reduce turnover.

As you can see, keeping your employees happy is part of a larger circle. Happy employees stick around longer, and fewer employees quitting help contribute to happier employees. Anything you can do to keep your healthcare employees happy will only help your practice in the long run.

Funding Medical Staffing

Do you need help with funding to support your medical staffing needs? Having enough employees and keeping them happy can pay off down the road. However, it can be expensive at first.

First Union Lending is here to help. With 9 different loan options, they’re sure to have the right one to help you fund your medical staffing needs. Our lending experts are happy to help you find the right loan types.

It’s easy to get started with First Union. Simply click here or call 863-825-5626 to talk to one of our financial experts.

Applying for a loan won’t impact your credit, and your loan could be approved as soon as today.

Get the loan you need for your medical staffing needs now. Don’t get stuck in a vicious cycle where unhappy employees quit and create more unhappy employees.