Grant Thornton, one of the world’s largest professional services networks, recently released its State of Work in America survey, which asked 500 health care employees what they thought of working in health care. The results from the survey were largely negative, as health care workers were found to be worsening in mental, financial and physical health over the past year.
In an industry facing a massive nurse shortage, workers repeatedly indicated that their top reason for leaving their jobs was because of not feeling valued by their organization. Health care workers’ stress over employee shortages also “dominate responses” within the survey.
According to Kim Jacoby, Grant Thornton people and organization director, mental and emotional stress have been the largest factors in the health care industry this past year.
“That was found to be the top cause of burnout among health care workers,” Jacoby told Grant Thornton senior manager of human capital services. “We also found that their mental and emotional stress has actually gotten worse in the past 12 months.”
When it came down to determining what has been making so many health care workers quit their jobs, the survey revealed that employees are not happy with their wages or their employer’s perception of them.
“The top two items for health care workers were that they don’t feel valued and that wages aren’t keeping up with inflation,” Jacoby said. “And we say that many employees on the survey do not feel that they’re fairly paid for the contributions that they’re making to the organization’s success, and that they don’t feel like their pay is linked to their performance.”
It’s a problem that exacerbates itself. As more health care workers leave the industry, more health care workers feel overwhelmed and overworked from the worker shortage.
“And a lot of the reasoning behind that is the shortage is causing people to have to work more than their job,” Grant Thornton human capital services principal Sharon Whittle told Edwards. “They may have to work someone else’s job too for a while, or pick up part of someone else’s job. And so they don’t feel, many times, fairly compensated when they’re having to put in more hours and more effort.”
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