EMPLOYEE RETENTION AND QUALITY OF LIFE

Centralized Communication

 
Lacking cntralized communication, workers in the healthcare industry can feel disconnected from their organization. Feeling they have no easy way to communicate with different departments, send feedback to upper management, or learn about upcoming events throughout the community, there is no sense of connectedness or ownership. The inability to engage and acquire information easily can lead to frustration for employees and cause to choose to move elsewhere.

A cutting-edge centralized communication system gives an organization a competitive advantage when it comes to both employee acquisition and retention in several key areas:
 

• Information
   
• Recognition
   
• Improved performance management results
   
• Engagement
   
• Support

Information

With a distributed workforce, such as generally found in home-based healthcare, obtaining current, changing or new information in a timely fashion is challenging. To be a provider, held to the highest best-practice standards yet not even know when those standards may change, produces a level of anxiety that is not only unnecessary, it is detrimental to their overall quality of life, and has a direct impact on their interest in remaining with your organization long-term. Other changes, like organizational policies or procedures also must be communicated quickly and directly to all staff members, whether in the office or in the field.

Finally, being in the field means a lack of access to traditional resources like bulletin boards, opportunity posting, event calendars and the like. Sharing of this information via your centralized communications system reaffirms their connectedness with the rest of the organization and underscores the concept of “team” that organizations must achieve to improve employee retention.

Recognition

Some factors causing people to leave their jobs may be outside of an employer’s control, but there is one aspect that can be influenced: how employers recognize, reward and engage with their employees in the workplace.

One study found that only 42% of healthcare employees feel they are valued by their employer. Considering how much is asked of employees and the difficult conditions they often face, putting in the effort to make them feel appreciated should is a core responsibility of all managerial and leadership staff.

By practicing recognition and reward in the workplace, your organization will unquestionably see reduced staff turnover rates and absenteeism levels as your employees form a deeper connection with you and see the positives of working on your behalf.

However, the impact of this activity will also bring about other positive effects. For example, it has been shown that when employees are engaged and motivated, both their productivity levels and quality of work improves. With the healthcare sector constantly looking to meet a multitude of ambitious targets, tackling the employee engagement issue first could start them off on the right foot for tackling all their other priorities.

Use your centralized communication system to publicly recognize outstanding work performed by your staff members. Celebrate their achievements, both large and small, globally within your team. This will foster the feeling of value and recognition that your employees need and deserve. Don’t be afraid offer accolades on personal achievements, as well. This reinforces the employees sense of value and builds a long term attachment to the organization.

Improved Performance Management Results

One of the commonalities in employee dissatisfaction noted was a perceived lack of opportunity. Using a performance management system has been shown to increase goal/objective achievement and improve perceived opportunity to grow within an organization.

You can improve performance management results, as well as improve employee retention, by using your centralized communications platform to:
 

1. Announce new objectives or goals as they are developed
    
2. Publicly recognize employees when they meet or surpass those corporate goals
    
3. Announce new growth opportunities when they are offered
    
4. Give and receive feedback from your team members on goals/objectives

Engagement

To many workers, an organization that allows them to make their voices heard and acts on their concerns is highly valued. Health care is no exception. Ensuring that employees feel valued is important, but forward-thinking organizations that want to keep their people on board will take the next step and help workers see exactly how their efforts are helping those around them, while allowing them to offer suggestions for improvement.

Here, it’s essential to be transparent about your organization’s goals and mission. Many employees won’t remain with an organization that doesn’t prioritize the same values that they do. It’s also important to ask for employee feedback and ideas on everything from improving patient care to boosting community outreach. This makes them feel more engaged in their work and more invested in helping your organization accomplish key objectives. An invested or engaged employee is one that feels a valued part of the organization. It feels like “family”, and no one wants to leave their family.

Your communications system can be utilized to foster vertical, as well as peer-to-peer communications, sharing ideas and obtaining input. You can use it to recognize organizationally based ideas fostered by your employees and get group feedback on new concepts or ideas.

Support

Home-based care workers are required to be independent and autonomous given they work without direct supervision most of the time. The catch-22 is: extended periods of working remotely also contribute to a sense of isolation and emotional distancing from their office and clinical teams. Their successes, failures and stressors are their own and rarely shared or supported. This feeling of isolation leads directly to feelings of dissatisfaction with the organization and contributes to feeling undervalued and unimportant.

Your centralized communication system is the best possible tool to change those feelings. Your support for your employees can be shown in many ways, but here are a few suggestions:
 

1. Identify an individual whose first priority is to address in the field emergencies or issues
    
2. Contact your staff members after they have seen a particularly difficult client
    
3. Check in with a staff member if they are serving in a risky neighborhood
    
4. If assistance is requested, send a broad, open message to all team members requesting response.
    
5. Allow peer-to-peer communications. Sometimes, your staff needs an opportunity to vent and no one understands better than someone in the trenches.
    

Offering supportive options for your staff members increases their level of overall satisfaction, reaffirms their value to your organization and decrease dissatisfaction with their immediate situation. 

Support Resources

 
Your staff’s isolation has other repercussions, as well. Invariably, they will need some form or piece of educational information that they do not have with them. Their options then are (a) drive to the office, get it and return; or (b) hope they remember to bring it next visit. Neither option is optimal, and both increase the stress level of your employee.

Ideally, your staff would have everything they could possibly need right at their fingertips. Consider this a digital briefcase. All your educational or informational handouts, copies of your forms, lab results information or whatever your staff needs at the moment, instantly available to them digitally.

For convenience, these documents can be arranged in groups or packets, such as admission documents or comprehensive protocols, such as hip replacement guidelines, recommendations and exercises. A simple download of the correct packet is all that is required of your clinical staff. Putting this same toolbox in the hands of your health aides gives them the ability to share tips on moving the bedbound patient, in a written format, at the press of a button.

If the client is receptive to email or text message delivery,. If printing is required, the provision of a portable printer is an easy answer. A quick note to the patient digital file regarding the file transfer and your staff has just documented the education provided, a key part of all Medicare reimbursed care.

Providing your staff with the tools they need to be effective in the field is absolutely fundamental to how they feel about your organization and their place in it.

Your staff went into the healthcare field because they want to help people. Now, you’re giving them the tools to do so and underscoring their professionalism and value at the same time. Further, their productivity levels will increase, due to time savings.

Employees remain with organizations that provide them what they need to do their job and show the public how highly valued there are within their organization.

PREPARING NEW HIRES

 
Onboarding is the action taken by an organization to support a new employee’s introduction to the organizational culture, and to provide them with the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors to be productive and satisfied employees.

A well-executed onboarding program gets employees engaged early, raises retention rates and improves productivity. Studies show that a significant amount of staff turnover – as high as 20 percent – typically occurs in the first 45 days of employment. Studies also show that employees who go through professional onboarding programs are much more likely to stay with the organization after three years.

When bringing on a new hire, a company has one chance to make a favorable impression. A company with a structured, well-executed onboarding program creates the impression it is well run and values its employees, whereas a company without a program, or with a poorly executed one, comes across as disorganized and indifferent to employee success.

The time between the offer letter and the start date is crucial because new hires may still be interviewing with other companies and can change their minds if they have any doubts.

Here are some easy suggestions to help.
 

• Send a welcome gift and note to new employees, such as a promotional item emblazoned with your company’s logo or a personalized letter from your CEO. This small effort can make a new hire feel valued and excited about your company. It also reiterates their value and anticipated contribution to the team.
   
• Send the first week’s orientation schedule and new hire paperwork prior to the start date.  Human Resources should send the employee a welcome packet that contains new hire paperwork, including benefits materials, tax forms, and Form I-9. These forms should be delivered electronically and offer an electronic signature option.
   
• Share the responsibility among multiple departments. Onboarding is most effective when hiring managers and senior executives are involved in a cohesive, structured way. Prepare a plan for each division or department to delegate roles and ensure that orientation goes smoothly.
   
• Go paperless. Forward-thinking companies automate new hire administration. A web-based employee onboarding system streamlines the process by eliminating data entry and improving accuracy. Also, instead of overwhelming employees with information during the first few days, an employee portal serves as a useful tool which employees can consult long after the initial orientation.
   

Integrating your onboarding process with your performance management system and your online training and management system creates a supportive network for your employees, both immediately upon hire and as their tenure grows.

It underscores your commitment to your employees as valuable team members and your organizational commitment to training, knowledge and providing staff with the tools necessary to excel in their positions.

Career Planning

 
A natural by-product of an outstanding training and education program, particularly if coupled with a great performance-based management system, is the desire on the part of employees to reach for growth opportunities.

Caregivers want to get their CNA license. CNAs want to become nurses. Nurses eye the DON/DCS position. It is the natural order of business. Do you want these upwardly mobile, highly skilled, and well-trained individuals to go to other healthcare organizations? Keep them instead.

Offer career planning options, establish mentorship programs with senior staff members, encourage certifications, reimburse for tuition. An informed, well-trained staff is the product of an intentionally designed, fully integrated system. These individuals repay your organization with improved patient outcomes, higher levels of professionalism and skill, higher retention levels and better marketing opportunities, to increase your patient census and, overall, bottom line.

There is no better payoff than investing in the very people that are the heartbeat of your company.