It is often said that “The way you treat
or engage your employees reflects directly on the company’s image and profits”.
In recent times, many customer-centric healthcare providers have
been researching methods and ways to improve the quality of service offered by
their client-facing employees, exploring different avenues to increase the
interface. From my experience of working with various healthcare providers, I have
observed that there is an overwhelming correlation between customer
satisfaction and employee
engagement. Like any other
service industry, healthcare is prone to the risk of people being dissuaded
from coming back to the same place from the way they are treated by the
employees whether it is a doctor, nurse, or support staff. Unlike a hotel or a restaurant
which receives customers seeking relaxation
or a holiday, hospitals tend to have customers who are tensed, upset or “on
the verge of losing it all”, seeking restoration and care. Given the predisposition of the customer, healthcare providers have a larger risk of
losing customers for petty reasons, making focus on better customer
satisfaction a major differentiator. Therefore the pertinent question now is,
how to improve customer satisfaction using employee resource pool.
There are many ways to do so but one surefire method to ensure improvement
and continuous excellent customer satisfaction is by finding out how much your
employee is engaged in their jobs. Employees would out-perform their peers
in other hospital when it comes to customer satisfaction provided they are
highly engaged and motivated. The level of
engagement will determine if employee would sell the company to the clients in
a negative or positive light.
Given below are a few ideas to increase the employee engagement within
a company:
Individual employee recognition:
The need and value of staff members who have worked for a longer time with the
company should be identified by recognizing them and providing them
opportunities for growth, as they are the key contributors to employee
engagement. In addition, recognition should not only be viewed as an acknowledgement
for a job well done, but also for participation in decision making, and for being
listened to by management and fellow employees. These practices will result in
“more respect and visibility” for positive contributors.
Long-term designs: Programs
and activities in the hospital should be designed to contribute on the long run
to the employee engagement needs and it should be viewed by the management strategically
rather than short-term efforts or efforts initiated on multiple fronts would weaken
the overall impact of the programs and may distract the staff from meeting the
patient care demands.
Enhance sense of belonging: Couple of years ago, a large manufacturing company back
in my hometown decided on a new technique; they brought an idea called “the
talking stick”. It was simple and very effective, the management and the entire
workforce would listen to the individual who holds the “talking stick” during
team meetings. Through this initiative, employees were given a platform to express
themselves by giving new ideas and solutions to the management for improving
the company. The result was simple; the workforce became comfortable with the management
and even better, they became more engaged in the work and the profits increased.
Managers
should hold team meetings with their staff in which they should present the need to improve
customer satisfaction, ask for suggestions, discuss ideas and decide to implement
the best ones. Thus they would not only engage the employees to come up with
ideas on how to improve the quality of service that is provided, but also
create the sense of “My Company” feeling which further enhances the employee
engagement.
Personal touch: Further,
the expanded use of technology for diagnostic testing and vital signs
monitoring have reduced the patient’s feeling of being personally cared for. As
the popularity of electronic prescription and records rises, healthcare
employees need to exercise “the personal touch” in caring for patients. Management
should train the employees in interpersonal skills and encourage one-to-one
interaction with the patients.
Organizations are heavily dependent on employees to make a
positive impact on customers and to deliver high level of satisfaction. More
than any other source of marketing promotion, word of mouth recommendations are
a primary driver in patient health care decisions. Hospitals that have higher
levels of employee engagement provide better experiences for patients, and
patients that have higher levels of satisfaction are most likely to recommend
the hospital to others.
Christy Koshy is a management consultant specialising in people
management and operations. As a functional expert at Medallion Hospital
Consulting, he provides coaching and transformational support to Medallion’s
clients across India. He holds a Masters in Social Work and is passionate about
redesigning people development and motivation frameworks in hospitals.
