Culture is the road we choose to get results.
Employee engagement is the vehicle that delivers us there.
An engaged workforce is a powerful tool to ensuring long term success of an organization. Many health systems have great pockets of employee engagement but have been unable to successfully engage most the workforce. We see some common indicators in healthcare organizations which indicate there are engagement opportunities. Here are a few examples:
• Regardless of compensation survey results, the employees continually state they are underpaid. What employees are really saying is, "you're not paying me enough for what I have to put up with."
• It is difficult to fully staff patient care areas. This leads to excessive overtime, working short or travel contracts. When employees do not believe anyone cares, it becomes difficult to fill open shifts or even show up for work on time.
• It is difficult to make improvements to processes and procedures. When you want to execute a change to improve the patient experience, cut costs or reduce patient harm, it is very difficult to rally the organization to execute.
• Everything becomes a mandate. When you have difficulty engaging employees, the improvement efforts become mandatory. No one enjoys being told something is "mandatory."
Healthcare employees work in this field because they have a heart for the patient. We know those employees have a purpose that is geared toward helping others. Ensuring they are engaged in their jobs is the best lever available to improve the patient experience. Because this is part of their DNA, we do not have to convince them to care about the patient. A leader's job is to chart a path that fulfills their purpose and align it with the organization's goals.
Here are six waypoints on the path to an engaged workforce.
1. Commitment – The first and most immediate challenge is to get the employees to commit to a change. They have seen many improvement efforts come and go over the years so we ask them to commit to something that is important to them: Safety. This is easy to implement because all employees know that everyone must commit to safety in a healthcare organization – that's non-negotiable.
2. Trust - We must develop trust across the entire organization. Trust is a foundational element. If we develop trust, the employees will not engage. Trust develops over time through interactions with someone that is relevant by having interactions where we show we are trustworthy. Trust allows us to remove the barriers between the organization, employee, and patient experience.
3. Alignment – We must build relationships up and down the organizational hierarchy. Our primary emphasis is with the relationship between the employee and their immediate supervisor. To truly gain alignment, we extend this to the senior leadership and peers in the department. It is important for the employee to see that their work aligns with the others in the organization.
4. Collaboration – Collaborating across departments is important to improving both the employee experience and the patient experience. When the interactions between departments are seamless, the employee enjoys their work more and the patient also benefits by not being caught in the middle. Employees must work together to remove the barriers between departments.
5. Accountability – Employees must hold themselves and others accountable if they hope to improve their work environment. Without accountability, the employees who do not engage will disrupt how the department operates. This means that leaders must set the tone to address poor behavior and performance.
6. Team – The improvements start with the individual, spread to the department, then to the organization. The result is a powerful team. When the organization works as a team, the barriers have been removed that prevented the employees from realizing their purpose. This results in an engaged workforce that also transforms the patient experience.
Once workers are engaged, organizations have higher productivity and profitability, less employee turnover and fewer safety incidents. When organizations follow this path, we learn that what is important to the employee is also important to the patient. The act of caring and compassion is part of what makes your employees special, and it also drives your clinical and financial improvement. Caring about employees results in a great patient experience which leads to the clinical and financial outcomes we seek.
About the author
Robert Freeman is a former attorney who started the Freeman Group in 2014 with a mission to improve the patient experience by focusing on the engagement and empowerment of healthcare employees. Robert developed the We Care culture transformation framework to help healthcare organizations systemically build trust throughout their workplaces.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.