By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
How many of you have seriously considered leaving your role? I recently asked this question during a session with nurse managers, and I was not surprised to see 80% of the hands in the audience go up. While we are not seeing massive turnover in the nurse manager ranks year over year, the turnover rates among newer managers within their first four years of leadership have increased. CNOs tell me that they can see their managers struggling in this turbulent healthcare environment and want to implement the strategies that will be most helpful in retention.
That brings me to the recently released “Trends and Innovations in Nurse Manager Retention“ a collaborative effort between Laudio and AONL. The report is on insights from Laudio’s platform, which includes data on more than 200,000 frontline employers and AONL-led interviews with nine nurse managers.
Their key findings include the following:
- Nurse managers are most likely to exit management and return to a frontline team member role within their organization within their first four years as managers. On average, the annual management exit rate for those in their first few years on the job is between 10% and 12%.
- The average annual nurse manager organizational exit rate is 7.5%, though it can be as high as 12% for managers with around three years of experience.
- Nurse manager turnover is disruptive to staff. It is associated with a 2—to 4 percentage point increase in average RN turnover in the year following the transition.
- Most managers (89% of the leaders interviewed) rated a healthy work environment as their top priority, focusing on physical and psychological safety. This was followed by promoting leadership development, early identification and development of future leaders, and addressing the complexity of the manager role.
- Managers wanted more flexibility regarding their schedules and the structure of their roles. This includes a four-day workweek, job sharing, and more administrative support when the manager is absent.
One interesting finding in the Laudio data set is that 50% of nurse managers have 3.5 years or less of experience, with the most common tenure being one year (21%). They are early in their leadership careers, and there is a significant risk that many won’t stay past the four-year mark. When nurse manager turnover occurs, the most likely replacement is a frontline nurse working on the unit (37% of the time) or an assistant manager (20% of the time). This speaks to the need to develop strong leadership bench strength by investing in emerging leader programs.
The report recommends that nurse executives focus on four key areas to promote nurse manager retention:
- Ensure a healthy work environment
- Promote leadership development
- Identify and develop future leaders early
- Address manager role complexity
While none of these recommendations are new, the report highlights a pressing need to address them to avoid future nurse manager turnover. Many nurse leaders are currently working on strategic priorities for 2025. Nurse managers are the linchpins for staff recruitment, retention, engagement, and achievement of performance metrics, so addressing their needs is a wise investment to improve many other aspects of nursing practice.
© emergingrnleader.com 2024
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