Employers Strive To Retain Aging Workers

Large healthcare organizations make it their business to retain employees, including those who want to switch to less demanding jobs before retirement.

Whether their jobs are physically taxing or not, lots of people look to make a switch at some time in their career. Last year, 92 percent of the workers who visited Fairview Health Services' career counselors were planning for the future of their careers. The rest had more immediate health or family concerns, reports Laura Beeth, Fairview's director of talent management.

Nursing yields lots of options

Options for workers depend on their current positions. Nursing is one of the most flexible while others may require more training to make a switch.

"Nurses and other health care professionals have many opportunities to either increase their hours or decrease their hours based on their lifestyle or whatever is going on with their career cycle," says Beeth. "That's pretty common."

Working for a large healthcare organization yields more opportunities for workers who want to ease into retirement, according to Kari Olson Finnegan, director of employee occupational health and safety for Park Nicollet Health Services.

Park Nicollet helps hospital staff nurses transition into positions in education, medical information, case management and ambulatory clinics. In less skilled positions such as patient transport within a hospital, more training might be needed to make a change. "We can work to help them enhance their skill base through our education area to move to the next level, if that's what they wish to do," says Olson Finnegan. "There doesn't always need to be more education. It's a matter of a person really evaluating what they have in done their life and what skills do they have that can transfer to another type of position."

The aging workforce poses challenges throughout healthcare, but health systems are becoming more flexible in meeting workers' needs, according to Beeth. "We've got to figure out how to keep people longer, how to work with them if they want to work shorter shifts or not all year, or fewer days per week," she says.

"Within nursing itself, it's being looked at nationwide, how to keep that nursing knowledge in the workforce but still create an environment where those individuals can still be useful and succeed," adds Bill Johnson, RN, a Fairview workforce development specialist. "I don't think we're far enough along that we have all the answers yet."

Nancy Crotti is a freelance writer who lives in St. Paul.