While increasing base pay for nurses is an obvious strategy that can help staff retention hospitals and health systems, it often is an expense these provider organizations cannot afford.
Towers Watson, through research, has found three other reward options that nurses value just as much as a pay increase, but that cost the organization a lot less.
Patrick Kulesa, global research director in Towers Watson's organizational surveys and insights practice, laid out the three rewards in a 2012 video. Those three surprising rewards are as follows:
1. Flexible work arrangements. Managing shift work better "is really of as much value to nurses…as changes in their base pay," Mr. Kulesa said.
2. Additional training opportunities. This can mean meeting requirements they need for certain types of accreditation. "The research is telling us that managing that issue effectively, giving the nurses more opportunity in this training area, is of just as much value to them and it has just as much impact on their engagement and retention as changes to base pay," he explains.
3. Career development opportunities. Providing nurses with more clarity about how they can grow and advance in their careers also has great value to them and positively impacts engagement and retention.
These three rewards are "a range of nonfinancial, low-cost issues that organizations can focus on get a lot of return at less cost to them" than increasing base pay, Mr. Kulesa concluded.