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ASHHRA: 'Jerk Bosses' Derail Nurse Retention Strategies

 |  By John Commins  
   September 13, 2011

The best nurse recruiting and retention plans on the planet are no match for a "jerk boss."

"Jerk bosses have one common quality --people don't trust them," says Dick Finnegan, CEO of C-Suite Analytics, and the author of Retention Rethinking.

"If you can't close that gap, you are on an island trying to make these programs work. How many times have you heard an employee say 'I don't like it here, but if I can just hold on until employee appreciation week'?,'" Finnegan told a full room at the 47th annual convention of the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration in Phoenix, AZ.

For recruiting and retention plans to succeed, Finnegan says, so-called jerk bosses must be identified and they must be held directly accountable for the turnover of people under them. He suggests that HR set specific retention goals for supervisors, and conduct exit interviews with those supervisors every time they lose an employee.

Job turnover is a tremendous cost driver in healthcare. There is a 27% turnover rate for first-year nurses. That can be reduced, Finnegan says, if employers understand what motivates workers to stay. It's not a fear of the recession or unemployment because the unemployment rate for college graduates is about 4.5%, and nurses are in particularly high demand.

What gets workers to stay, he says, is not more money but a belief that they are getting something "unique" from an organization, that they are well-matched with their jobs, and that their supervisors have built a trusting relationship that fosters retention."

Finnegan offered seven steps to improve retention.

1. Get the C-suite on your side by quantifying the cost of turnover in dollars, not percentages. Make sure that the CEO and the CFO understand the direct and indirect costs of turnover." Once you have a number they can back, they get it," Finnegan says.

2. Provide monthly reports on retention and name names. Identify the supervisors who are not making retention goals, and make sure they understand the costs of not meeting those goals.

3. Change the hiring process. Make sure that your supervisors conduct structured, competency-based interviews. "HR is highly structured but interviewing managers aren't," Finnegan says. "Teach them to probe based on the answers they get. Don't let lousy hiring managers make lousy hiring decisions."


4. Use RJP -- Realistic Job Previews -- so potential new hires completely understand what they are getting into. Make sure they understand that they will probably be working most holidays, perhaps evenings, and that much of what they will encounter in their first year of nursing may not resemble what they anticipated when they were in nursing school. "It is why 27% of new hires don't last a year. They don't get it. What can you show them that smacks their senses," Finnegan says.

5. Implement tipping point interviews.  Make sure that supervisors have regularly scheduled "tipping point" interviews with new hires to gauge progress and satisfaction. "You can't just say 'good luck.' You can't just walk down the hall and say 'How ya doing?' That's a greeting, not a meeting," Finnegan says.

6. Develop manager relationships that foster trust. "Think of the role that trust plays because it is in everything,"

7. Train managers to conduct "stay interviews" with staff at least once a year. Find out what makes them happy. What concerns they have. Try to address the issues they raise. If an issue can't be resolved, explain why. "The irony is that in marketing you are always asking the customer what they want, but we don't do that with employees," Finnegan says. "The fear is that they will want more money. No. They won't. But they will be thrilled that somebody has asked."

 

John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.

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