Josephine Sunset Home's Sweet Success

January 14, 2002

Dear Clint - Happy New Year!

We wanted to share our Josephine Sunset Home success story with you and thank you for the role you played in that success.

Becky O'Brian and I heard you speak on staff recruitment and retention at AAHSA in the fall of 1999. In January 2000, we brought you to Josephine to spend half a day with our newly formed recruitment and retention team!

By using what you taught us combined with our ongoing hard work, in two short years we've reduced turnover by 53%! NAC turnover in 2001 was one-half what it was in 2000 and our nursing department has not experienced a "staffing crisis" for over one-and-one-half years.

Yeah! Wow!

Here's what we learned from you and how we've applied it.

#1 To begin to improve turnover we quit looking at the problem as being "out there" - you know the "health care labor crisis". The real question is: "What are we doing or not doing that is negatively affecting turnover?"

#2 The problem is retention, not recruitment. When we looked at our numbers; we hired 144 people in 1999!

#3 We learned to ask: "Who are we losing, where, when, why?" We analyzed the numbers and found out:

- We were losing 45% of our employees before 90 days.
- We were losing another 35% before their 1st anniversary.
- Only 20% of our turnover were employees with more than one year of service.

#4 We asked: "Are the "wolves" eating our young?" Our turnover in the laundry and NOC shift in nursing was 153% even though three-quarters of these crews were our longest-term employees! We confronted this negative reality directly and told these employees, "We've replaced your whole crew one-and-one-half times last year, cut out the poor treatment of new employees or we'll just start fresh all together!"

The biggest realization for us was - we were responsible for our turnover problem. We were hiring, screening, and reference checking appropriately, but we weren't putting nearly enough energy and focus on orientation, training, and ongoing nurturing of new employees. Working with you and using your ideas were the best dollars we've ever spent!

Not many nursing homes can say, we have no current NAC openings!

I don't know what the industry averages are today, but our overall turnover was 26.5% in 2001 and we'll do even better in 2002!

Thanks Clint!

Sincerely,
Monica Mattson, Administrator
And all of us at Josephine Sunset Home