Healthcare Retention Starts With Redesign, Not Recruitment

Key Takeaways

• Burnout and overwork — not a lack of purpose or passion — are driving healthcare workers away.
• Retention starts with redesigning systems that sustain employees, not persuading them to stay.
• TA and HR leaders can rebuild trust and stability by improving work wellbeing from the first touchpoint.

The nation’s largest employment sector is reaching a breaking point. According to Indeed’s 2025 Pulse of Healthcare report, 2 in 5 healthcare workers say their roles feel unsustainable, and among them, 1 in 4 are considering leaving the industry altogether. Nearly 6 in 10 of these workers are already looking for new jobs. What was once a challenge of turnover has become a crisis of career sustainability.

Indeed initiated the Pulse of Healthcare research to better understand the root causes of this workforce sustainability crisis. Based on a survey of more than 900 U.S. healthcare professionals open to new job opportunities, the report examines what’s driving attrition — and what could help stabilize the system.

Even as demand for healthcare workers remains one-third higher than prepandemic levels, according to the report, the people at the center of the system are struggling to stay. Only 1 in 5 feel strongly supported by their employers, and nearly half report feeling exhausted in their current roles.

Yet meaning hasn’t disappeared — relationships with patients remain the top source of fulfillment for healthcare professionals. The passion is still there; it’s the structure of the work that’s failing them.

The following insights from the Pulse of Healthcare report explore what healthcare workers say they need most and how employers can build a more sustainable workforce.

A System Under Pressure

Healthcare has long rewarded overwork, often confusing it for dedication. Chronic understaffing, administrative overload and limited advancement opportunities are driving many workers to question their future in the field. Forty percent cite compensation, 36% staffing and 33% growth opportunities as top sources of dissatisfaction. Healthcare workers say they’re short-staffed 43% of the time — leaving little energy for patient care, learning or recovery.

Indeed’s Work Wellbeing Score indicates that work wellbeing peaked during April 2020.

Healthcare worker wellbeing briefly peaked during the COVID pandemic. In April 2020, they felt more valued than ever: People cheered for them in public, managers offered support and a strong sense of purpose fueled their work. But that appreciation soon faded. Once the applause stopped, the same cracks that existed before the pandemic widened. The systems never fully recovered, and many people holding them up didn’t either.

Overwork isn’t just a staffing issue; it’s a sustainability issue. When companies reward overwork, they create a cycle that reinforces burnout. The result is a shrinking workforce where experienced professionals exit faster than new ones can enter. This erosion of institutional knowledge impacts patient care, morale and the stability of entire healthcare organizations.

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Redesigning Work to Retain Healthcare Talent 

Healthcare retention is about making the job worth staying for — and that starts long before the first shift. Every touchpoint shapes how healthcare workers see your organization, from the job ad that signals your values to the onboarding experience that sets the tone. 

Too often, job ads emphasize “resilience,” “multitasking” and “fast-paced environments,” signaling that burnout is part of the deal. Ads that instead highlight support systems, mentorship and teamwork tell candidates their wellbeing matters.

Indeed’s 2025 healthcare report shows that 2 in 3 healthcare workers are unsatisfied with their current jobs, but those who are satisfied cite supportive teams and human connection as their biggest reasons to stay.

In other words: belonging is the new benefit.

"Belonging is the new benefit."

Senior Talent Strategy Advisor Kyle M.K.

When healthcare organizations invest in belonging, they build trust and connection that outlast even the toughest shifts. Workers who feel connected to their colleagues and leaders are more likely to stay, even when the work is demanding.

Building Alignment Through Human-Centered Design

Despite sharing a mission to provide care, healthcare employers and workers often have different priorities. Alignment starts with listening to your people — not to confirm what company leaders believe, but to understand what your employees actually experience.

At Indeed FutureWorks 2025 in New Orleans, I invited over 200 talent acquisition and HR professionals to participate in an interactive wellbeing exercise. I asked them to identify one small change their organization could make to improve wellbeing across different stages of the candidate and employee experience, from attraction to onboarding. 

Talent acquisition and HR professionals participate in an interactive work wellbeing exercise at Indeed FutureWorks 2025 in New Orleans.

The conversations that followed revealed a unifying theme: Healthcare’s greatest opportunities for retention begin with small, human gestures.

Four key themes stood out:

1. Human-centered hiring

Participants agreed that happiness and purpose start with the first impression. Many recommended revising job ads and career pages to reflect belonging, teamwork and values, while others suggested manager-led welcome calls or day-in-the-life videos to humanize the process — helping candidates feel seen and imagine themselves in the role before they apply.

2. Purpose in practice

Half of the healthcare workers surveyed cite patient relationships as their top source of job satisfaction. Leaders at Indeed FutureWorks 2025 shared simple ways to connect roles to patient outcomes through real patient stories, mission-focused onboarding or cross-department shadowing. These moments help reconnect employees to why they chose healthcare and instill a renewed sense of purpose. 

3. Predictability and support 

Many ideas centered on reducing stress through stability, such as offering consistent schedules, early notice of shift changes and 90-day peer mentorships. Predictability can ease anxiety and show respect for employees’ lives beyond work. 

The data supports this: Healthcare professionals rank consistent and predictable hours (41%), the ability to take time off (36%) and schedule flexibility and control (33%) among their top sources of job satisfaction. More than 6 in 10 also say adequate staffing enables them to take time off and spend more time with patients.

4. Psychological safety

People stay where they feel safe to speak up. Participants suggested emotional check-ins, manager training to spot burnout and anonymous “pulse” surveys followed by real action. When feedback leads to change, it turns wellbeing from a buzzword into a lived experience. According to the report, more than 70% said that management acting on feedback — rather than just collecting it — would improve their working conditions, making it the top workplace improvement factor.

Across every idea, one truth remained: Retention grows from everyday acts of care. When employers and employees co-design better systems and leadership acts on employee insight, work wellbeing becomes part of the culture, not just a policy.

From Healthcare Burnout to Belonging

Improving healthcare retention requires structural change, but it doesn’t depend on sweeping strategies. It’s built through everyday choices: a manager who listens without judgment, a peer who models flexibility, a recruiter who writes job ads emphasizing sustainability over speed. These moments build trust, and trust builds tenure.

Talent leaders have the power to shape the future of care by designing systems that support both wellbeing and efficiency, enabling healthcare workers to help others without losing themselves in the process. By prioritizing aspects like human connection, professional support, recognition and balanced workloads, you can turn crisis into connection.

Because in healthcare, the question isn’t whether people want to stay — it’s whether we give them a reason to.

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