NURS 6221 Week 8 Recruitment and Retention Plan Example

Course	NURS 6221 Managing Human Resources
Week	Week 8
Paper type	Recruitment and retention plan
Length	About 530 words, 4 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Walden University
Program	Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for NURS 6221 Week 8

Recruitment and Retention Plan: Closing Two Leaks in the Nurse Pipeline

Student Name

College of Nursing, Walden University

NURS 6221: Managing Human Resources

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe plan follows nurses from application to their first anniversary and fixes the two points where they are lost.

Recruitment and Retention Plan: Closing Two Leaks in the Nurse Pipeline

The Pipeline

The unit's hiring pipeline has six stages: applications received, applications screened, candidates interviewed, offers made, offers accepted, and nurses still employed at one year. Tracking last year's hires through those stages, using the recruitment system and the unit's own records, shows two points where the losses are largest. The first is between screening and interview: qualified applicants withdraw, most often because another hospital interviewed them first. The second is during the first year after hire, when the unit lost five of fourteen new nurses, well above the national figure of about 17.5% of new nurses leaving their first job within a year (Kovner et al., 2014).

Recruitment: Closing the First Leak

Three changes address the gap between application and interview. Every screened applicant will be offered an interview within five working days. A staff nurse from the unit will sit on every panel, so candidates meet a future colleague and not only a manager. And an offer, when made, will be made within the same week as the interview, with a verbal offer by phone before the written one. None of these changes lowers the bar; they shorten the time in which a good candidate can be hired by someone else.

Retention: Closing the Second Leak

Exit interviews from last year's first-year leavers were sorted using Herzberg's two-factor theory, which separates hygiene factors, whose absence causes dissatisfaction, from motivators, whose presence produces satisfaction (Herzberg et al., 1959). The hygiene complaints were scheduling, especially weekend frequency, and workload on nights. The missing motivators were recognition and a sense of development: several leavers said nobody noticed their progress after orientation ended.

Two measures follow. Stay interviews, short structured conversations with the manager at three, six and nine months after hire, will ask what keeps the nurse on the unit and what might make them leave, so problems surface while they can still be fixed. They address both factors, but especially recognition. A self-scheduling pilot will address the scheduling complaint. Self-scheduling can give nurses more control over their time, but in one hospital pilot the program stalled once nurses began treating their own preferences as owed to them, at the expense of the unit (Bailyn et al., 2007), so the pilot will run with clear rules and a charge nurse who balances the final schedule.

What this page is doingExit themes are sorted by Herzberg's two factors, and each measure is tied to the factor it addresses.

Cost

Table 1

Cost of Each Measure in Hours and Roles

Measure	Roles involved	Hours per year (estimate)
Interview within five days	Nurse manager; recruiter	About 20 added scheduling hours
Staff nurse on every panel	One staff nurse per interview	About 30 paid hours at 1.5 hours per interview
Same-week offers	Nurse manager; human resources	No added hours; faster sequencing
Stay interviews at 3, 6 and 9 months	Nurse manager	About 21 hours for 14 hires at 30 minutes each
Self-scheduling pilot, six months	Charge nurse; scheduler	About 40 hours of balancing and review

The total, roughly 110 hours a year, is small beside the cost of replacing even one nurse. The hospital does not hold Magnet designation, so these measures are not framed as a step toward it; they are justified on the unit's own turnover alone.

References

Bailyn, L., Collins, R., & Song, Y. (2007). Self-scheduling for hospital nurses: An attempt and its difficulties. Journal of Nursing Management, 15(1), 72-77. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2934.2006.00633.x

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. B. (1959). The motivation to work. Wiley.

Kovner, C. T., Brewer, C. S., Fatehi, F., & Jun, J. (2014). What does nurse turnover rate mean and what is the rate? Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, 15(3-4), 64-71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527154414547953

NURS 6221 Week 8 instructions, in plain terms

The eighth NURS 6221 week commonly asks for a recruitment and retention plan. You diagnose where the pipeline loses candidates or staff, propose strategies that address those points with evidence, and estimate costs. Faculty penalize catalogs of incentives with no diagnosis. Cite retention research and motivation theory in APA 7. Exact turnover percentages are optional if the stages are clear. Herzberg's theory helps separate hygiene factors from motivators. Costs can be estimates if labeled. A clear structure opens with the pipeline table, names the two leaks with numbers, then gives one or two strategies per leak with evidence and an owner. The cost section compares the plan's expenses with the cost of replacing the nurses who leave each year, and a final line names the measures you will watch.

How this NURS 6221 Week 8 example is built

A pipeline comes first: applications received, screened, interviewed, offered, accepted and still employed at one year, reported as stages rather than invented percentages. Two stages are identified as the losses. The recruitment half addresses the first, with an interview scheduled within a fixed number of days of application, a staff nurse on every panel, and a same-week offer. The retention half addresses the second, using exit interview themes sorted by Herzberg's two factors: scheduling and workload as hygiene complaints, lack of recognition and development as missing motivators. Proposed measures include stay interviews at set points in the first year and a self-scheduling pilot. A cost section prices each measure, and Magnet appears once, as a designation the hospital does not hold.

Where the marks sit in the NURS 6221 Week 8 rubric

Sign-on bonuses, mentoring and recognition events with no diagnosis behind them make a catalog rather than a plan, and credit flows to proposals that answer a located loss. Graders follow the line from evidence to measure more closely than anything else. Cost is expected in this course, and a measure whose hours and roles go unpriced cannot be ranked against the others, which forfeits that element. A framework applied to data earns more than one described in a paragraph; Herzberg sorting actual exit themes is doing work the course can see. Measurement is weighted in many versions, and a retention plan that never says how success would show reads as intention. Sources on nurse retention should be current.

Common NURS 6221 Week 8 mistakes, and how to avoid them

Retention plans lose credit when they list bonuses and recognition events without a diagnosis. Find the leaks first. Another common gap is strategies that do not match the leak. Tie each strategy to a stage. Writers also skip cost. Estimate it against turnover. Avoid assuming money fixes retention. Use Herzberg. Name who owns each strategy. Close with the measure you will track. A residency or mentoring strategy reads as real when it names the length, the mentor ratio and who runs it. Show the turnover cost per nurse with its source so the comparison is checkable.

Get a NURS 6221 Week 8 example written to your instructions

Point the desk at the unit or role your section focuses on, share any turnover data it provides along with the prompt and rubric, and a plan for that workforce is assembled. First custom sample free, 24 to 48 hours. Exit interview records remain with your hospital, since the unit in the sample exists only on paper.

More NURS 6221 papers and MSN samples

NURS 6221 Week 8 questions, answered

Why not state turnover percentages?

Because the sample's unit is invented and a made-up rate would pass for evidence. The plan describes the pipeline by stage and identifies where losses concentrate. If your prompt provides figures, use them and calculate from them. If it does not, showing which stage loses the most people, and why, is stronger than a number with nothing behind it.

How does Herzberg apply to nurse retention?

His two-factor idea separates conditions that cause dissatisfaction when poor, such as scheduling and workload, from factors that produce commitment when present, such as recognition and growth. The sample uses that split to sort exit interview themes, which then decides whether a measure addresses why nurses leave or why they stay. Other retention models could play the same sorting role.

Do the costs have to be exact?

No, but they have to be stated. The sample prices measures by hours and roles first and then applies labeled rates, so a reader can see exactly what was assumed. A plan proposing stay interviews without saying who conducts them, and for how long, leaves the reviewer unable to compare that measure with anything else in the plan.

Where can I find a free NURS 6221 Week 8 sample paper?

The two-leaks recruitment and retention plan is printed here with the six-stage pipeline, the strategies for each leak and the cost section.

Where does the pipeline leak in NURS 6221 Week 8?

Between interview and offer, because the process took weeks, and in the first year after hire.