Place Turnover under the Microscope: Discover Where to Take Action Today!

High staff turnover is hurtful.  It hurts your home’s bottom line.  It stresses out your staff.  And it hurts resident care.  The good news is that you can stabilize your workforce, gaining you and your home improved care, saved money, and better survey outcomes.

Over the next year, MOLANE partners will focus on retention.  Each partner will offer training sessions on this important topic which will be widely publicized.  You can register via this link to the first session, a webinar on July 23 from 10:30 am to 11:30 am, sponsored by DHSS (Editor's note: this session has occured in the past).  We will also share practical information each month called "R-TOP Tips" – Reduce Turnover, Optimize Performance. These tips will provide key steps you can take to begin a solid staff retention program and will be posted here. Be sure to download and read the free Staff Stability Toolkit featured on this website.

What's happening

Our first tip focuses on drilling down to what’s currently happening at your home. There are several ways to start off:

• Objectively look at what is happening.
• Collect data on who is leaving or staying.
• Ask employees for their perspective.

You may think it’s easier to just do this all yourself—STOP RIGHT THERE!  Many times it is not so much about what you do individually as it is about how you work towards progress together. Using a high-involvement approach by asking your staff to help will improve care across your entire home.

1. Communicate throughout your home that you are recruiting people to help with this issue and welcome participation.
2. Select and personally invite a select group of employees from all levels.
3. In the first meeting, ask the group to break into pairs and list what they think turnover is happening and then discuss as a larger group.  Ask the staff who they felt were good co-workers that resigned in the last year.
4. Have each staff person talk with a couple of your most reliable and core staff about why they came to work at the home and why they have stayed.
5. Have each staff talk with someone employed less than a year about how they heard about the job, what made them choose your home, what helped them stay, what has been hard for them and what suggestions they have to help new staff settle in.
6. Meanwhile you can collect data on turnover using Worksheet 6 located in the toolkit. Look at the causes of involuntary terminations (i.e; how many were related to attendance?), objectively evaluate the employee break room, and get in touch with a few of the good co-workers who resigned.
7. DO NOT MAKE CHANGES YET!  TAKE THE TIME TO GATHER INFORMATION SO YOU CAN BETTER DECIDE WHERE TO TAKE ACTION.

Remember to download the Staff Stability toolkit by clicking here. Refer to pages 1-17 of the toolkit for more information.