Top Five Turnover Causes in Healthcare
a doctor showing data in the laptop's website to the patient

Human resources professionals and their senior teams are keenly aware that turnover comes at a high cost. Employee turnover also has a rolling effect throughout any company. In healthcare especially, losing employees has the effect of greater works burdens, less favorable scheduling and low morale. HR departments are left with the task of managing and improving turnover.

As in most projects, the first step in solving the problem is understanding it. Many employers will either create a short survey that they try to get in front of exiting employees. Others will schedule exit interviews. The problem with these solutions is that they are time-consuming and the data is difficult to capture. In addition, the participation rates are low, the responses are not secure and the respondents often do not want to tell all to someone from the company they are leaving. As importantly, these processes may not flag important issues like harassment and intimidation.

Your employees–including the exiting employees–are your best source of data about your company.

In the last 20 years, we’ve worked with over 80 healthcare organizations to improve their employee retention and work environments by capturing key, actionable data. We also have over 25 years of normative (also known as a benchmark) data that has been collected through ExitRight® our flagship product.

Based on the data we’ve collected regarding 12 controllable turnover causes, the top five most important reasons for employee turnover in the healthcare space are:

  1. Supervision and management
  2. Scheduling and hours
  3. Workload and excessive job demands
  4. Compensation and pay
  5. Feeling recognized, appreciated, and respected

Since we first published this data in 2012, workload and job demands have risen in importance, while the need to feel recognized, appreciated and respected has shifted down two spots, industry-wide. Why? First, we believe that the workforce shortage has forced healthcare companies specifically to re-examine their policies and practices. Second, the changing workforce, including the differences in priorities between generations, has caused a re-prioritization of what it means to be an “employer of choice.”

Our data shows that 56% of respondents listed those five causes as reasons for leaving. Some turnover causes that fell below the top five reasons are benefits, training, job security, and work rules and policy, to name a few. When employers know the sentiment and priorities for their employees, they can make smarter decisions about improving their organization overall.

Give Your Team the Data They Need

Our platform’s benchmarks for healthcare show that 80% of turnover is caused by what we call Controllable Factors that can be, you guessed it, controlled by the employer.

Turnover represents a significant cost to every business and significant amounts of time for HR teams. How much is it costing your organization? Check out our free-to-use Cost of Turnover Calculator to find out.

We give you the data so your retention improvement efforts can be focused on the facts instead of assumptions. With HSD Metrics, your company’s HR team can spend less time gathering research and more time acting on problems. Would you like to learn more or schedule a free demo? Contact us, we’re here to help.