Employee engagement is important in every business, on every level. Today I want to highlight how important it is where people are directly serving the customer. We can all remember a time when we had a bad customer service experience. Maybe it was at a restaurant, maybe it was in a retail store, maybe it was over the phone.
I’d be willing to bet that whoever it was you had a poor experience with, was disengaged from their work. Think about the impact that had on your overall feeling, impression and outcome. Now think about the implications when that takes place in a healthcare setting.
After a candid conversation with a healthcare administrator recently, I thought I would shed some light on the importance of this topic in the healthcare field. There is absolutely no question that employee engagement in the healthcare industry has direct ties to the quality of patient care and the patient experience. Incremental improvements in employee engagement and satisfaction can directly improve the quality of care being delivered.
Recognition for healthcare staff, including providers, comes in many forms. With continued financial pressure on the healthcare delivery industry, direct monetary compensation is by no means the only source of reward and recognition. In fact, monetary rewards are actually the least effective means of recognition.
There are a variety of fun, effective and personal ways to show appreciation, including: wellness activities, spontaneous recognition in the form of public gratitude and small tokens of recognition including; gift cards, company branded merchandise, additional paid time off, or promotions. At MI, we’ve seen firsthand just how much impact these little gestures can have on employee satisfaction and performance.
But this applies to more than just individuals. Group and team recognition is just as important in the healthcare setting as in any other industry, given the number of different touchpoints along a patient’s journey navigating the healthcare experience. Recognizing teams and keeping them engaged streamlines the patient experience and helps to provide a consistently positive outcome.
Are you or your company looking to elevate your employee experience or improve patient satisfaction? We can help. Contact Marketing Innovators today.
