The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report states half of all employees will need reskilling by 2025. The healthcare industry is facing many challenges such as healthcare-worker shortages, continuing high inflation rates and economic troubles.
Both upskilling and reskilling your workforce are achieved through training and other learning and development opportunities. Upskilling is improving existing employees’ skills and abilities so they can advance in their current roles and careers within your healthcare organization. On the other hand, reskilling involves training healthcare staff for different roles.
It’s imperative for healthcare leaders to lean into offering certifications and training to build and maintain the best workforce possible. Those who prioritize upskilling and reskilling their workforce will stand strongest against industry challenges and witness the benefits discussed below.
Enhanced Patient Care
Employee engagement is the level of connection between employees and their workplace. In the healthcare industry, truly engaged employees have a major impact on their organization’s patient care.
Highly engaged employees lead to:
- Increased patient safety
- Improved quality of care
- Higher patient satisfaction rates
A Gallup poll of 200 hospitals found three factors affect patient mortality the most when it came to nurses: the percentage of overtime hours per year, the ratio of the number of nurses to total patient days and the engagement level of nurses.
The assumption is tired and overworked nurses make mistakes which leads to less effective care. However, the key finding illustrates the level of employee engagement affects the life or death of patients. The poll states, “…nurse engagement is the No. 1 predictor of mortality variation across hospitals. The commitment and emotional involvement of the nurses on staff is even more important than their numbers.”
One of the top ways to keep employees engaged is by providing upskilling and reskilling educational opportunities. At the end of the day, the most educated and engaged employees will provide the best quality of care.
Boosted Employee Retention
Assisting with upskilling and reskilling creates a bond between employees and your organization. This will help retain employees, even if they’re offered better salaries and benefits elsewhere.
According to the Gallop/Amazon 2021 report, 53% of healthcare workers say they are very interested in or highly interested in upskilling. Focusing on employee retention is more important now than ever, given that 55% say they are also likely to quit their current position to work for an employer who offers training/education.
Those who say they participated in upskilling programs report improvements in the following three areas of their lives:
- 69% say their quality of life has improved
- 71% report greater satisfaction with their jobs
- 65% report their standard of living has increased
With positive percentages like these, your employees will remain loyal to your healthcare organization, because they feel valued, appreciated, and supported.
Reduced Skills Gap
“Skills gap” refers to the bridge between the skills that healthcare organizations need from employees and those that are actually available to workers. The skills gap in most industries has widened with the advancement of automation, AI and other technologies, along with the greater need for social and emotional skills.
According to a McKinsey Global Survey, “87% (of responders) say they either are experiencing gaps now or expect them within a few years.”
Survey respondents were much more likely to cite skill building (rather than hiring) as the most effective way to close skills gaps in the next five years. Offering upskilling and reskilling opportunities helps to minimize any skills gap in the workplace, along with increasing employee confidence and productivity.
Cost Effectiveness
Healthcare organizations spend much more annually to recruit, onboard and train new employees than to retain existing employees.
According to the 2022 NSI National Healthcare Retention & RN Staffing Report, the average hospital turnover rate in 2021 was 25.9%, revealing over a 6% increase from the prior year. The average staff Registered Nurse (RN) turnover rate in 2021 was 27.1%, revealing over an 8% increase from the prior year.
The cost of turnover can have a profound impact on the declining healthcare organization margin. The report also found that the average cost of turnover for a staff RN is $46,100 and that each percentage change in turnover will either cost or save the average hospital $262,300 per year.
Not only is it cost-effective to retain employees from a financial perspective, but from a time and effort perspective as well. An article from ADP reports it takes an average of 42 days to fill an open position.
When you take into consideration the time and effort it takes to fill an open position for a highly skilled and specialized healthcare professional, this could be much longer than the average. Offering upskilling and reskilling opportunities helps reduce employee turnover and therefore is more profitable for healthcare organizations.
Take Action
Upskilling and reskilling existing workers is a strategy many healthcare organizations focus on, because of its clear return on investment. According to the Future of Jobs Report, “2 out of 3 employers expect a return on investment from reskilling within one year.”
However, as healthcare employees have become overburdened, the ability of clinical educators in organizations to run these programs has come under pressure. Forward-thinking institutions are looking for partners to assist with elements of delivering educational programs consistently.
Emerge Education provides a ready-made, full-service solution for training and educating your healthcare workforce. We’ll work with you to design a custom program catalog to jumpstart or enhance your current professional and tuition assistance programs. Our client-focused expertise and support services will help you attract and retain more quality employees and maximize your overall return on investment.
To learn more about how Emerge Education can help, reach out to Lauren Holubec, Ed.D., our Senior Vice President of Corporate Partnerships, for a consultation or visit our healthcare page.
