Solutions

Retain, reengage, and reimagine

Retention requires reimaging work and the work experience

Today, many health care workers are feeling burnt out and frustrated by outdated ways of working. The pandemic accelerated a growing crisis, and care team members are navigating new stressors with little support, leading to talent shortages, burnout, and high attrition. Forward-looking health care organizations now have an opportunity to rethink their talent strategy, optimize the clinical workforce, and reimagine the work of the care team.

Health care’s biggest challenge: Talent

What’s causing the critical talent challenges and shortage?

Health care workers face multiple workplace challenges, including: long hours, poor working conditions, limited technologies, supply shortages, and safety concerns among others. As a result, 55%1 of front-line health care workers reported burnout with the highest rate (69%) among the youngest staff.

The health care talent shortage continues to grow in severity and results in direct costs to health organizations. To change this narrative, it is critical to consider reimagininge how you design roles and the environment around it.

The problem The changing environment The clinician’s role The caregiving environment
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Disruption of core talent

As clinicians care for patients, they often find themselves juggling workplace demands and struggling to be successful in their roles while maintaining healthy work/life balance. The pandemic multiplied these complexities, bringing with it longer hours, supply shortages, and increased workloads. As a result, many clinicians have left the healthcare workforce. As a result, 334,000² physicians, NPs, PAs, and other clinicians left the workforce in 2021 due to retirement, burnout, and other pandemic related stressors, leaving an overwhelming 85%³ of health system leaders say staffing challenges will have a major impact on their 2023 strategy. Talent attrition further pressures health care organizations bottom line, as research shows that Hospital turnover costs average 150% of a healthcare employee’s salary³ and increase contract labor cost. With high turnover and margin pressure, improving clinician experience is more critical now than ever.

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Rapid changes, inadequate training

Today’s clinicians are in a position of needing to adapt to changes in technology, expectations for caregiving, and an evolving industry. They face a steep technology learning curve with exponential technology change and care delivery innovations without training or user-friendly interfaces. Patients have different expectations of care that may widen the caregiver’s scope of responsibilities. Meanwhile, “The Great Resignation,” other career opportunities, and changes in the patient population may have widened the nurse’s scope of responsibilities.

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High demands, few rewards

Clinicians play an essential role in nurturing patient health and creating value for the organization, but the work itself comes with significant emotional, physical, and mental demands. Daily scheduling can be unpredictable and irregular, and rewards package are not competitive, where clinicians feel unrecognized for their achievements. Health care organizations need to address work/life sustainability and the well-being of staff separate from their patients. Roles need to be reimagined to leverage market-leading practices to create capacity and improve the experience at work.

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Lack of support, little opportunity

Clinicians often feel unsupported and stretched too thin in the current health care environment, especially when leaders are unable to provide support or motivation. Career development and mobility is often unclear and growth opportunities within the organization uncertain. Teaming priorities may be misaligned which can lead to communication barriers and operational inefficiencies. Overall, the challenges health care is facing have created an unhealthy “new normal” leading to nurse attrition.

Retain, reengage, and reimagine

Create a sustainable healthcare workforce by reimagining how work gets done emphasizing the caregiver experience to enable the full Quadruple Aim

To balance the quadruple aim of lower costs, better outcomes, improved nurse experience, and improved patient experience, health systems need to make bold moves in reimagining work and redesigning the workforce experience.

Deloitte’s R3 (Retain, Reengage, Reimagine) framework is leading the way in navigating the healthcare talent crisis, identifying and addressing the root causes of pressures with unique and innovative human-centered solutions.

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Retain
Retain with quick wins

Take immediate action based on areas identified as high priority and easy to accomplish in the short-term

● Build momentum through achieving quick wins

● Demonstrate leadership commitment to caregivers

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Reengage
Re-engage with enterprise shifts

Begin longer-term transformations using human-centered design to address high priority, complex issues identified as root causes of nurse attribution.

● Engage the workforce in the transformation process

● Increase satisfaction with outcomes

● Rebuild trust between the ‘clinical’ and ‘corporate’ teams

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Reimagine
Reimagine work, the workforce, and the workplace models

Identify key processes that need to be reimagined to transform care delivery and the human experience

● Increase value, meaning, and capacity for the workforce

● Optimize balance of humans and technology

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Our approach
Retain, reengage, reimagine

Our approach begins with a diagnose and triage assessment to identify the root-cause issue and inform solutions that are tailored to your specific needs. For roles and teams that need to be reimagined, we leverage human-centered design to transform the workforce experience and improve clinician retention by designing roles that people want to come to work in every day.


Diagnose and triage

● Assess the root causes of nurse attrition and predict attrition risk

● Prioritize initiatives and create a road map with a mix of quick wins, enterprise shifts, and reimaged opportunities


Implementation

● Retain with quick wins. Take immediate action on high priority and easy-to-accomplish initiatives to improve clinician retention

● Reengage with enterprise shifts. Begin longer-term transformations to address the root-cause issues identified driving clinician attrition

● Reimagine the work, workforce, and workplace. Use human-centered design to redesign roles and teams to transform care delivery and optimize the human experience

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    Contact us

    Look to Deloitte to help you retain, reengage, and reimagine the clinicians’ experience. By working together, we can meet today’s urgent needs and shape the future.

     

    Eileen Radis
    Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
    DC Human Capital, LIfe Sciences and Health Care
    +1 216.589.5012
    LinkedIn

     

    Chandrika Divi
    Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
    Core Business Operations, Life Sciences and Health
    +1 415.783.5876
    LinkedIn

     

    Shannon Poynton
    Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP
    DC Human Capital, Life Science and Health Care
    +1 267.337.2769

    End notes

    ² Pandemic drove 334,000 physicians, nurses, others out of the workforce: Study | Business Insurance

    3 Healthcare Turnover Rates [2022 Update] - DailyPay

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