Retention has been on CHROs’ agendas for years. What stood out in 2026 is how far it has spread.
In Becker’s conversations with HR leaders this year, retention came up in discussions of well-being, Generation Z, development and how front-line pay is structured, making it the word that best defines how health system CHROs talk about their workforces.
Many CHROs named retention outright. In January, Jamie Payne, CHRO of Tulsa, Okla.-based St. Francis Health System, said leaders directly shape the employee experience, engagement and retention. Weeks later, Denver Hopkins, CHRO of Fayetteville, N.C.-based Cape Fear Valley Health System, named retention as one of the system’s two most pressing workforce challenges for 2026, alongside placing talent in hard-to-fill roles.
Others have specific results to point to. At San Diego-based Scripps Health, the voluntary retention rate climbed from 89% to 92% in a year. Eric Cole, corporate senior vice president of human resources, attributed the gain to targeted actions that improved the employee experience, as measured by the system’s employee listening survey. At Springfield, Ill.-based Hospital Sisters Health System, voluntary turnover fell 50% over two fiscal years, and about 400 former colleagues returned to the system in one year.
Some of the clearest gains have come among the youngest workers, a generation many leaders have found challenging to manage. At Duarte, Calif.-based City of Hope, Gen Z turnover dropped from 22.4% to 14.5% over two years. Rhonda Jordan, CHRO of Marlton, N.J.-based Virtua Health, said her system has always been committed to recruiting and retaining top talent, acknowledging the need to adjust that strategy to attract and retain Millennial and Gen Z employees.
How CHROs are getting there
If retention is the goal, CHROs were consistent about how to reach it. The phrase “employee experience” came up frequently in several separate conversations months apart. Mr. Cole used it in March, and City of Hope CHRO Joline Treanor used it in July to explain her system’s Gen Z results.
“I believe it stems from a broader focus on creating an employee experience where people feel connected to our mission, supported by their leaders and able to grow professionally,” Ms. Treanor said.
Well-being is one piece of that experience, and some systems are tying well-being investments directly to keeping staff. In February, CHROs described bringing previously siloed well-being efforts together under one enterprise strategy. At Tucson, Ariz.-based TMC Health, CHRO Alex Horvath said two registered nurse health coaches offer peer support based on their own bedside experience, a resource he estimated retains four to eight nurses a year.
For Ms. Treanor, being “able to grow professionally,” points to the other lever CHROs kept coming back to: development. Cyndy Donato, PhD, chief people and culture officer of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho-based Kootenai Health, said the system’s medical assistant apprenticeship programs support both access and retention by developing employees internally. Kristan Eaton, CHRO of Joplin, Mo.-based Freeman Health System, said workforce adaptability and growth will drive both recruitment and retention. Ms. Treanor added that many Gen Z employees care as much about growth and learning as they do about how their work connects to the mission.
The logic is simple: employees who can see a future inside an organization have less reason to look for one outside it.
That same thinking is now reaching compensation, one of HR’s most traditional levers. Some health systems are tying front-line raises to performance instead of attendance, and at least one CHRO describes the change as part of the same retention effort.
“When we think about our colleague retention strategies, we want to make sure that those who are doing exceptional work are rewarded as such,” said Thomas Ahr, senior vice president and CHRO of HSHS.
What it signals
Put together, these comments show retention is no longer one workforce goal among many. It is increasingly the measure of whether a workforce strategy is working. Hard-to-fill roles remain a challenge, but the question CHROs keep returning to is whether the people a system hired are still there a year later, and whether they want to be. That puts the responsibility on the whole organization, not on individual managers.
“The biggest misconception is that [turnover] is an individual leader’s problem,” Mr. Ahr said in July. “It is a system challenge, and we need to look at it that way.”
