By David Wolfe
If you’re hiring people who are coachable, driven, and people-savvy, they want to grow.
These are A-players. They don’t just show up for a paycheck. These people constantly want a challenge.
For retention, you’re going to have to create challenges and anticipate how to help this person progress year to year, three years from now and five years from now. If they don’t get that challenge, they’re going to leave. If they feel like they have been doing the same thing for three years, they are gone. They’re looking for something else.
Ideally, you should create some sort of growth plan, one that has an increase in title, an increase in money, and in increase in responsibility, over time. If you can’t do those three things all at once every couple years, then you can offer one or two of those things. If you can’t do any of those three things, come up with some other creative ways to advance their responsibility. Maybe ask them to sit on an advisory board or committee, if you can’t give them a true title, money, or responsibility changes.
Make it clear that these changes are merit based, and that not everybody gets them. These are earned, which makes it more valuable. If you just give a growth position to everybody who hits the one-year mark or the two-year mark, it becomes fake and it actually works against you. It has to be for those people who are going the extra mile. That motivates them to do more, continue to learn, and continue to push themselves into a growth mentality versus a static mentality.
If you’ve got a bunch of static employees who are complacent, your company is not going to grow and you’re going to be static as well. But because you’re hiring go-getters, those true team players, they don’t want that. They want an organization where people are constantly learning, growing, and getting better.
For example, we have three core values. The first: We deliver. The second: We serve. And the third: We get better every day. That means that, at our core, we are not a static organization. We’re constantly asking ourselves the question, “how can I improve today?” What’s the one thing I can do better today? We’re pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone to learn. You want to create a team that does that, too.
Within our staff, we have recruiters who start off as search associates. They can move up to search consultant, then search director, then director of recruitment, and finally VP of operations. With each step comes more money and more responsibility, along with a title change. If you’re working in a human resources department, maybe somebody starts out as a human resources assistant right out of college, and then moves to an HR consultant, then an HR manager, then a director of HR. That doesn’t mean everybody’s going to move through those roles. But in the recruiting process and again in the retention process, if the candidate sees that there’s a growth progression, then they’re more likely to join your organization and stay there. They need to see that they can grow here, that they can have a long-term career, that they can stay for ten or twenty years, make a huge impact, and eventually have a chance to become a director of the company.
They also know they might get passed up for a promotion, but just knowing that there is a growth plan that you’ve created and that it’s not guaranteed puts them into a position of wanting to be up for the challenge. Those real team players will jump all over that. They want to join and stay in an organization that has challenges and rewards in store for them. The fact that you’ve carved out a growth plan is huge. I know that this is not as easy in some professions. If you’ve been trained for a specialized position, like Nurse Practitioner, what else can you aspire to? That’s where creativity is especially important. Perhaps you put them on a medical director team or a board of directors, or you create a committee of senior level Nurse Practitioners or some sort of think tank, where they are part of the big picture and they’re making decisions for the organization. Maybe you make mentoring younger NPs part of a growth plan. Or put them on a path where they’re managing other RNs and NPs. Each step ideally has a change in title, responsibility, and salary. Maybe they become a senior Nurse Practitioner or vice president of operations, Nurse Practitioner division. They might still be doing their core job as a primary care Nurse Practitioner, but now they’re part of committees or adding responsibilities, they’re mentoring, they’re teaching, and there’s some sort of pay increase with that.
Now, a lot of nurses don’t want to have anything to do with management. They might be happy with just doing primary care as an NP. In that case, you can try to tailor the growth plan to their interests. For instance, if they are working in primary care, but they really have an interest in diabetes education, you help them get their diabetes educator certificate. They go to school for it, they form a committee, they do some teaching, they do “lunch and learn” meetings with the rest of the Nurse Practitioners. It’s about getting inside their head and figuring out what their passion is and how you can fuel that passion. You also need to think ahead about what’s next for this person, what’s going to keep them challenged, and how you can retain this person, especially if they are an A-player. What initiative do I have to put in place to keep them versus sitting on my hands and saying, it is what it is, it’s a primary care NP job, and hope they stay here for twenty years. That’s taking a very passive approach, and that’s how turnover happens. The reality is, they’re going to get bored and they’re going to move on.
AN EXAMPLE OF SHOWING A PATH FOR GROWTH
“I have a current APP who has shown an interest in providing palliative care and becoming the lead medical provider for our hospital’s palliative care team. I have encouraged her to apply and have written a strong letter of recommendation for her entrance into the University of Washington’s Palliative Care training program. She will receive time off to complete the education and time to perform these duties. For the hospital, this small investment will bring a great return.”
Karen Geheb, MD, CMD Director of Hospitalist Services Pullman Regional Hospital