What today’s healthcare workers want from their employers
Burnout and the graying of the workforce are the latest challenges healthcare employers are grappling with — but there have been many challenges over the past 50 years.
What’s changed is the level of investment and the development of innovative approaches to tackle issues related to advancement opportunities, training, compensation and scheduling flexibility. Technology and artificial intelligence have changed some healthcare roles but the industry has been a consistent leader in the labor market, adding almost 700,000 jobs through the first 11 months of 2025.
To remain competitive, healthcare employers are turning to a variety of strategies to recruit and retain employees. Wages are at the top of the list. Sign-on bonuses for physicians have become expected.
The median national wage increase across all healthcare jobs for 2025 was 4.3%, up from 2.7% in 2024, according to a September report from healthcare consultant SullivanCotter.
Employers are finding that other perks and benefits, such as scheduling flexibility and tuition reimbursement, have grown in importance.
“Because the staffing crisis is so urgent, we use Band-aids like sign-on bonuses,” said Tess Michaels, CEO of Clasp, a company provides loans to healthcare students and connects them with potential employers that will help repay those loans. “But the problem is it doesn’t actually drive retention.”
Employees want training and room to grow
Staff are looking for opportunities to advance. Offering tuition reimbursement or employee-sponsored programs to assist those seeking to earn a higher degree or additional skills has become a popular recruitment and retention strategy.
Health systems also are working beyond their own four walls to create a pipeline to help fill different types of roles.
Houston-based Memorial Hermann launched the Health Education and Learning High School in 2024, in partnership with Aldine Independent School District in Texas. The program offers a high school education along with some clinical training for multiple roles. It is supported in part by a $31 million gift from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Students in the program are guaranteed a position at Memorial Hermann following graduation. President and CEO Dr. David Callender said the health system also has focused on expanding continuing education opportunities for employees.
“We continue to support the employees by providing time and money for them to pursue additional education,” Callender said. “It’s a little bit of a competitive process, you have to stay in it. You have to be successful with the educational course curriculum. But so far, experiences are that people are doing quite well. They’re very excited to have the opportunity, and it just makes them have a greater desire to stay within our system and move forward on their career path.”
Tuition and training support from employers could become even more necessary in the future.
The Education Department is weighing whether to exclude several healthcare professions, including advanced degree nurse such as nurse practitioners and nurse anesthetists, along with physician assistants, from its list of professional degrees. That would cap how much financial assistance students can receive through school loans and potentially disrupt the pipeline of potential healthcare workers.
Job flexibility has grown in importance
The roots of per diem, locum tenens and other on-demand staffing date back to the 1970s when nurses needed time off for maternity leave.
Based on the success of that approach, organizations began using staffing pools to support facilities beyond maternity leave — to cover vacations, strikes and times where hospitals had surges in patient volumes. Today there are numerous staffing companies working with providers.
Todd Walrath, CEO of ShiftMed, a healthcare staffing platform, said younger workers in particular are drawn to shift work, travel work opportunities and flexible scheduling.
“In 2020, zero nurses in the United States were Gen Z, in 2025 they [made] up 22% of nurses,” Walrath said. “They want the flexibility. They’re seeing people get laid off. They’re suspicious of big business. There’s no more social contract between companies and workers.”
Workers want more technology
Burnout has been an enduring challenge for healthcare workers, but more employers are turning to technology to help alleviate some stressors like administrative tasks.
Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, Missouri, created the Helen App, an AI-powered program for nurses to use to reduce administrative burden. Through the app, nurses can submit requests for help with tasks including supply delivery and patient admissions or discharges. The app routes the request to the right team.
The app was developed to help combat staff burnout, said Dr. Alejandro Quiroga, president and CEO of Children’s Mercy.
“What we have done is offset a lot of the tasks that are not clinical,” Quiroga said. “It has decreased the cognitive load for the nurses, improved the relationship between nurse and patients and saved nurses time — up to an hour per shift. We think that we can have improve that amount of time even further.”
New App for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Evaluation
You can access the app here:
https://apps.apple.com/app/id6753718476
