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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Health Care

They are talking about this topic: Workforce Trends & Challenges

 

The quotes below are about this issue:
Retirement: Many nurses are approaching retirement age, but are delaying retirement. This makes it difficult for employers to strategically hire and train new employees in preparation for a wave of retirements. This, too, fuels concern about an increase in shortages of experienced workers.

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"Also the aging workforce, they are on their feet a lot, so we are trying to get more ergonomic-type workstations for people and it's difficult. And we are also seeing older students coming in, so it's not just people that are retiring, it's also the people who are getting into their second or third career. We are starting to see that. We've hired more people that are in their late 40s or early 50s lately. And they are doing phlebotomy, so they are running the floors a lot. They are covering anywhere from five to eight miles a day by just running. So, you have to look at some of those items. We are looking at some of those items." Central
"I know in our workforce, we're seeing more and more seasoned nurses, moving towards retirement. Nurses in the 55- to 65-year-old age range." Metro
"I think when we all start retiring, we're going to need a really big influx of replacements." Northwest
"If you took a survey today, probably the average age of a working nurse is 47- to 52-years-old. And that's both RNs and LPNs, I believe. A lot of times, in the nurse's aide population, people don't work that long because it's a physically demanding job and people often go back to school and go into something else after a particular age. There are some that work their entire career in that area though. But when you think about the number of nurses that are going to be retiring, that challenges us to think about doing things differently. Maybe some sort of a team model so that we can manage the number of people that we take care of, and help the new people learn what these new systems are. But replacing, if we think about today and ten years ago, replacing the number of people we have, then that's one story. But I can remember when I started as a nurse, I think the average age was maybe 30-something years old. Now, it's the late 40s. And that makes a big difference when you think about five or ten years down the road. How are we going to care for people? And how many people will we have to have to be able to fill that need?" Southeast
"Nursing leaders right now are a pretty aged group. So, we've got people that can't do budgeting, can't do this, can't do that. How are we going to replace those leaders?" Metro
"One of our issues is that some of our older workers are wanting to ratchet back on their FTE, and so it becomes a little bit difficult to have more full-time positions open to recruit new ones. So, those are some of the internal challenges that we have. Because people don't want to retire as early as maybe they used to. They want to stay in the workforce longer, and so we're sort of struggling through some of those types of things.

And for the lab, while there are Minnesota programs, we actually run a clinical site, too, for the lab. But we get them out of North Dakota. They come through [MnSCU college] and so the collaboration that we have, they work through that. But we're getting them from other states as well. For us, it's really an issue. It's not about growing the number of positions. For us, it's more about replacement. When so many people think that there are lots of jobs out there, it's not because there are so many more positions that are being added in those fields—I think it's an issue of retirements or people moving or things like that. But it's not because we're trying to grow those specific categories and positions across our organization."
Southeast
"One of the concerns that I have is the numbers look very good right now, but we know that things will change. The main thing that is being pushed right now is science and technology. So, as those kids graduate and go into college and find those fields—where does health care fall in that situation? We are going to have the people that are in health care right now that are getting ready to retire and there is going to be a freak-out because there will be a shortage of employees because now all of these kids are going into the engineering jobs and health care is being left behind." Southeast
"One of the things as far as workforce needs for the future, for the laboratory, we have our professional organizations looking at the retirement factor. They're predicting that there's going to be a real large spike in need across the nation. We're trying to gear up and prepare for that. A lot of people only look five years in advance. That's a seven to ten year thing that's going to explode. I'm assuming that is similar for nursing and many of these other categories. Many of the practitioners are older so that's the same thing for faculty. Faculty members are closer to sixty." Southeast
"Our problem really truly is the new people coming in. We are backfilling. And, as I mentioned, we have an aging population, a huge aging population. Backfilling all of those positions in the next several years is going to be very difficult because we will not have the capacity to train them the way that we want to with the number we are going to have to train." Central
"So, we can't quit producing the replacement folks, but they aren't getting jobs as fast as they probably expected because the older folks aren't retiring as expected." Northeast
"Some are laser-focused on how quickly they can get out the door to retirement. I mean, one is actually studying billing and coding because she wants to work from home, so she can retire at her cabin. So, I'm going to have a huge turnover in the next five years, and they all like to point that out." Metro
"Well, one of the things that we've noticed is that all of the forecasts for shortages of nurses—or shortages of this or that—have come to pass much more slowly than we anticipated, probably because of the economy. People are working longer than folks used to and that's not just in health care and that's not just in nursing. That's true of the aging workforce, across the board, in this country—they're staying at work. Their 401ks took a dip and various different things. We're living longer, so they may not have enough money to cover those extra years. So, people are staying at work, including the RNs that we forecasted a shortage of. It's a funny thing because we know it's going to happen. You can't keep working forever. So, eventually, the people that we expected to retire will retire, but we don't know when." Northeast
"When you look down the road it's not just what we're doing or what the long-term care facility is doing, but it's the new development coming into town or in the area. Concerns that are going to spread. Market saturation is a potential there. You know, spreading our workforce pretty thin. Potentially, down the road, it's a concern." Southeast