Whether you call it the great resignation, the pandemic exhaustion or the great discontent, the medical profession is not immune to the growing wave of employee turnover that is currently shaking organizations in all sectors. In fact, the rotation rate for staff nurses it has grown by almost 3% to just under 19%, with an annual cost of between $ 4 million and $ 6.5 million in hospitals. Between doctors, 69% say they feel detached and 54% say they plan to leave their current employer, with the loss of each doctor totaling an additional $ 250.00 in new hiring costs each year.
This should come as no surprise, as health professionals have long been among them work with more stress of any sector, even before the onset of the pandemic.
With so many health workers thinking of leaving or have already given a warning, smart leaders are doing more than realizing, they are taking steps to address this labor crisis that is rapidly heating up within their own organizations, resolving their experience challenges of the most urgent employees. using a two-sided approach.
One, they are listening to their people. Really listening. To everyone. And second, they’re taking things a step further by figuring out what their team members need to have the sense of belonging, connection, and community they crave.
Listen when it matters
If there is no vehicle for workers to share their experience or there is no sense of confidence that nothing will be done if they talk, any potential feelings of stress will only continue to increase over time.
And this is not because of the lack of problem solving among employees in the field of medicine. If they have the opportunity to talk and share their ideas, they will have more than enough suggestions to offer. Approach any group of nurses and ask them about broken processes and you will be able to sit there for hours talking about what doesn’t work.
The challenge is that medical professionals who come forward every day to provide the best possible care, want what has been broken to be resolved so that they can provide a superior patient experience. When circumstances are not optimal, levels of frustration increase and this is precisely what is causing the exhaustion and abandonment we are seeing in the healthcare field right now.
Technology, however, can play a critical role in solving this problem. When organizations use all the tools at their disposal to ask the right questions to their employees at the right times, they can understand how their people feel at all times.
Simply maintaining a constant pulse to detect signs of exhaustion, continuously consult with timely questions, and answer with the following steps based directly on feedback collected can tell employees that leaders are aware of what is important to workers. and that understanding and addressing the points of friction in the overall journey of employees are the top priorities.
In particular, within the healthcare sector, demonstrating empathy and responsiveness in this way is very important. When you think about the nature of what providers do on a daily basis, nowhere else do you feel heard and considered important. When we listen to and understand the experience of our employees and are able to achieve higher rates of commitment and satisfaction, we can see the result in the form of higher patient satisfaction reports and financial results.
With all of this, however, the healthcare industry is really lagging behind other sectors when it comes to modernizing its employee listening programs and employee information strategies.
The future of employer response capacity within health care goes beyond conducting traditional rounds and annual provider satisfaction surveys. You need to register with employees in real time with two-way digital surveys and operational data. It requires gathering more than feelings and moving towards gathering actionable feedback that delves into how to specifically address the most challenging challenges your employees face.
Employers with data knowledge are collecting feedback and signals from their people throughout the journey of employees, from the early stages of hiring and incorporation to later milestones throughout the life of employees, such as during annual reviews, in times of leadership change and more. Not only are they based on surveys, but they are gathering input from employees wherever they engage, whether through video, text, or leveraging crowdsourcing. And they are bringing together separate systems to combine operational data and experience to get a line of sight from the overall employee experience.
It is when organizations gather these data sources, combining direct feedback (such as surveys) along with indirect signals (such as PTO use, department changes, performance reviews, and patient feedback) that they can begin to be predictive. Using AI-driven technology, they are able to identify patterns and identify when and why people move. From there, they can implement solutions that can help retain the best talent and save on billing, hiring, and incorporation costs.
These AI-based tools can be used to detect a number of threats, whether they are signs of rotation, potential factors influencing serious security events, or other key business outcomes.
Creating a sense of belonging, connection and yearning for community health professionals
The number one step employers need to take to create a sense of community for their team is not just capturing employee information. What matters most is what the leaders do next. That is, how they respond.
Within large-scale organizations, the best way to make sure your people feel connected, loyal to your organization, and committed to the mission is to make sure they feel heard and can see evidence that they are taking the next actionable and timely steps to address its mission. more difficult challenges.
In order to advance in diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging, employers must prioritize equitable listening and action, that is, listening initiatives and continuous response from employees who address the voices of the entire organization to create more equitable employee experiences.
Final thoughts
For too long, the status quo has remained unchanged, with leadership only collecting feedback from employees each year, at best, asking employees to fill out the kind of long questionnaire that, when it comes to, reflects more on the perspective of leadership and organization as a whole rather than shedding light on the needs and desires of employees. After all, these efforts do nothing to help the current problem of employee exhaustion and rotation.
Without tuning in to the entire employee journey, and with all the urgent friction points along the way, employers simply won’t be able to address the most important mistakes in the experience of our industry employees. Exhaustion will not go away, nor will the related hiring costs.
Today’s healthcare leaders have all the tools they need. Using real-time comment capture, combining your data sources and using TO THE To analyze the full picture, you have the power to understand what your employees are trying to tell you, what they want you to fix, and how to help them feel engaged, connected, and prepared to continue to serve your patients while maximizing the best. of their capabilities.
About Kristi Roe
Kristi Roe is the head of healthcare experience at Medal. Kristi’s experience in healthcare spans more than 20 years and has been at the forefront of the evolution of the experience movement. Kristi started in the patient experience at Atrium Health in 2010 just when HCAHPS was implemented and led the patient experience team. At Press Ganey, she was a leader in the strategic consulting division and partnered with leading healthcare organizations to make the transition from tactical approaches to the development and implementation of systemic experience strategy. Kristi was vice president of organizational resilience at Novant Health, where she focused on understanding and improving the caregivers ’experience in terms of emotional exhaustion and exhaustion. Basically, Kristi’s work focuses on the intentional creation of resilient, high-performance systems based on meaningful, actionable knowledge.
