We have been working in Nurse and HCA recruitment for over 18 years and question that continuously comes up is pay, and are we paying enough.
Now this is a legitimate question but using pay as an attraction and retention tool does not work, especially when we are talking about retention.
“People join companies, but they leave managers”
To try and prove my point I am going to share the date from research completed in the USA which gave participants 4 different rewards for completing a given task, they participated in the task 3 times over a period of time and upon each completion they were given one of the following rewards.
The participants were lead to believe the research was related to the task and not the reward, I won’t bore you with the details but I believe you will find the results shocking.
In the questionnaire they completed before beginning the tasks, they were asked what was their favourite chocolate bar, and this is the bar they were given.
Four rewards
- Large Financial ($15)
- Small Financial ($1)
- Chocolate Bar
- Thanks
In the questionnaire they completed before beginning the tasks, they were asked what was their favourite chocolate bar, and this is the bar they were given.
It should be noted that when we say thanks we are not talking about an impersonal thankyou as someone left the room, we are talking about a personal social contact, for example
“Thank you so much for taking part in the study, and for your commitment, you did really well and what we are learning from you participation is going to help us make a real difference in people’s live, really I can’t thank you enough”
This sincere, genuine thank you was delivered at every stage of the study.
The table below shows the average number of completed task for each category in each trial.
| Reward | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 6 | % Change |
| $15 | 159 | 141 | 130 | -18% |
| $1 | 148 | 136 | 134 | -9.50% |
| Chocolate Bar | 156 | 150 | 151 | -3.21% |
| Thanks | 178 | 207 | 211 | 18.5 |
- Had Higher productivity in completing the task
- Enjoyed the activity more than the other participants
- Were more mentally engaged
- Greater loyalty (only 4% absence where the it was 19% across the other groups)
So how does this relate to you, well I want you to ask yourself two questions
- Do you have a staff retention problem?
- When did you last take the time to go out of your way to thank a staff member for something they did?
“Mary, I noticed you did two extra shifts last week, and know that had to put pressure on areas of your life outside of the Home, I just want to let you know I really appreciate everything you are doing here and trust me, lots of people notice what a difference you make, please let me know if I am ever asking you to work too many shifts, and thank you for everything you are doing”
“John, Bills family came to me yesterday and told me since their dad has been cared for by you, he seems much happier and he told them he looks forward to his chats with you, I really just want to say thank you so much for making a real difference for Bill and his family.”
“Marta, I know you have only been her for a few weeks now, but I just wanted to let you know you are doing really well and I am hearing very good things about you, really I just want to thank you for everything you are doing and I am really glad you decided to work with us.”
“Alan, I was speaking to Mary and she told me that the support and training you are giving her is really helping her settle in, I just want to say thank you for everything you are doing here, and I know Mary wanted to thank you too.”
So if you want to increase productivity, improve job satisfaction, have more engaged employees and dramatically improve retention, just say thank you.
I left the best till last, it makes you feel good too.