Boosting Healthcare Retention with PTO

The healthcare industry employs approximately 14 percent of the overall U.S. workforce, yet is facing the largest labor shortage ever, with one in five workers leaving the industry due to burnout. In fact, 80% of healthcare workers suffer from some degree of burnout.  

As a healthcare provider, the fight for talent is tougher than ever. Employees expect more from their employers, and the budget doesn’t always have the flexibility for pay raises.  

Because of this, healthcare organizations typically put a greater emphasis on employee benefits, but how can an organization provide robust benefits that fit a wide variety of employee needs without increasing costs? This is where innovative solutions like convertible PTO come in.  

Convertible PTO gives hospitals and healthcare systems the option to meet their employees where they’re at, offering them benefits that meet evolving needs while reducing balance sheet liability. 

Convertible benefits for healthcare workers  

Healthcare and hospital systems usually offer a generous PTO policy. However, most of that PTO goes to waste since healthcare workers often don’t have the bandwidth to take off due to labor shortages. This results in most employees carrying significant PTO balances year-over-year, leaving millions of dollars of accrued PTO sitting on the balance sheet. Not only do companies see huge balance sheet liabilities, but large amounts of accrued but unused PTO balances lead to employee dissatisfaction and retention challenges. 

Additionally, healthcare workers often don’t have as high salaries as other industries, so organizations instead look to provide more appealing benefits packages to attract and retain talent. Many organziations classify as non-profit organizations, so every dollar spent on employee benefits needs to be used wisely.  

Healthcare employees most often rate PTO, health insurance and a retirement savings plan among the three most important employee benefits.  

Hence, healthcare organizations and hospitals should strive to create benefits packages that convey a mix of tangible and intangible rewards and benefits to prospective and current employees. The packages should be holistic and meet the needs and expectations of the workforce.  

Flexible benefits, such as convertible PTO, offer an option for hospitals and healthcare organizations to appeal to employee demands while not incurring any additional costs for finance departments. It offers the healthcare industry a way to show they value and care about the important work these workers are doing and giving them a different way to be rewarded for the benefit they earned. 

How PTO Exchange closes the gap  

With PTO Exchange, healthcare systems and hospitals can support employees’ financial wellness initiatives with convertible PTO. Self-directed PTO allows healthcare workers to convert their unused PTO into financial wellness benefits such as cash out, student loan payments, retirement contributions, and more.  

This solution offers flexibility and options for a multi-generational workforce. It empowers employees to choose their own solutions and create personalized benefits packages that address their unique set of needs, whether its financial wellness or social well-being.  

Because healthcare organizations find PTO Exchange so compelling, their employees account for the highest percentage of active users on the PTO Exchange platform, totaling just over 40%. It’s no surprise that more than 43% of the dollars exchanged have come from healthcare employees.  

Healthcare sees some of the highest transaction amounts by hours across all clients, averaging 48.38 hours per exchange. And these exchanges are almost exclusively financial wellness transactions. In fact, over 99% of transactions by healthcare employees have been for cash payments, retirement contributions, HSA contributions, or education expenses. 

Benefit cost savings through convertible PTO programs 

Healthcare organizations need benefit programs that are both high-impact and low-cost. With convertible PTO, organizations can structure their program to create cost savings, improve their credit rating, or offset the cost of other benefits programs and/or premiums.  

PTO liabilities are immense and tend to weigh down the balance sheets of healthcare organizations of all sizes. Solutions like PTO Exchange can help organizations reduce that liability before year-over-year salary increases cause that liability to expand naturally. And beyond that, Finance Departments can leverage convertible PTO as a way to put much-needed funds back into the bottom-line. 

Download our new ebook, “Retention Rx: The Power of Convertible PTO in Healthcare” to learn more about how healthcare organizations can implement convertible PTO programs.