Employee Retention
The County General Hospital is facing a serious turnover problem, with most of the nurses not lasting more than six months in the hospital. The nurses, when interviewed, have stated that the low remuneration and lack of social space is causing them to consider employment elsewhere. The root cause of the turnover, the effects, and possible solutions are considered in this paper.
The HR strategy used by County General Hospital is cost leadership strategy. The hospital strives to offer affordable health services to the farming communities in the surrounding. This has led to the management of the hospital adopting cost reduction measures that make it possible to charge the patients less. One of the cost reduction measures taken by the hospital is lowered remuneration for the nurses that work in the facility (Stewart & Brown, 2014). As a result, experienced nurses are not keen on staying in the hospital for a long time. They tend to get higher remunerations from competing hospitals, leading to a high nurse turnover in the County General Hospital. The cost reduction approach taken by the Hospital is not helping in increasing the efficiency of the services, as the nurses tend to take the skills learned in the hospital elsewhere. The loss of skills to competing hospitals is frustrating the doctors in the hospital.
The management of the hospital should consider the concerns of both the nurses and physicians. Doing that will ensure that the turnover rate is reduced and the services offered to the patients improved. A program that would be effective for County General Hospital to reduce the turnover rate would be to raise the salary of the nurses to a competitive level. The HR manager of the hospital should research on the general range of salary offered in the competing hospital and raise the nurse salary to that level (Sara, Richter & Beauvais, 2018). The financial hiccup that the hospital would suffer will be offset by the retained skills in the hospital and better services provided to the clients. Better services put the hospital in a better position to charge higher rates without getting a backlash from the patients. The other program that the hospital should implement should be investing in education and continual learning for the nurses (Sara, Richter & Beauvais, 2018). It should request funding from the state to build a learning facility within the hospital, which can be used by the nurses to advance their careers and also solve the problem of lack of social atmosphere for the nurses. The additional students in the learning facility will provide a conducive environment where the younger nurses will not feel socially constrained.
The stakeholders in the facilities include the communities making up the client base, the nurses, physicians and the management of the hospital. The community will benefit by having the quality of services improved due to retained talent and skills. The nurses will benefit from better remuneration and chances for career advancement. The physicians will have an easier time, as the skills they teach the nurses will be put to use, and the patient outcomes improved. The management will have an easier time demanding for funds from the state and will be justified in adjusting the price of medical services upwards.
In summary, the HR challenge faced by County General Hospital is high turnover rate of the nurses, who take to other hospitals the skills they have gained at the facility. The causes of the high turnover rate include low salary and lack of social space for the young nurses that have just completed college. The suggested solutions are to have the salary raised to a competitive level and investing in education and continual learning for the nurses. The two measures are aimed at resolving the causes of the high employee turnover at the facility.
References
Sara, J. P., Richter, J. P., & Beauvais, B. (2018). The effects of nursing satisfaction and turnover cognitions on patient attitudes and outcomes: A Three‐Level multisource study. Health Services Research, 53(6), 4943-4969. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.12997
Stewart, G., & Brown, K. (2014). Human Resource Management Linking Strategy to Practice (Third ed.). Wiley.