Your Ace for Retention: How Onsite Clinics Boost Engagement and Reduce Turnover 

The past few years have seen some major shifts in the way people work, how they view their careers and what workers want from their employers. These evolutions have made more businesses focus time, effort and money on ensuring their employees are engaged and reducing worker turnover. 

Offering an onsite clinic — where you can offer work-related injury care, preventative care services, wellness programs and more — can help your organization make great strides in improving employee engagement and decreasing turnover.  

Benefits of Onsite Clinics for Employee Engagement 

Unengaged or actively disengaged employees cost American businesses about $1.9 trillion in lost productivity each year. With an estimated 67% of employees reporting being unengaged or actively disengaged in their work in 2023, not taking steps to re-engage workers puts your business at risk. 

Here are some ways onsite clinics can increase employee engagement. 

Improved Access to Healthcare 

Not having access to the proper healthcare resources, either due to cost, distance or lack of appointments, means many workers are simply going without crucial medical attention. This leaves them to often forego getting the care they need to stay healthy and focused on their work. 

By offering an onsite clinic, workers can receive not only immediate assessment and treatment for injuries that happen at work but, depending on the design of your clinic, potentially some routine medical care as well. Vaccinations, blood pressure checks and chronic disease screening can be conducted at your onsite clinic, and workers can get these services on their lunch breaks or immediately after their shift. This helps them avoid the scheduling challenges that come with visiting offsite providers for every health concern, and helps your business avoid the productivity decrease that comes from these offsite visits. 

When workers receive the care they need, they are healthier and able to better focus on their duties. This improves their work performance and translates to increased productivity. 

Enhanced Employee Wellbeing 

Workers who put off medical care, whether related to an on-the-job injury or otherwise, are less healthy overall. This can translate to them battling more serious, complex issues, and may lead to depression or other mental health conditions. 

An onsite health clinic allows you to encourage employees to visit the clinic for minor issues, either receiving help on the spot or with a plan to receive outside care. Sometimes, the first step toward getting care is the hardest, and convenient access to medical professionals paired with encouragement from their employer can be enough to push a worker in the right direction. 

Additionally, your onsite clinic can offer a variety of wellness services to your employees to help them make their health a priority. Onsite lifestyle assessments and goal-setting sessions, health challenges or mental health appointments give employees a convenient connection to resources that encourage them to take charge of their wellness and take steps to being and feeling their best. 

Foster a Culture of Health 

Your organization is more than just a place where work gets done; it’s a sum of all the people, experiences and personalities that make up your workforce. A workplace’s culture is one of the key things that makes or breaks whether employees stay engaged at work and the length of their tenure at an organization. When your workplace culture breeds negative or neutral feelings for workers, where they don’t feel they are challenged appropriately and they don’t want to come to work, your employees are more likely to be disengaged and less productive. 

Employee wellness programs show your workers that you care about their wellbeing and give them incentives to participate. They can help build relationships between employees, helping them become more connected to their coworkers and improving their positive feelings about their jobs. 

By offering onsite wellness programs, you also are helping to create a culture of health and wellness. Workers participating in a step challenge, for example, may spend their lunch break taking group walks around the building, a tradition they continue after the challenge is over. These workers set a positive example for others, and the group taking walks grows over time.  

Simply seeing positive health behaviors modeled may encourage more of your employees to take part in them, expanding the impact of your wellness program. 

Onsite Clinics and Turnover Reduction 

A February 2024 report from Express Employment Professionals and The Harris Poll found that 33% of hiring managers in the United States expected employee turnover to increase in 2024. With a November 2023 survey showing that turnover cost employers an average of $36,295 — and more than 20% of respondents saying their turnover costs were more than $100,000 — retaining the employees you have is more important than ever. 

Here are some ways onsite clinics can help you reduce turnover and decrease your hiring-related costs. 

Reduced Absenteeism 

Workers who are in poor health, both mentally and physically, are absent more often than their peers. Absences due to mental health were up a reported 33% in 2023 from just a year prior, and up 300% from 2017’s levels. The more a worker is absent, the more likely they are to leave your organization entirely, making frequent absences a risk for your organization. 

Having an onsite clinic allows workers to receive convenient care for health concerns, even if they aren’t directly work-related. A worker who has frequent headaches can visit clinic staff for a blood pressure screening and other assessment, then either receive necessary care there onsite or have a plan for receiving follow-up care from their primary physician.  

This also translates into reduced absenteeism for those employees who are injured at work. 

Immediately following their injury, they can visit the onsite clinic for assessment and treatment. If their injuries are manageable with onsite care from the onsite clinic team, they can be treated and sent back to their duties without missing more work. When they do require offsite care, onsite clinic staff can help them find the right in-network provider and monitor their treatment, getting them back to work faster. 

Boosted Job Satisfaction and Loyalty 

Employee investment in the workplace is crucial to lower turnover rates, and when your workers feel that you care about them as people and not just the work they do, they are more likely to stay employed with you long-term. 

An onsite clinic is a visible reminder to your workers that you take their health and wellbeing seriously. They can visit with work-related and non-work-related health concerns and participate in wellness programs. Having an onsite clinic sets you apart from other employers in your area and industry, making your organization a more attractive place to work. 

When employees feel their employer cares about their health and wellbeing, they are more likely to report higher job satisfaction and, as a result, stay loyal to your organization. 

Your Onsite Clinic Partner 

At Medcor, we pride ourselves on being a trusted partner in your organization’s success. Our onsite clinics provide immediate care for injured workers and offer valuable services to your employees that keep them engaged and happy at work. Are you ready to explore how adding an onsite clinic can be key to retaining quality workers? Speak with an advocate today.