The tools lowering turnover at Hackensack Meridian

Over the past three years, Hackensack Meridian Health has reduced turnover for full- and part-time employees from a high of 14% to just over 8%. This improvement is partly due to heightened attention translating to greater engagement, Linda McHugh, the health system's chief experience and people officer, told Becker's.

Boosting attention and leadership capacity of the Edison, N.J.-based system has been key. Team leaders receive quarterly engagement survey results, giving them insights into their team and encouraging weekly check-ins, Tria Deibert, senior vice president of culture and team member well-being, told Becker's.

"The openness that we have in wanting to hear from team members weekly definitely has inspired the culture to be much more open and people less afraid to speak up because they know we want to hear them," Ms. McHugh said. "We also have listening-to-understand sessions that I think have helped open the culture up to talk about difficult topics."

Leaders also receive customized emails each month with their results, helping them understand how they are performing against their goals focused on involvement, communication, celebration and checking in with their teams, Ms. Deibert said.

"Our initial challenge was understanding the data at the leader level and the variability across different leaders, and then really working to focus on the leaders who might need some extra support," Ms. McHugh said. "We've been really lucky that our leaders have been very open and interested in what they could continue to do to support their team members."

Ms. Deibert emphasized the role of team leaders in these engagement and retention efforts.

"When I moved into this role a few years ago, I felt like I had to create the engagement at the organization," she said. "I quickly realized that's not how it works. It is team by team, leader by leader. So any success we've had is due to our leaders. They've really leaned into all of the strategies and tools we've shared with them."

The focus on engagement, combined with competitive compensation and benefits packages, have driven retention, Ms. McHugh said. Through listening to team members, Hackensack Meridian has introduced student loan forgiveness. The system plans to expand this option to entry-level positions, particularly with a direct-pay option in certain roles, allowing employees to avoid upfront payments with reimbursements.

"We've been working through how we can be more flexible with our team members in their benefits that are available to them, the well-being strategy we have to support them, and continuing to grow our leaders to make this a healthy, psychologically safe environment," Ms. McHugh said.

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