Eau Claire, Wisconsin – The nursing home workforce is quietly growing again, and operators say the gains aren’t coming from anything glamorous. They’re coming from steady, often unorthodox recruiting that started paying off this fall.
According to the latest federal employment data, skilled nursing facilities added 2,100 jobs in October, pushing total SNF employment to roughly 33,100 jobs above where it stood a year ago. Nursing and residential care facilities as a whole now employ about 3.495 million people, a modest tick up from September.
Behind those numbers, providers describe a grab-bag of strategies that have one thing in common: patience.
Looking overseas, even now
At Care and Rehab, a family-owned operator of senior living and skilled nursing facilities in Wisconsin and Minnesota, international recruitment has become one of the most reliable staffing pipelines — despite tight immigration policy. The company has been sponsoring workers from the Philippines, several African countries, Sri Lanka and Nepal for nine years, and it doesn’t stop at nurses. Caregivers, housekeepers and cooks have all come through the program.
“America is their dream, so they can’t wait to get here,” co-owner Andrea Thayer said at a recent industry webinar. “And when they get here, they work double shifts.”
The tradeoff is time. Internationally recruited registered nurses generally take two to three years to arrive; other workers can take closer to five. Employers must also show they advertised domestically first and couldn’t fill the role with available U.S. workers, and Care and Rehab works with three immigration attorneys to stay compliant. The payoff, Thayer said, has been a sharp drop in agency reliance and workers who put down roots — buying homes and raising families in rural communities where housing costs less than in big metros.
Nontraditional labor pools
Other operators are hiring closer to home. Michelle Stuercke, chief clinical officer at TCM Consulting and Management, which oversees six skilled nursing facilities, said her facilities partner with local schools for students with special needs, employing them in laundry, activities and dietary roles.
“They are probably the best workers because they always come to work,” she said, adding that residents have embraced them.
TCM has also built a nursing leadership training program that has filled roughly three-quarters of its nursing leadership vacancies over several years, and it works with community colleges and CNA, LPN and RN programs to bring students in for clinical rotations — hoping they’ll stay. Scheduling flexibility helps too; one facility introduced a 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift for parents managing school pickups.
The common thread, both executives said, is building workplaces where people feel valued. That’s also what the latest national quality data on nursing home staffing appears to reflect: the best-rated facilities consistently staff at higher levels than everyone else.
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