Communications Strategies to Attract Nurses in Senior Care

According to the World Health Organization, the aging population is expected to double by 2050. In response to this projected growth, players in the senior care industry are looking to expand their workforce. But despite these efforts, staffing attrition in senior care facilities remains high, with widespread burnout on the rise and 900,000 nurses expected to leave the profession by 2027.

Initially—and especially during the pandemic—many facilities turned to travel nursing to fill staffing gaps. While travel nursing remains critical to the sector, senior care facilities have sought to reduce labor costs and maintain a more permanent employee base. Now, facilities are primarily focused on hiring their own and providing continuity of care that aligns with a patient-centric approach.

Understanding what nurses value

To keep nurses in the field, senior care providers first need to understand nurses’ unique values and motivations.

The Bliss Group conducted audience research to gain insight into the core factors that incentivize nurses to apply to certain healthcare companies. This research included collecting and analyzing data from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and review sites such as Indeed between December 2021 and January 2023.

Based on the analysis, we found that purpose-driven work, peer-to-peer relationships, a positive and supportive culture and compensation and benefits were the top factors that drive nurses to pursue a career at a given company.

By conveying these values through an integrated marketing approach, senior care facilities can attract and retain top nursing talent. Storytelling is the way forward.

Purpose-driven work

Nurses are primarily drawn to their work for one simple reason: to make a difference in people’s lives. Beyond the call to care, nurses want to build long-term relationships with their patients and residents. These relationships give nurses a sense of purpose, adding meaning to the long shifts, painstaking decisions and sometimes hazardous conditions in which they work.

Emergency rooms and outpatient care settings naturally experience more patient turnover, preventing nurses from building bonds with their patients. Senior care facilities are comparably stable healthcare settings, housing the same patients and residents for a more extended period of time.

To attract and retain nurses, facilities should spotlight the nurse-resident bonds across multiple channels, including their website and social media platforms. These stories should illustrate the longstanding relationships nurses have cultivated with their facility’s residents, as well as capture the ways in which these nurses find personal fulfillment at work. Taking this storytelling a step further, facilities can demonstrate the impact their nurses have had on their patients and residents and the broader organization.

Content with images, compelling quotes and personalized details tends to garner more engagement.

Peer-to-peer relationships

Our audience research shows that when nurses are happy about where they work, they share their experiences with other nurses. Good co-worker relationships are also the number one reason why nurses stay with their employer, according to Nurse Recruitment Experts’ Nurse Retention Survey. Nurses lean on colleagues for solace and support, as these bonds help them reduce stress, improve productivity and feel overall happier at work.

Nurses also rely on other nurses to inform their decision-making about where they want to work, and many turn to online forums via Facebook and Reddit to share their work-life experiences.

This information-sharing necessitates organizations to foster a company culture that encourages camaraderie. One way facilities can convey this value is by leveraging nurse ambassadors to champion the organization’s cause. Ambassadors should share their positive experiences working at the facility and their relationships with fellow nurses on their personal social channels. Senior care facilities should amplify these stories through blog content and social channels, highlighting employee milestones, accomplishments and close working relationships.

Positive and supportive culture

Long hours and staffing shortages continue to contribute to higher stress in the nursing profession, with 32 percent reporting that they felt burnt out in 2023. More than ever, facilities must demonstrate that they provide a stable and supportive work culture.

Senior care facilities, which offer more steady and predictable hours than hospitals and outpatient care settings, should leverage marketing communications to highlight their nurses’ relatively steady day-to-days at the facility. One way of conveying this stability is to solicit reviews from happy employees with a proactive online review campaign, directing nurses to employee review sites such as Indeed and Glassdoor.

Facilities should also lean into social media to showcase their supportive company culture. Posting company events, nurse promotions, mental health and wellness initiatives and employee appreciation spotlights can impress upon nurses that the organization values its nurses and their overall well-being.

Compensation and benefits

Combined with feelings of burnout, nurses feel overworked and underpaid, and like all members of the workforce, they seek jobs with competitive compensation and benefits. Given their notoriously long shifts, nurses are particularly drawn to benefits that allow for flexibility, as well as opportunities to upskill, further their education and receive other perks.

Senior care facilities, which offer considerably lower-stress environments than emergency services settings, should highlight their schedules as well as nurse-resident ratios on career platforms including Indeed, Glassdoor and LinkedIn.

Organizations should also leverage these platforms, as well as social media channels, online forums and owned career pages to highlight their workplace benefits. Including specific details about compensation packages, opportunities for upskilling and promotion, flexible work arrangements and other benefits are more enticing and likely to attract top talent.

Telling stories about upward mobility—for instance, a certified nursing assistant working their way up to director of nursing—are not only inspirational, but they also demonstrate a workplace’s growth potential.

As the aging population grows, the senior care industry is expected to surge in demand, driving a need for more nurses.

LinkedIn data suggests that nursing candidates interact with their future employers 29 times, on average, and vet their prospects for six months before their hiring date. These findings underscore the need for senior care facilities to create multiple touchpoints with nurses.

Marketing professionals can support their senior care clients’ nurse recruitment and retention efforts by leveraging analytics and audience insights to shape highly targeted campaigns.

In order to attract top talent, senior care providers will need to demonstrate that they understand and nurture nurses’ values—because when nurses thrive, facilities and their patients and residents do, too.

By Alexis Odesser

This byline was originally published in O’Dywer’s

Photo by Karolina Grabowska via Pexels