June, 2025
Part of our Summer Series, this webinar digs into why focusing on staff retention is much more than an HR initiative, it’s a critical element of operations and financials for long-term care organizations.
In fact,
Transcript:
We’re gonna talk today about, why retention is the new revenue. Now in saying that, I realized that in Canada, in Ontario, we’re not in this, I’m using air quotes for the money, but revenue can be applied to a bunch of different elements inside of a long term care facility that we desperately need. We know that we work with paper thin margins. If there are savings that we can realize through retention strategies, The money that we save from an HR and onboarding and restaffing perspective can be applied to any number of things, upskilling, training, events, care programs, upgrades to the facility.
There’s any number of things we can reallocate these funds to and that’s what I wanna talk about today. I wanna start with an uncomfortable truth that is turnover in senior care isn’t just common, it’s chronic, it’s not a problem, it is the problem that we’re facing and here’s why. Fifty three percent of care delivery teams and and nursing teams leave their jobs every year. It’s fifty three percent is the average turnover rate for nursing staff.
Ninety four percent of homes have said that they are understaffed at any time for most shifts. If fifty percent nursing staff leave their jobs every year, consider the impact that this has not just on today, but tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, but also the rest of the team.
And nearly every home reports being understaffed. This isn’t just a staffing issue, it’s a care issue. It affects resident outcomes, it affects team morale and leadership burnout. And until we fix it, everything else is gonna feel like triage, everything’s chaotic, everything’s an emergency.
Here’s another problem, staff turnover is eating your budget. And like I was just saying at the beginning of the call, we work with razor thin budgets to begin with. Any amount of money that I can save by retaining as much staff as I can and not having to spend that money on restaffing, I can reallocate to something that’s much more critical and crucial for my residents and my staff. The financial impact of turnover is staggering, to be honest with you. It’s four to ten thousand dollars is the average cost to replace one frontline worker. If an average facility sees a ten percent bump in turnover for frontline staffers, depending on the size of your facility, that could run between a hundred and sixty to two hundred thousand dollars in unexpected costs that you don’t have to spend if you can retain the staff.
Moreover, there’s hidden costs involved with this. As I just said, there are morale impacts, there’s compliance impacts, there’s productivity impacts. What this is coming down to is all studies show that care consistency equates to care quality. If we lose staff at a regular basis, we’re losing that intellectual property that they carry.
We’re losing that institutional knowledge and the relationship that they built with that resident. The new person has to come in, it takes some time to get ramped up. We’re losing the ability to identify, diagnose and properly treat and care for our residents because we just don’t have that familiarity with them. I want to suggest a mindset shift that retention is not a soft HR goal, it’s a financial strategy.
Every staff member you keep is a multiplier. They train others. They carry institutional knowledge. They reduce agency dependence, which we all know is ridiculously expensive and it helps to improve consistency as I just said.
The return on retention compounds over time and the earlier you act, the more you will save. So I’ve talked through this a few times on other webinars but I want to talk and just touch on the top three reasons why care staff leave their jobs. And it’s funny when asking most people about this, they’ll say they’ll leave for more money, better hours, better shifts. Not necessarily true.
What never appears in the top three most quoted reasons for leaving is money.
A twenty twenty two survey of direct care delivery staff in nursing homes revealed that although wages were mentioned, it was not viewed by most participants as a primary factor to reduce turnover.
A further study by McKinsey Group in twenty twenty three, it was a study of registered nurses in the workplace cited several culture related factors as the key drivers of their likelihood to stay in their current position.
In fact, seventy percent of them said that having caring and trusting teammates and managers increased their likelihood to stay. Seventy percent likelihood they would stay in their jobs if they knew that they had caring, trusting and supportive team members and management. Well, that’s all culture. That’s not something that you can provide people with. That’s something you have to do and build into the environment that you work in.
So your culture is reflected in how your staff feel on Sunday evenings before the start of the week. More importantly, for frontline staff, your culture is reflected in how quickly your staff answer the phone when you call.
If they see your number show up and they dodge it because, I don’t really wanna go into work because I don’t really like it there, that’s very telling. That means there’s stress for you to fill those shifts. That means that the morale on the team probably isn’t as high as it needs to be. That means that the people just don’t wanna come in.
There’s a number of reasons why they might but if one of them is I get an feeling or a pit in my stomach when thinking about work, that’s a problem that we can solve.
So what are the top three reasons that care staff quit? This is interesting and this all lines up to what we’re talking about today from a retention strategy perspective. The number one quoted reason for people leaving their jobs is poor internal communications.
And I think it’s funny that every single organization we speak to at Niuz says the same thing.
I hear from my staff that our communications suck. Great. Our responses then, what have you tried? I’ve tried email. I’ve tried newsletters. I’ve tried bulletin boards, events, blah, the list goes on and on. Everyone has tried the same thing but no one seems to have cracked that nut yet.
So what does poor internal communications lead to? It leads to it builds a lack of transparency. It builds a lack of trust in management. As I just said, if people feel they have trust in the management, they’re seventy percent more likely to stay in their jobs.
It creates confusion among the frontline staff if I don’t know what’s going on and that’s gonna build frustration and resentment. That’s gonna build up over time. It’s gonna erode your culture and people will leave.
The number two reason, lack of appreciation and recognition. We all know this. Our frontline staff are doing a lot of things that are pretty unsavory that a lot of people wouldn’t want to do, but they do it because they care or they do it because they’re not able to do something else from an educational perspective. Regardless of that, if we can show them that they’re appreciated and recognized, they’re more likely to give more of themselves to the job.
They’re more likely to stay. They’re more likely to build those relationships with residents. If we don’t show this, here’s what happens. The frontline staff have the feeling of being underappreciated.
They feel like they’re just a number. They don’t feel like they have support from management because they just come and do the job and then they go home. There’s no pat on the back. Thanks so much.
We understand. We hear you. We feel you. This is gonna lead to burnout. It’s gonna lead to an increased number of sick days because people just don’t wanna come into work.
They’re gonna excuse themselves out of it. They’re gonna be disengaged with what it is that they do. It’s gonna build frustration. It’s gonna build resentment, and they’re gonna seek validation elsewhere because they’re not getting it at work.
Third most common reason people leave critical information is too hard to find. And again, this is all coming into the communication side of things.
If there are shift impacting updates, like outbreaks, resident deaths, emergency notifications, whatever it is that’s gonna impact my day today and I show up and I didn’t know about it, was I not important enough for you to tell me?
Builds resentment, builds frustration, builds confusion. I’m gonna seek validation out where I’m now feel like I’m just a number because you didn’t think it was important enough for me to know that there’s an outbreak today. Or you tried to get a hold of me, but you didn’t know how to or whatever the case may be. What about real time emergencies like floods?
Like, now, we had thunderstorm warnings. What if power got knocked out? What if a road got washed out? You just need a way to let people know.
As management, we hear you. We care for you. Here’s what you need to know that’s gonna impact your day to day.
Job specific information, policies, procedures, we get new mandates handed down regularly by the government. There’s new changes in how we need to do things. What if we get a new lift or new technology in the building that the staff need to know about but because I only work weekends, I wasn’t here on Monday when they did the in service training. Well, I don’t want my staff to rely on my other staff to teach them what they interpreted. I want them to see the information.
I need a better way to communicate with them.
Again, this is gonna build confusion, frustration, resentment.
It piles up over time. So when we ask people to leave, the answers are almost never about pay. Sometimes they are. Of course they are. If I’m gonna get paid an extra four dollars an hour, yes, of course, I’m gonna leave. But those opportunities are few and far between. What most often happens is they leave because they feel invisible, because they’re exhausted, they’re unheard, they don’t know what’s going on, they don’t feel appreciated, they don’t feel like they matter.
And that’s a fixable problem with the right tools and with the right focus.
I’m sure you’re saying this all makes sense. Sure. But what can you do? You’ve tried email newsletters. You’ve tried what everyone does. The weekly cadence stuff, the shift meetings, they posted memos on the walls.
You’ve added employee of the month or employee of the week to the bulletin board in the in the staff room, but nothing really seems to work. Right? I get it. All three of these things, improving communication, showing public appreciation and recognition, making critical information easier to find, all of these things are easier done than said.
Not easier said than done, easier done than said if you’ve got the right tool. Now this is gonna sound like I’m pushing Niuz on you. I’m not. What I’m presenting is there is a way to do this very easily, very simply, very effectively, and consistently.
That’s the important part. So where can you start? You’ve tried all this sort of thing, but I wanna propose it’s not that I know something that you don’t. It’s that I understand maybe it is.
It’s that I understand how you can do this with one tool or how you can make this an easier habit versus making it seem like a ton of work. Culture starts with connection. Retention doesn’t happen once a quarter or once a year. It happens every day.
Your culture is defined by how connected and appreciated your staff feel, especially your frontline team. If they feel informed, appreciated and heard, you’re going to see higher engagement, less burnout, stronger loyalty. You’ll also see improvements in care quality, fewer falls, more proactive interventions, fewer hospitalizations.
This will lead to happier, healthier residents, which leads to happier families and fewer awkward calls and meetings for you. This is where the right communication plan and platform can make all the difference.
Pictured here, on the left hand side of this picture is Christina. Christina is the HR and Communications Director for Crown Ridge Health. It’s a four building organization in Ontario. Christina’s job was to try to improve the culture, the environment inside of Crown Ridge.
Their mantra is that they wanted to feel like home when you come into work or when you come in to live with them. They wanna have a very familial feel to things. But she was finding that the staff just don’t resonate with that. It didn’t make sense to them.
It found it felt to her like each one of the four homes was a separate, segregated, completely individualized environment inside. And even though some staff would move between buildings for their shifts because they were part timers, even though staff members said the same thing, each home has its own vibe. And they didn’t really care what was going on in the other homes, not part of the Crown Ridge manifesto. So Christina tries what we’ve all tried, email newsletters, employee of the week, events, communication strategies, posted memos, everything.
Again, nothing really seemed to work. The individual homes didn’t really care what the others were doing just because they weren’t there. They weren’t around. They didn’t see it.
Christina adopts Niuz as a platform and she started to go into the homes with her phone out and ask people, do you mind if I take your picture doing what it is you’re doing right now? Of course, some of the staff said, get no. No. Thank you.
I’m not interested at all. But some went, yeah. Absolutely. Go for it. So Christina started to take pictures.
Let’s say there’s Pam dealing with a senior at a table helping with lunch, bingo, activity, whatever it was. She snaps a picture, types in a quick post. Look at the smiles on these faces. This is what Crown Ridge is all about and sends to the organization, not just the home, but everybody across the organization so everybody sees it.
She starts to do this regularly. Inside of six weeks, she went from four individual environments and communities to a strong, connected, in sync community, an environment where everyone knew what everyone else was doing, recognized each other’s faces, knew their names, and we’re almost competing to see who would get the most recognition on the app. They bring more energy into work. They smile more.
They’re happier. The the residents are happier. The families are happier. Everything has improved from a staffing and HR perspective.
She couldn’t be happier. We couldn’t be happier. It’s one of the best stories I can tell. I love it.
That was in six weeks she saw that turnaround. And again, it’s just because she made this a habit of recognizing staff.
That’s kinda why sorry, sales pitch. That’s why Niuz was built. We were built to improve retention.
Niuz brings together the three pillars of retention, communication, recognition, and feedback.
It’s a mobile first platform that lets you share updates, post kudos, track sentiment, and make sure everyone across shifts, across sites feels connected and engaged. No more bulletin boards, no more missed memos, no more frustrated new hires, just a simple centralized way to engage your team. What Christina has done, she’d made Niuz part of the onboarding program for staff. She also rolled it out across all staff and said, we’re not communicating via posted memos or emails or newsletters anymore.
Everything you need to know will now be in this app. She’s got adoption through the roof across the organization and people are really getting a lot of value out of the communication platform that she’s using. This is what I want you to walk away with. This is a very quick webinar.
Retention is not an HR function. It isn’t just an HR function. It’s the most powerful ways you can drive operational and financial success, one of the most powerful ways you can improve care quality, it’s one of the most powerful ways that you can build that really strong enviable culture inside your organization that people want to show up for and will bring more themselves to.
When your staff feel informed, appreciated, heard, they stay. Niuz can help you do that every shift, every day without adding a whole ton of extra work for you. If you can use Instagram or Facebook or a banking app, you can use Niuz. It’s that simple to do.
If you’re ready to explore how Niuz can help, please feel free to visit our website, book a demo. You can send an email directly to julia at Niuz dot com. Thank you so much. We’ll talk soon.