Linking Employee Satisfaction With Patient Satisfaction and Safety – Fair Evaluations and Making a Difference

This is the final installment in my series on patient and employee satisfaction. Today we’ll take a look at perceived fairness with evaluations and employees feeling that their work makes a difference.

From a young age, the concept of fairness in instilled in us, and this carries through to the workforce. For employees, fairness is a critical part of job satisfaction. Understandably, they want evidence that their organization has policies in place to ensure performance reviews are done fairly, and present objective and constructive feedback. That sense of fairness makes it easier for employees to accept negative feedback and challenge themselves to improve.
With a talent management system in place, HR can ensure policies are implemented and managed quickly, consistently and fairly. For example, a talent management system can help by automating forms and processes, giving HR control over what forms are used and when, so that everyone is evaluated fairly. Managers’ comments and ratings are tracked and visible to HR and higher level managers which also ensures fairness. Automated systems make managers accountable for every step of the process from completing timely appraisals to the actual content of each appraisal. Another way that these systems can improve perceived fairness is through multi-rater and self-evaluations which can be used to provide fair and complete feedback on an employee’s performance.

For individuals working in the healthcare sector, probably more so than in other sectors, knowing the work they are doing makes a difference is a key driver of their personal job satisfaction. However, many organizations struggle with how to actually demonstrate the link between an individual’s contributions and how the organization is doing as a whole. One of the key ways to demonstrate this link, is by aligning employee goals with organizational goals using a talent management system.

For example, if a facility has a goal to increase patient satisfaction, each department may have a different application of this goal, but everyone would be working on it in some way. The emergency department might give managers the goal of improving patient flow, while food services could reexamine its suppliers to offer more menu variety. Using the talent management system, people can then see how goals are progressing; giving employees the context they need for their work and giving them a stronger sense of belonging and contribution. The process of linking individual and organization goals also keeps everyone, regardless of their position, is accountable for their achievements, which makes a major difference when it comes to organizational performance, and in employee’s perception of the organization as a whole.

Employee satisfaction should be an organizational priority for a multitude of reasons. Dissatisfied employees are costly. They either leave or do just enough work to keep their job, putting patient satisfaction and safety at risk. Both of these situations pose concerns for those who pay for healthcare services, namely Medicare, Medicaid, HMOs and insurance companies.

While your CFO or CEO may argue that employee and patient satisfaction cannot be quantified, I’d argue that they can’t afford to ignore them. Employee turnover increases recruiting costs while Medicaid and Medicare have made patient satisfaction and safety criteria for payments to healthcare facilities.

If you’d like more information, or to discuss any of the points in this series further, email me at ymartel@halogensoftware.com