Employer retention strategies and their effect on nurses' job satisfaction and intent to stay.

Faced with a nursing shortage and anticipated increase in demand, home care agencies are implementing retention strategies with little knowledge of their effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to describe the strategies implemented and their effect on nurse job satisfaction and intention to leave. Data were collected from a random sample of 123 New England agencies during in-person interviews. Most agencies reported implementing multiple recruitment and retention strategies. Regression results suggest that the effects of employer retention strategy on nurses' intent to stay are the indirect result of its effects on job satisfaction. The only retention intervention that made a statistically significant difference in job satisfaction was shared governance, and no retention strategy directly affected nurses' intention to stay in their jobs.