If your hospital struggles to attract and keep competent accounting staff, you’re not alone. Retaining accounting talent has historically been a challenge across the medical industry as a whole, and in recent years, medical accounting turnover rates have reached an all-time high. Accountants leave their positions at healthcare institutions for various reasons, with a lack of opportunities for career growth and inadequate compensation being among the most common.
Given these conditions, healthcare institutions need to work harder than ever to create a working environment that supports permanent employment for their accountants and other financial professionals. Long-term employees can perform more efficient accounting for hospitals and healthcare providers because they’re familiar with the numbers that are specific to their institution. Low turnover rates also minimize the need to constantly recruit and train new staff, which can be expensive as well as time-consuming.
Fortunately, keeping effective accounting employees is easier than you think. The following tips can help your healthcare institution hire the best accountants and keep them onboard for the long term.
Ask Your Accounting Staff What They Need
To address the problem of employee turnover at any institution, company leadership needs to understand what causes it in the first place. As turnover problems tend to be systemic in nature, the best way to remedy them is simply to ask your team members what they need from a long-term working environment. Once you know for certain what your employees want instead of guessing, you can begin to adjust your operations accordingly.
When soliciting feedback from your accounting staff, it’s important to encourage their honesty by emphasizing that the request comes without strings attached and that they need not fear reprisal for negative input. It’s only when you allow your employees to be candid about their dissatisfaction that you can begin tackling the root of the problem. Is the primary issue inadequate compensation? Career stagnation? Burnout? Once you’ve identified what your employees need, you can begin figuring out ways to offer it to them.
Put More Effort into Recruiting
One of the most effective ways to retain accounting staff and keep turnover low is to ensure that you hire the best fit for your organization the first time. To achieve this, your healthcare institution may need to invest more time, effort, and resources into the recruiting process.
When interviewing job candidates, for example, encourage your hiring managers to pay close attention to their qualifications and references. Harmonious relationships with past managers and co-workers are generally a good sign that a candidate will thrive in a long-term position. You’ll also want to ask about how settled your candidates are into their lives outside of work, as relocation is one of the most prominent causes of turnover should this ever be a factor.
Be Willing to Compromise
While it’s not practical to bend over to every request your employees make, it will ultimately benefit your institution to meet their personal needs when possible. Employees without work flexibility are more susceptible to feeling trapped and burnt out, which only increases turnover rates. By contrast, employees who feel heard and accommodated by their employers are likely to be more satisfied with their jobs and therefore less likely to seek new opportunities elsewhere.
Workplace flexibility looks different in every institution, so as mentioned above, it’s best to have an open dialogue with your accounting staff about how your institution can meet their needs. Extended lunch breaks and hybrid work arrangements that allow employees to work from home a few days a week are common strategies for many hospitals and healthcare providers.
Offer Appropriate Compensation
It takes a lot of work for professional accountants to secure the expertise and certifications needed to do their jobs well, and they expect to be compensated accordingly. Nowadays, accountants are also expected to be skilled at handling data and modern technology and to contribute significantly to an organization’s financial strategy. Hence, any healthcare institution should know what their accounting staff’s skills and labor are worth and be prepared to pay them accordingly.
It’s important to implement regular salary increases and to review employee benefits and salaries at your hospital to ensure that your accountants remain satisfied and well-compensated in the long term. Keeping yourself informed about what other hospitals pay their accounting staff and the current national salary average will also help you adjust your compensation appropriately.
Get Your Finance Teams on the Same Page
Any organization benefits from a united and harmonious team, but it’s especially important for accounting departments to be aligned on departmental and organizational objectives. Have your finance department define their goals clearly, and ensure that each team member has a clear idea of how they are meant to help reach those goals.
You may also want to look into digital accounting solutions that can help your finance department automate manual, repetitive tasks. This not only saves your institution valuable time and money, but it also empowers your accountants to take on more challenging and value-adding work. This approach will both make your accounting more efficient and boost employee satisfaction and motivation.
A happy, high-performing, committed accounting team is vital for the long-term fiscal health of any health organization. Hospitals and healthcare providers can keep their accountants on staff by taking strategic steps to hire the right people, compensate them fairly, and accommodate their needs.
