Archived Publications eBook: The Dollars are in the Details | Page 9

“We were experiencing real pain three years ago, prompting us to make
the decision to focus on employee turnover,” reports Memorial Hermann’s
Vice President of Human Resources, Lori Knowles. “During a period of
major growth for Houston, Memorial Hermann was also expanding its
services and geographic footprint and at the same time was experiencing
some recruitment and retention issues.”
IN 2015, Memorial Hermann
staff was working feverishly to keep up
with demand for healthcare in their
growing Houston service area.
3 Priorities for Reducing Turnover
1. Competitive Benefits. The exploratory team realized
that it had been some time since the corporate
benefit package had been reviewed, and the System
needed to catch-up in several areas.
2. Career Opportunities. There was a need to focus on
growth and development plans for early career nurses.
3. Leadership. Research indicated that leaders were the
most important factor in whether employees choose
to stay or leave an organization. Many exit interview
comments indicated that employees did not feel
supported by or had little contact with their leaders.
There was an opportunity to better equip managers,
help employees connect to Memorial Hermann, and
intervene with employees before they felt the pull to
leave the organization.
To accommodate the growth, Memorial Hermann was
undergoing four major expansions and had two brand-
new hospitals coming out of the ground. The System’s
headcount was growing at 8-9% per year, which translated
into a need for nearly 5,500 new employees annually.
Although there was a dedicated push to hire new
employees, this effort was hindered by the fact that the
System had only an 85% organization-wide retention
rate, with pockets of turnover at 25% among first-year
nurses and in key areas such as the ED, ICU, and OR.
Against this backdrop, leadership decided it was
imperative that Human Resources (HR) take on the
System’s first year retention issues. A Closer Look at Benefits
HR began this task by studying the System’s turnover
data, including the results of recent employee exit
surveys. Knowles wanted additional “expert eyes” on
the data and asked Memorial Hermann’s HR partners
to spend four hours per week studying the information.
She reports that it took about a year to put their plan
together and what began as an HR effort expanded to
include all Memorial Hermann CNOs and business
advisory leaders. The group concluded that they should
focus their efforts in three areas and assigned a team to
each initiative. After conducting a thorough market analysis, the team made
numerous changes to the System benefit package, including:
• Restructuring their maternity package to make
out-of-pocket costs equal to those of competitors.
• Accelerating their 403(b) match to occur in Year 1
rather than Year 3.
• Accruing PTO from Day 1 rather than Day 90.
• Implementing a student loan repayment benefit of
$400 per month, up to a maximum of $20,000.
• Right-sizing tuition reimbursement programs to
favor the degrees in highest demand.
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Reprint from JUL 2017 PX Advisor
9