Linking Employee Satisfaction With Patient Satisfaction and Safety – Showing Management Listens and Cares

Today I’m going to take a look at how talent management can be used to demonstrate that healthcare management cares for and listens to employees.

For management to show that they care, employees need to see that they, as individuals, and their work are valued by the organization. A big way healthcare organizations accomplish this is by having HR policies and programs that institutionalize their commitment to employees, and for these policies to be applied fairly and consistently across the organization. These corporate HR policies may include accountability, pay for performance, fairness, stress management, promotions from within, and so on.

The practical application of these policies comes in the form of talent management programs such as employee performance reviews, learning management or succession planning. You can easily use automated, web-based applications to act as integrators between policies and programs, making them consistent for employees.

Take for example, training and development. Helping employees achieve their career aspirations makes a powerful statement. If a nurse has strong technical skills and a weak bedside manner, that weakness may be holding him or her back from a promotion, which results in frustration and then the risk of poor patient care. A training and development program that is part of a talent management strategy enables the organization to ensure the nurse is appraised fairly, provide concrete examples of any weaknesses, identify areas for development and empower the manager to create a clear action plan to help the nurse improve and expand their skills.

Talent management can also play a major role in ensuring employees know management cares by providing continuous feedback, on time pay merit increases, and easy access to employee records.

There are many ways talent management assists with demonstrating on a day-to-day basis that management listens to employees. As part of the employee evaluation process, any negative feedback about a department or the organization itself can be captured and then acted upon. This provides invaluable data when it comes to employee satisfaction and performance improvement. A great example is how our customer, West Virginia-based St. Mary’s Medical is able to quickly run a report of all the negative comments made during the appraisal process to ensure they are being addressed. Without a system in place, collecting this information would be both time consuming and unrealistic.

Another area where talent management is critical is in providing employees with a voice in the form of self-appraisals, performance journals and similar tools. By providing these tools, management is placing a value on the employee’s thoughts and perception of their performance, which in turn shows they are listening to them in yet another way.

Next, I’ll take a look at the final three drivers of employee satisfaction: receiving help with job stress, perceiving evaluations to be fair, and feeling work makes a difference to the organization and patients.