What exactly is employee engagement? Engaged employees are happy with their work, committed to the organization and they’re willing to go the extra mile to achieve the organization’s goals.
Why does employee engagement matter? In a recent study published by the Gallup Business Journal, that evaluated more than 1.4 million employees, there was a direct connection confirmed between strong employee engagement and lower employee turnover rates as well as a reduced number of patient safety incidents. This is just the justification your organization needs to invest in an employee engagement strategy that has a direct impact on the quality of your patient care.
Employee Engagement in Healthcare Organizations
We’ve worked closely with our healthcare customers to build an out-of-the-box intranet solution tailored specifically to the needs of those working in the healthcare industry. By taking the time to involve our customers in the design and development of our Healthcare Intranet, we also uncovered the key elements of an intranet that can highly engage your healthcare staff to help yield the positive benefits outlined above.
Here are three simple strategies you can follow to improve employee engagement in your healthcare organization today:
1. Facilitate Open Communication Amongst Staff
Since healthcare organizations can have hundreds of employees across several different departments and multiple geographic locations, facilitating open communication between all staff members can be difficult. However, keeping all staff up-to-date and in the know can improve employee engagement and consistency in patient care. That is why many of our healthcare customers manage their documents, policies/procedures, and forms online through their intranet.
Open communication also provides your staff a direct line of communication with your executive/leadership team. This can be done through a weekly message from your President / CEO, bi-weekly blogs from various members on your Leadership Team, or even quarterly Employee Satisfaction & Engagement Surveys.
As patients interact with different members of your healthcare staff daily, the importance of open communication and transparency cannot be stressed enough. Your patient experience depends on it.
2. Centralizing Essential Resources Online
The duties of a healthcare worker carry a heavier weight than that of an everyday workforce employee. Healthcare workers often deal with more sensitive, urgent, and personal issues than that regular expense reports and performance dashboards. Tools and technology that can streamline their daily tasks so they can focus on what matters most, the patient, are appreciated by healthcare staff. Keep in mind, simplicity is key when introducing new technology!
For example, automating tedious manual tasks, such as moving managerial approval workflows online, with Online Forms & Automated Approval Workflows, can give your staff more time to focus on improving the patient experience, with less time spent on tracking down the right resource to sign off on a routine document/procedure.
Other healthcare customers have centralized essential resources to improve employee engagement on their Healthcare Intranet with Online Credentialing, Online Staff Training, Staff Self-Service Menus, Ward Specific Department Sites, and Intern Evaluations.
Here is how one of our healthcare customers, Gold Coast Hospital, summarized their experience with moving an essential resource on their intranet for their hospital staff:
“Working with Intranet Connections, we moved our credentialing tools online which has helped to make our hospital a safer place, and most importantly, provide the best experience for our patients. Enhancing your skills improves patient safety.”
– Leo Marneros, Gold Coast Hospital
3. Recognize Employees for Stronger Engagement
Employee recognition can go a long way in any workplace, but the personal stories shared through employee recognition in the healthcare sector can further connect employees to one another.
Caring for and interacting with patients daily is a common bond shared by healthcare employees and whether it is a hospital cafeteria staff that goes out of their way to find the last pudding cup in the kitchen to give to a child with a sick parent in the hospital or a receptionist that juggles the appointment calendar to fit in a last-minute patient in distress, these staff members that go out of their way to provide better care are appreciated not only by the patients but also their fellow staff members as well.
Providing a place on your Healthcare Intranet to recognize and appreciate these outstanding staff members makes the individual staff member feel appreciated while creating a culture of appreciation within your healthcare organization that engages and rewards more than you can imagine.
Healthcare Intranets that Engage
To see how a Healthcare Intranet by Intranet Connections can improve your healthcare organization’s employee engagement, request a FREE personal Healthcare Demo today!
