Improve employee engagement to retain your workforce.

BACKGROUND: Turnover hurts patient care quality and is expensive to hospitals. Improved employee engagement could encourage employees to stay at their organization.

PURPOSE: The aim of the study was to test whether participants in an employee engagement program were less likely than nonparticipants to leave their job.

METHODS: Health care workers (primarily patient care technicians and assistants, n = 216) were recruited to participate in an engagement program that helps employees find meaning and connection in their work. Using human resources data, we created a longitudinal study to compare participating versus nonparticipating employees in the same job titles on retention time (i.e., termination risk).

FINDINGS: Participants were less likely to leave the hospital compared to nonparticipating employees (hazard ratio = 0.22, 95% CI [0.11, 0.84]). This finding remained significant after adjusting for covariates (hazard ratio = 0.37, 95% CI [0.17, 0.57]).

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Improving employee engagement resulted in employees staying longer at the hospital.