Employee retention is a top priority for many ASCs as they face workforce shortages and a competitive labor market.
Andrew Weiss, administrator of Voorhees, N.J.-based Summit Surgical Center, joined Becker’s to discuss the culture and strategies that have helped his center keep staff turnover in the single digits.
Editor’s note: This response was edited lightly for clarity and flow.
Question: What specific strategies that you found the most effective in improving retention at your ASC?
Andrew Weiss: It’s a culture that you have to really foster. You need to make sure that you’re supporting your employees and what they really want — with stability, paychecks, etc. Healthcare is very competitive. ASCs sometimes have limits on what we can offer, as far as salaries. We’re often competing with healthcare systems, which could be a pay differential. Just having no nights and no weekends and no call doesn’t always fit the bill anymore to attract employees, you have to go a little bit above and beyond.
It’s all related. As we try to provide the highest patient experience, it starts with focusing on your employees. Like Richard Branson said — the customer comes second. You have to give priority to your employees and their needs and support them. And again, it’s not always just about compensation. I think creating an environment where you have stability. A lot of centers will focus so hard on numbers, on staffing numbers and costs. They look at mandatory flexing or changing schedules with a mindset like: ‘Well, we’re not busy, we have no cases, everyone has to go home.’ Most of us don’t have the luxury of being able to adjust our expenses on a sliding scale based on how busy our employer is. So you really have to rethink those strategies to create that stability for employees to feel secure.
Q: What is your strategy for being able to care for the employee in that way while still being very sharp on costs?
AW: You have to remember what the cost of turnover really is. I’ve read that it can be around $60,000 to recruit, hire, train and onboard an RN. You got to really think about that strategically. It’s much cheaper, much more efficient to work with the staff that you have, and develop a retention plan rather than take actions that will ultimately lead to turnover and unleash those costs on you.
We kind of learned some lessons from COVID-19, although some of us forgot as quickly as we learned. But we’ve kept turnover at Summit Surgical Center in the single digits, which is just unheard of in any business. During COVID, we kept everybody working, some centers could afford to do that. Others couldn’t, and I get it. I’ve heard stories of physicians taking pay cuts or not taking a paycheck at all in order to keep their practices and their centers open. But we’ve always maintained that the loyalty that our staff really got us through that crisis. It works both ways.
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