The US boasts the biggest health industry, consisting of 784,626 companies and it spends about twice what other countries do on healthcare. The global pandemic has now led to an increase in demand for healthcare, and it has become very vital to drive employee engagement, now more than ever.
Engaged healthcare professionals tend to attend their patients with genuine smiles and put an extra effort to help them with their questions and concerns. They listen to their patients without rushing through, leading the patient satisfaction levels to be increased.
Employee engagement is the essential step that any hospital management should take towards a better healthcare. Here are a few reasons for you to understand the importance of employee engagement in healthcare
There are various studies that talk about the correlation between engaged healthcare staff and patient satisfaction levels. Employee engagement has a major impact on patient satisfaction. According to an HR solutions case study, 85 percent of engaged employees displayed a genuinely caring attitude toward patients, compared to only 38 percent of disengaged employees.
Therefore, as a manager, it is important for you to focus on driving employee engagement. When it comes to healthcare professionals, it is a hard to measure engagement without having a proper system that can measure and track it. Having a performance management system in place allows the management to align the individual goals of their employees to the organizational goals.
Safety
Employees make mistakes, but some mistakes cost more than the others. And, in the healthcare industry, making a mistake could mean compromising with patient safety.
Disengaged employees might not actually mean to make mistakes but when you are constantly stressed and burnt-out, it is hard to stay focused and engaged at work. According to Curaspan Health Group, in a 2007 study of a nationwide system of 23 hospitals facilities with more engaged workers had 8 percent higher net revenue per patient than facilities with lower engagement
The healthcare management should understand that they cannot just conduct employee engagement activities once a year and expect the outcome to be immediate. It is important that they find a system that helps them sustain the initiative they took in the first place.
Lower Operational Costs
Another very important things to consider is the lowered operational costs due to employee retention. Employee retention in healthcare industry is often ignored. But professionals who aren’t engaged at their current workplace, always tend to look for a change or look for an environment that can help them evolve and nurture their careers.
Engaging employees and helping them stay engaged through out their work can actually help you retain them so that you don’t have to put extra costs to get new staff on board.
Mortality
Nurses have the most frequent contacts with patients during their stay at the hospital. According to Gallup, which studied more than 200 hospitals, it was found that the engagement level of nurses was the number one predictor of patient mortality rates.
Imagine nurses who aren’t really satisfied with their job or are disengaged at work. The effect of it directly impacts the patient mortality rate. There are many factors that affect this rate like, the number of hours they put in for overtime, patient visits etc but one of the most important factors is their dedication and emotional engagement with the patients. To take care of this factor, it is very important to focus on engaging the healthcare workforce.
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Kylee Stone supports the professional services team as a CX intern and psychology SME. She leverages her innate creativity with extensive background in psychology to support client experience and organizational functions. Kylee is completing her master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational psychology at the University of Missouri Science and Technology emphasizing in Applied workplace psychology and Statistical Methods.