The Challenge:
The senior living industry has always faced recruiting and retention challenges, but the pressures of the pandemic and a tightening labor market makes filling open positions even more difficult for today’s providers. Amidst these challenges, one Central Pennsylvania-based rehabilitation and skilled nursing facility sought perspective into how its wages compared with market rates for various nursing and administrative roles. To enhance its ability to retain and attract talent, the facility’s leadership team wanted to take stock and make the necessary adjustments to its compensation structure, as well as consider other tactics and benefits to distinguish themselves in the market and support long-term growth goals.
This facility’s relationship with RKL had expanded over the years to include audit work, Medicare cost reporting and, most recently, Provider Relief Funds and Employee Retention Tax Credits through coronavirus relief legislation. Now, it turned to RKL’s Human Capital Management team for a compensation analysis.
The RKL Approach:
RKL’s HR advisors and data analysts took a phased approach to address the facility’s priorities. First, they conducted a market compensation analysis to compare its current pay ranges to market estimates. This phase involved a review of job descriptions, interviews with key leadership and evaluation of compensation-related policies and documents to understand the facility’s pay philosophy. Using comparable market data, the RKL team then developed salary percentiles for each of its 48 positions.
These salary percentiles fed into the next phase – compensation structure evaluation and design. RKL proposed new groupings for wages and new pay ranges for each group. With a new compensation structure finalized, RKL also provided recommendations to facility leadership on how to roll out the compensation adjustment to employees, how to make future compensation decisions and how to integrate a new position.
The Results:
The facility’s existing compensation structure was fragmented, unaligned with the market and represented an obstacle to their recruiting efforts. RKL produced a new structure to bring rates up to market and provide flexibility moving forward. This statistically sound and evidence-based model allows leaders to make fair, justified and quantifiable hiring and compensation decisions for existing employees and new hires.
To position this new compensation approach for long-term success, RKL continues to work with the facility to integrate relative market positioning into performance evaluations and enhance the efficiency and transparency of that process. Facility leadership reports increased hiring confidence and improved employee sentiment knowing that wages are supported by market data.
To learn more about how RKL can drive real results for your organization, send us a message or contact one of our local offices.
