While nearly all long-term care administrators and nursing leaders find their work meaningful and their contributions valued by co-workers, many wish they had better support from bosses and are looking for jobs elsewhere.
Those findings come courtesy of the exclusive 2019 McKnight’s Mood of the Market Survey. More than 250 skilled nursing administrators and nursing leaders responded to digital inquiries in April to shape findings.
Nearly all respondents (98%) said their work was meaningful — 83% said “very meaningful” and 15% said “somewhat meaningful.” But nearly one-third (31%) also said they had seriously considered quitting their job during the previous three months.
“That’s 98% who support and believe in the work. There’s a lot of people in this field because of the mission and what we’re doing,” said Mark Heston of Heston & Associates. Previously the human resources director for skilled nursing chain LCS, he currently consults across a wide array of industries on leadership and human resources management.
Nursing leaders (85%) were a little stronger in the “very meaningful” response rate than their administrator (82%) counterparts.
By a wider margin, more nursing leaders (43%) said they had “seriously considered quitting” their job in the previous three months, compared to administrators (30%). [See chart below.]
Heston said that given a recent Gallup poll showed about 60% of workers have either quit or have seriously considered quitting their jobs, the long-term care numbers are “pretty good.”
He also noted that the competition to fill positions could have had a hand in the results.
“We know that DONs and administrators are in high, high demand. Chances are most of the good ones have had one, two, three or maybe a dozen calls from a recruiter in the last three months,” Heston noted. “It’s human nature that unless you’re just really happy where you’re at, you listen to a headhunter.”
Other survey results support the idea that nursing leaders carry plenty of value in this hot economy.
Most notably, 46% of nurse leaders rated supervisors’ help with opportunities for advancement as “excellent” while only 17.7% of administrators agreed. [See chart on Page 21.]
Overall, many survey respondents weren’t expecting much help from their bosses, and they anticipated even less from their employers. Location and company size influenced responses.
Nearly two in five respondents said career-advancement opportunities in their companies were less than good.
On a related question, more than one-fourth (11.9%) of respondents said they trusted their supervisors “just a little” or “none at all” when it comes to presenting opportunities to advance.
Opportunities to move up vary.
“If you’re a DON and you don’t want to be an administrator, you could be topped out,” Heston said. Or administrators may not want to be executive directors, he added.
Salary satisfaction
Respondents said they are generally satisfied with their current positions — and their compensation.
Administrators reported relatively high overall levels of pay satisfaction — with 23% at “very well paid” and 47% at “somewhat well.” Nursing directors expressed more in the top slot — 26.8% at “very satisfied,” along with 35% at “somewhat well.”
“Your average or better rating for pay is 88 percent. Those are numbers you only see when people are happy with where they are,” said Paul Gavejian, managing director of Total Compensation Solutions in Armork, NY.
Top-line numbers may be stagnant or decreasing while salaries are increasing, noted Matt Leach, a senior consultant with Total Compensation Solutions.
“For these folks, money isn’t the biggest motivator,” he added. “But boards have to be careful. I think the results would drastically change if respondents start to think they’re being cheated or taken advantage of.”
Administrators reported the highest levels of satisfaction with their jobs: 59% picked “very satisfied,” while 32% chose “somewhat satisfied.” Nursing directors were close behind in aggregate, with 46% at “very satisfied” and 43% at “somewhat satisfied.”
“If you wanted a different job and you’re not satisfied now, it’s relatively easy to find another one,” Leach said. “We’ve seen this in similar surveys in other industries and other periods.”
Changes to help
When asked what one change would most improve job satisfaction, “more training or learning opportunities” led the list (22%), followed by “higher salary” (18%) and “more paid” time off (15%). [See chart above.]
“More respect” was mentioned most often under the “other” category.
Experts were most intrigued that less than 5% said “a new boss” since survey findings in various industries have shown that “workers don’t quit jobs, they quit a boss.”
Feeling in control
Long-term care administrators and directors of nursing also said they have strong feelings of control over their work. Perhaps more importantly, they also expressed confidence that their colleagues value their contributions.
Nearly 88% said they felt valued either “a great deal” (48.2%) or “a moderate amount” (39.5%). A relatively small percentage of respondents said they felt like their contributions were valued only “a little” (9.9%) or “not at all” (2.4%).
“The real value proposition here is 12 percent of respondents are sort of in that ‘negative’ zone and 88 percent are in the ‘positive’ zone, so they feel like they are making a good contribution,” Gavejian said. “A company wants to spend a lot of time making people feel good about their colleagues, or training and other things that show they’re continuing to try to improve the organization.”
About 52% of administrators said they felt they were valued “a great deal,” compared to 43.9% of nursing leaders feeling the same.
Findings indicated that the long-term care leaders didn’t think they were being micromanaged.
Tech optimism
Nearly one-third of the directors of nursing and almost one-fourth of administrators included in the survey said they feel “ahead of the curve” when it comes to their ability to keep up with new technology and innovations at work.
Roughly the same percentages said they don’t trust their supervisors to get them ready for nursing homes’ future tech challenges.
Overall, more than 92% of respondents said they were personally either “ahead of the curve (28%) or “average” (64.4%) when it comes to their tech prowess at work.
Nearly one-third (31%), however, said they had “just a little” (14%) or no confidence at all (16%) in their supervisor’s ability to prepare them for future tech changes.
Nurse leaders were seven percentage points ahead of administrators in personal tech confidence and about three percentage points more confident about their supervisors’ tech prep abilities.
“I would have expected a higher ‘falling behind’ or ‘below average’ percentage,” Leach said. “Then again, the people who say ‘falling behind’ might know the most — they know the train is leaving the station without them.”
Nonetheless, “if only 8% are saying they don’t think they’re behind, they’re probably not terribly dissatisfied at work,” Heston pointed out.
