Health Sciences North nearly halves turnover by linking existing wellness efforts

Health Sciences North says it cut employee turnover from more than 15% to about 8% over three years by connecting existing wellness, safety and engagement programs under one framework. The Ontario hospital’s experience, detailed in a new Excellence Canada paper, offers a model for health systems facing burnout, staffing shortages and fragmented workplace initiatives.

Why it matters: - Health Sciences North’s turnaround suggests hospitals may be able to improve retention without launching new programs or spending more on standalone initiatives. - The results come as Canadian health systems face staffing shortages, burnout, tight budgets and pressure on frontline workers. - The hospital’s experience points to a broader operational shift: better integration can turn scattered efforts into a measurable culture strategy.

What happened: - Health Sciences North, a Northeastern Ontario hospital system with more than 4,400 staff and a service area of more than 557,000 people, reduced employee turnover from over 15% to about 8% over three years. - The hospital did not add a new wellness program. It connected existing wellness, engagement, safety, accreditation, leadership development and patient-experience efforts. - Excellence Canada and Health Sciences North released a new paper today, Connecting the Dots: Beyond Programs: How Excellence Canada is Supporting Health Sciences North as They Build a Culture of Connection. - The paper is part of Excellence Canada’s Executive Insights Series.

The details: - In 2025, Health Sciences North adopted Excellence Canada’s Healthy Workplace Standard as an integration framework. - A diagnostic assessment found the hospital already had about 60% to 70% of the required elements in place. - Health Sciences North aligned accreditation, safety, wellness and employee engagement under one framework. - The hospital also embedded healthy workplace accountability into leadership performance management. - Workplace violence incidents declined, and staff reporting confidence improved. - Absenteeism fell, and workforce stability improved. - Early data shows improving patient experience scores. - Staff and leaders now describe wellness, safety and accreditation as parts of a single strategy rather than competing demands. - In November 2025, Health Sciences North received the Canada Award for Excellence at the Essentials/Silver Level. - The award served as external third-party validation of the hospital’s foundational systems. - The paper draws on interviews with HSN physicians, nurses, patient and family advisors, frontline staff and senior leaders. - The paper is aimed at executives, HR leaders and healthcare decision-makers facing similar challenges. - The full paper is available as the full paper.

Between the lines: - The hospital’s core problem was not a lack of effort. It was fragmentation. - Separate committees, champions and reporting lines created what staff described as “initiative overload.” - The approach suggests culture change may depend less on adding more programs and more on connecting the systems already in place. - Leadership mattered, but the results also depended on coordination across executives, managers, department leads, frontline staff and physicians. - CEO David McNeil tied healthy workplace accountability to performance management and emphasized structures and processes over slogans. - Excellence Canada President and CEO Sean Slater framed the results as evidence that culture can become a driver of performance, resilience and long-term success when strategy and workplace practices align.

What’s next: - Health Sciences North and Excellence Canada are using the paper as a replicable model for other organizations dealing with fragmented workplace programs. - Hospitals and employers facing retention and burnout pressure may look to the HSN approach as a lower-friction way to improve performance. - The next test is whether other health systems can reproduce the same gains by integrating existing initiatives instead of creating new ones.

The bottom line: - Health Sciences North cut turnover nearly in half by making its existing workplace efforts work together, not by adding more to the pile.