It is no secret that hiring histotechnicians and histotechnologists is difficult at best and impossible at worst. In my first blog post on histology workforce development, I shared that workforce shortages have reached critical status, and we believe the existing data are lagging indicators. In my second post, we shared that there are not enough histotechnology students to fill current openings.
I am proud to have served the National Society for Histotechnology as the Executive Director since May 2015. I attended my first NSH Annual Convention, then my first ASCP Annual Meeting, discussing predicted workforce shortages. The ASCP 2018 Vacancy Survey of Medical Laboratories in the United States shared concerning data. When asked about retirement, 27.13% of Anatomic Pathology Supervisors expected to retire over the next three to five years, and 18.24% of Histology Supervisors expected to retire within the next three-five years.
Well, here we are. We’ve already addressed mega trends accelerating retirements and career changes. This month, MIT Sloan Management review published an article looking at data on why employees leave their jobs in droves. Wages drive turnover, but the primary reason employees leave is a toxic culture.[i] In preparing for my Understanding the Histotech Shortages webinar, I monitored social media and spoke with histology recruiters, NSH members, and leaders. The consensus is that we must do better and improve lab culture. “Although this survey shows high job satisfaction among respondents, overall job-related stress is high and burnout is prevalent. The majority of respondents rated their work-life balance as “fair.” The main contributing factors to job stress, burnout, and work-life balance are quantity of workload and understaffing. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the underlying causes.[ii] In general, there is high job satisfaction from doing meaningful work. Still, not enough time is allocated to training and continuing education, and a primary driver leading to burnout was workload and understaffing. In the 2019 report, HTLs had the second-highest stress levels.
Your top lab staffing strategy is retention and promoting a positive workplace culture. Lab leadership must work on employee retention as hard or harder than recruitment. To use a cliché, stop the bleeding. Develop and implement a plan to provide meaningful training opportunities, including team-building activities. Rather than relying on travel techs, consider implementing temp to permanent arrangements.
To learn more about the histotechnology workforce shortages, consider attending our Lab Webinar Series session, Understanding the Workforce Shortages, on Wednesday, January 25, 2022, at 1:00 pm Eastern Time.
Written by: Sharon H. Kneebone, FASAE, CAE
[i] Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation (mit.edu)
[ii] Edna Garcia, MPH, Iman Kundu, MPH, Melissa Kelly, PhD, Ryan Soles, MS, Lotte Mulder, EdM, Geoffrey A Talmon, MD, MEd, The American Society for Clinical Pathology’s Job Satisfaction, Well-Being, and Burnout Survey of Laboratory Professionals, American Journal of Clinical Pathology, Volume 153, Issue 4, April 2020, Pages 470–486, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcp/aqaa008