If your healthcare team is disengaged, patient satisfaction will decline, but there’s also a direct connection with your bottom line.  Employee retention, medical mistakes, and productivity all decline when your healthcare workers aren’t engaged.

Healthcare is as much of a people experience as it is a clinical one. Your patients come in contact with healthcare workers at every point in the care continuum. However, if an employee is disengaged from their work or the organization, the chances are fairly high that the patient experience will suffer. That’s why healthcare organizations must concentrate on improving the employee experience. Using training and other tools to engage your healthcare workforce will provide a positive impact on customer satisfaction – and your bottom line.

Connection Between Employee Engagement and Patient Experience

According to Gallup, “Psychologically committed, or engaged, employees are the key to improving patient satisfaction and loyalty.” Their work to track patient satisfaction scores established a correlation between the patient’s overall experience rating and the happiness and engagement healthcare works. This effort polled both healthcare patients and employees to prove the hypothesis that employee engagement increases patient satisfaction.  

An employee drives a positive patient experience with a small child

Gallup asked several questions, but five stood out as clear indicators of positive employee engagement in a healthcare setting:

  • I have the materials and equipment to do my job properly
  • At work, I can do what I do best each day
  • The mission of my organization makes me realize my job is important
  • My fellow healthcare workers are committed to high-quality work
  • Over the past year, I have had opportunities to learn and grow at work

Gallup was one of the first organizations to establish key metrics that defined what healthcare employee engagement would look like. In the 90s there was no consistent way to measure healthcare worker engagement. But by 2002, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) developed a standardized way to measure patient satisfaction. 

Nearly 20 years later, hospitals increasingly have their reimbursement tied to patient satisfaction via the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). These measurements strongly rest in the human experiences of the patient as they come in contact with human care providers. Several questions in the survey inquire about the patient’s experience with the care providers and not just the clinical care they received. This includes:

  • Thoroughness of staff communication
  • Quality of communications about medications and care delivery
  • Responsiveness of the hospital staff

These powerful questions help illustrate the connection between having an engaged employee in every healthcare setting. Quality healthcare is about more than diagnosing and treating illness. Quality in healthcare, as currently defined by HCAHPS, is also about the human connection for care delivery that is so critical to a positive patient care experience. How can you know that your healthcare workers are engaged even before it comes time to receive feedback from your patients? How can healthcare providers create engaged employees in their practice?

Creating the Engaged Healthcare Worker

Engagement is about the connection to the job. These workers connect to patients and other employees in a way that is genuine, warm, and positive.

A medical employee drives a positive patient experience with an older man

Becker’s Hospital Review suggests four key characteristics of an environment that fosters workforce engagement:

  • There is mutual respect at all levels of the staffing chain
  • The workplace is one of mutual trust between teams, and administration and frontline workers
  • There is open and honest communication at all levels of the organization
  • Workplace performance is measured and linked to a system of rewards

The Association for Talent Development says if healthcare providers aren’t achieving the employee engagement results they’re seeking, they should look to leadership to create an environment to improve the lives (and engagement) of their healthcare workers. They suggest leadership should see employee engagement as an ongoing issue and not a one-time box to check off their to-do list. Making engagement a key part of your healthcare organization’s strategy will create a ripple effect across your organization. It should be a consistent part of an effort to continuously improve.

Some of the best ways to improve employee engagement, no matter the size of your organization includes:

  • Communication continues to be an important facilitator for employee engagement. This process begins with the candidate’s first experience and continues throughout the employee’s tenure. Communicating the core values of your organization and revisiting them frequently with your staff will not only ensure everyone is rowing in the same direction—it will give them a sense of purpose.
  • Setting practice benchmarks across your organization is another important way to engage your workers in the overall success of the organization. Holding frontline workers accountable is one thing, but managers should also have metrics and benchmarks to achieve. Each individual in the organization should know what is expected so everyone can ultimately strive toward the same organizational goals. 
  • Training remains a critical part of any healthcare position. Clinical training and certification are, of course, required for medical professionals. However, if a hospital or medical practice network plans to hold a manager accountable for employee engagement, they should make training available to help them achieve this goal. 

Consistently, training has been pointed out as a key way to engage a healthcare worker in the success of the organization. How does this process help your team improve?

How Can Training Improve Employee Engagement in Healthcare?

The original Gallup poll cited earlier in this article first established the link between employee training and their engagement in your organization. Knowledge workers in particular seem to thrive in an environment that gives them new tools to improve their careers and their lives.

An employee who drives positive patient experiences is complimented by her boss

A recent Willis Towers Watson report stated, “More positive hospital employee experiences have been linked with greater patient satisfaction, better quality of care results, enhanced safety, and even lower medical malpractice claim rates.” Importantly, their research of six years of employee surveys from 24 different healthcare providers showed a key correlation between access to training opportunities and employee engagement.  

Training can both teach best practices and give employees the tools they need to improve their work and interactions with patients, but it can also provide a chance to share best practices that can help your organization. Training can also remind a workforce of their value to an organization through career enhancement. This can improve employee motivation and engagement. 

Insight Training Solutions offers healthcare organizations training programs that are proven to engage employees in the success of your organization. Talk with our team today about tools that can improve your employee experience and increase patient satisfaction.