Dive Brief:
- Intermountain Healthcare is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour starting Sept. 19 in a move that will impact 2,200 employees currently paid less than that rate, according to a release from the system.
- It's also giving pay raises to 12,800 employees in more than 250 roles, ranging from 3% to 7% based on their tenure with the regional nonprofit giant, according to a spokesperson.
- The job market — especially for healthcare roles — has changed dramatically in the past two years, and the raises will "align compensation to the current market and ensure employees are paid fairly," Heather Brace, chief people officer and senior vice president at Intermountain, said in the release.
Dive Insight:
The healthcare job market is tightening as burnout remains widespread and the highly contagious delta variant continues overwhelming some hospitals. Systems have posted massive sign-on bonuses to attract new nurses in particular, and staffing firms say both openings for traveling and permanent nursing positions are reaching record highs.
Salt Lake City-based Intermountain joins a number of others across the country that raised their minimum wage to $15 this year, including Johns Hopkins Health System and Advocate Aurora.
Other systems already planned to boost their minimum wage to $15 an hour before the pandemic, like the Cleveland Clinic and Jefferson Health.
Intermountain employees in jobs currently making less than $15 an hour include scrub technicians for labor and delivery, psych, critical care and environmental service technicians, along with those in a handful of other roles, according to a spokesperson.
The last time the system raised its minimum wage across the board was in 2019, to $13 an hour, though earlier this year nurses did receive an off-cycle wage adjustment, they said.
The system periodically makes wage adjustments when changes in the job and pay market warrant raises outside the annual increase cycle, according to the release.
Intermountain has 25 hospitals and hundreds of clinics across Utah, Idaho and Nevada and employs 42,000 people. In September, 15,000 employees will receive pay raises.