15 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement in Healthcare

In the healthcare industry, an engaged workforce is key to providing high-quality patient care.

But over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on medical professionals — especially frontline workers. A 2020 survey from Mental Health America found that 93% of healthcare workers were experiencing stress, and 76% reported exhaustion and burnout. As a result, 1 in 4 American healthcare workers have considered leaving their current jobs since the beginning of the pandemic.

Even before COVID-19 was in full effect in the US, many healthcare workers were experiencing chronic distress and disengagement. A January 2020 report found that 42% of physicians were experiencing some level of burnout. And according to a 2013 Harvard Business Review analysis of a Willis Towers Watson study, only 44 percent of U.S. hospital workers are highly engaged.

The good news? By taking action to improve the employee experience, healthcare organizations can reduce staff turnover, better support their teams, and ultimately improve care quality. Now more than ever, it's important that organizations invest in creating an engaging work environment for their healthcare staff.

What is employee engagement?

Many people mistake employee happiness with employee engagement. But the truth is that they're very different things. So what is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is the level of connection between employees and their workplace.

While happy employees may be satisfied at work, engaged employees are truly committed to their organization's mission and values. Unlike employee happiness, employee engagement that has a direct impact on team performance.

In the healthcare industry, truly engaged employees have a huge impact on their organizations. Engaged healthcare employees lead to higher patient satisfaction rates, increased patient safety, and improved quality of care. A Gallup poll of 200 hospitals found that a higher engagement level of nurses resulted in lower patient mortality.

Investing in employee engagement can also affect a hospital's financial performance. Hospitals with the least engaged nurses pay more than $1.1 million annually in malpractice claims than those with the most engaged nurses.

Here's 15 ideas to help healthcare leaders better support their medical staff, boost employee engagement, and ultimately improve patient satisfaction and care.

Employee engagement starts with a culture of wellness. Download Cooleaf's free wellbeing checklist!

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1. Build a culture of listening.

One of the biggest impediments to employee engagement in healthcare is poor internal communications. When employees feel like their feedback isn't heard by leadership, they can easily become disengaged and dissatisfied at work. This leads to more turnover and a worse patient experience.

In order to increase employee engagement, healthcare leaders must conduct regular employee engagement surveys and create an action plan to address feedback.

An internal survey can give leaders valuable insights into how their employees are feeling and the roadblocks that might be getting in their way. And by taking time to identify the pain points and measure employee satisfaction, leadership can start to build trust within the organization.

2. Offer more opportunities for peer-to-peer recognition and manager-to-staff recognition.

Recognition has a powerful impact on staff motivation and turnover. A SHRM report found that companies with employee recognition programs saw a 63% increase in employee productivity and a 51% increase in employee retention.

Without consistent recognition and appreciation, employees can feel invisible. The solution? An employee recognition program. Employee recognition programs encourage employees to thank their peers for hard work, spotlighting heroic actions and making team members feel more appreciated. With an employee experience platform, like Cooleaf, employees can easily recognize and reward one another on-the-go through a web-based platform or mobile app. Not only can you spot-recognize your staff for excellent performance, you can also send special gifts for birthdays, work anniversaries, and holidays like National Nurses Week.

3. Prioritize learning and development.

Offering learning and development opportunities for your healthcare staff has a measurable impact on employee retention. In fact, 70% of employees would be at least somewhat likely to leave their current organizations for a job that offers better opportunities for employee development and learning. Additionally, organizations with a strong learning culture enjoy 30-50% higher employee engagement and retention rates than those that don’t.

Healthcare organizations that prioritize staff learning and development see improved turnover rates and higher quality of care. Offering ongoing job training, as well as leadership training for managers and supervisors, can have a measurable impact on team retention. If you're using an employee engagement platform like Cooleaf, you can incentivize employees to complete training courses with automated rewards.

4. Offer increased peer support and mentorship.

Strong support and mentorship can make all the difference in boosting employee morale. According to recent research, 83% of employees participating in a mentoring program said that their experience positively influenced their desire to stay at their organization.

A coaching or peer support program can lead to strong professional relationships and happier employees. For healthcare professionals who are experiencing difficult challenges in the workplace, a listening ear can make a world of difference.

If you choose to create a peer support or mentorship program, be sure to measure the success through surveys and one-on-one feedback sessions. Gather ongoing feedback from participants and ask for ideas to improve the program.

5. Keep your organization's mission front and center.

Many healthcare workers are intrinsically motivated by a strong drive to help others. But unfortunately, they often don't feel that same level of commitment towards their organizations. Over time, this can lead to healthcare professionals feeling disengaged and unmotivated.

Healthcare leaders can drive higher employee engagement by highlighting their organization's core values and mission. Give team members examples of how your organization is making a difference will help your healthcare staff feel more connected to your organization's purpose, resulting in better patient care. And frequently reminding team members of examples of your core values in action will result in a more motivated, engaged team.

Fostering a workplace environment of high employee engagement is a challenge, but it's well worth the effort. In the healthcare industry, engaged employees are essential to providing high-quality patient care.

6. Start from the top – invest in your leadership team

Great leaders help to inspire others. They serve as role models and help to encourage, mentor, advise and motivate their employees. When leaders are perceived to be out of touch because they have poor people skills, more times than not this will filter through the organization from the top down and result in a toxic or negative workplace culture. Train your leaders to be better, otherwise, most of your other efforts to boost morale and engagement will be wasted.

7. Lead with optimism

Leaders play a key role in fostering employee engagement. Projecting a positive attitude about the organization, work environment, professional role, and life, in general, can have a significant impact on employee engagement and morale. In addition to being skilled and competent managers, leaders act as role models by setting a professional, positive tone and leading by example. Beginning each day with an optimistic outlook can provide an energy boost that improves employee engagement and morale.

8. Cultivate relationships

Building, developing, and sustaining relationships takes focus, discipline, and dedication—and is at the heart of creating an engaged workforce. Effective leaders understand and appreciate others’ needs, and as a result, they pay careful attention to individual and collective relationship building. This requires leaders to understand each individual’s needs and to provide an environment of open communication and transparency. Effective leaders listen well; encourage others to share ideas, concerns, and varying perspectives; and welcome new ways of doing things. They realize that employees will be more motivated to work hard and try new things if their leader acknowledges their efforts.

9. Foster interpersonal and organizational trust

Effective leaders keep their word, inspire trust, and build confidence among team members. Interpersonal and organizational trust must be earned, and both stem from an intentional effort to follow through and align one’s behavior and values with the institutional vision, mission, and shared values. Great leaders cultivate a work culture where each employee is treated with respect and civility and trusted to fulfill the organization’s strategic goals. They promote an environment where meaningful, frequent, and open communication prevails. These factors help to create an environment where employees feel appreciated and thus become highly motivated to accomplish their work.

10. Encourage autonomy and individual growth

Many employees do their best work when allowed to practice autonomously and when given the opportunity to make decisions that impact their work environment. This doesn’t mean they work in isolation or without supervision. Rather, autonomy means creating an environment that allows employees to work both independently and collaboratively to make sound clinical decisions about delivering safe patient care. Fostering professional autonomy improves employee engagement, enhances patient care outcomes, and elevates the status of the profession. Employees feel engaged when employers are invested in them, allow them to make important and well-informed decisions, and provide opportunities to expand and develop their self-governance skills.

11. Be visible and available

Skillful leaders are visible, available, and approachable in the workplace. Effective leaders engage with staff, patients, and families—not to check up on employees, but rather to genuinely interact and converse and to be available to team members. Many managers proclaim to have an open-door policy, which generally refers to extending an open invitation for employees to visit and share ideas with the manager in his or her office. However, a better way to view this policy is to have the manager open the door and walk through it on his or her way to spending meaningful time in the workplace to build goodwill and engage with staff.

12. Set clear goals and provide feedback

Employees succeed when they understand and embrace their performance goals, have the necessary resources to accomplish the work, and receive ongoing feedback about meeting their goals. They want to know that the work they’re doing is meaningful and worthwhile. If employees are unclear about how they’re performing, or if their contributions go unnoticed, they may assume that their work is unimportant. Providing ongoing feedback helps employees feel engaged, connected, and involved.

13. Prioritize equity, inclusion, and belonging

In healthcare, teamwork is crucial; employees want to feel they can be themselves at work and that they’re part of something bigger than themselves. In short, they want to know that they belong.

Organizations may not immediately recognize barriers to equity, inclusion, and belonging. Engagement surveys and other methods of employee listening attempt to hone in on these issues by addressing them directly and providing a scalable way for organizations to identify how these perceptions may differ across the healthcare system.

14. Make your employees feel like they matter

By being clear and communicative above what is expected of each of your employees, from the quality of their work to your hospital’s mission, to their purpose and how they can contribute is the first step in demonstrating how they matter. Healthcare facilities are run by people, not robots, or machines. As such: genuine, honest relationships need to be built between management and individual employees; the type of relationships that build trust and comradery.

There are many ways to start the process. For example, give your employees the freedom to adjust their work schedules to better suit their needs. Offering flexibility in scheduling has proven to turn out more productive, happier, and more engaged staff. You can easily use your internal communications to support this strategy. Features like forums, online chat tools, idea banks, and access to corporate policies can assist you with this mission.

15. Keep your organization's mission front and center

Many healthcare workers are intrinsically motivated by a strong drive to help others. But unfortunately, they often don't feel that same level of commitment toward their organizations. Over time, this can lead to healthcare professionals feeling disengaged and unmotivated.

Healthcare leaders can drive higher employee engagement by highlighting their organization's core values and mission. Give team members examples of how your organization is making a difference will help your healthcare staff feel more connected to your organization's purpose, resulting in better patient care. And frequently reminding team members of examples of your core values in action will result in a more motivated, engaged team.

Fostering a workplace environment of high employee engagement is a challenge, but it's well worth the effort. In the healthcare industry, engaged employees are essential to providing high-quality patient care.

Want to learn more about how to improve the employee experience in your healthcare organization through pulse surveys, staff recognition, and virtual challenges? Chat with us!

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Want to learn more about how to improve the employee experience in your healthcare organization through pulse surveys, staff recognition, and virtual challenges? Chat with us!

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