Achieving Breakthrough Engagement

Topics: Employee Engagement, Workforce, Employee Communication, Employee Recognition, Recruitment and Retention

A tightening labor market, along with the market pressures on hospitals and health systems, have heightened the need for health organizations to maintain a work environment that engages their employees. This publication offers a number of best practices and case studies to assist health executives in:

• Elevating employee engagement through either tactical or strategic approaches, as well as using a diagnostic to determine which method would add the most value
• Implementing the chosen approach to drive engagement, utilizing the detailed descriptions of best practices which can be followed
• Learning from the comprehensive profiles of four organizations which have achieved and sustained high levels of employee engagement

Executive Summary

The case for engagement

Hospital and health system HR executives are facing critical, yet seemingly conflicting, workforce challenges. On one hand, hospitals must replace retiring baby-boomer employees amidst a tightening labor market. At the very same time, organizations need to raise employee productivity to help bridge the widening gap between cost and revenue growth. As if these two challenges are not enough, heightened transparency is forcing hospitals to make significant improvements in clinical quality as well.

How can HR executives support their organizations’ efforts to achieve greater commitment from employees while simultaneously asking them to work smarter and harder? Fortunately, there are promising strategies for meeting this seemingly intractable challenge. In fact, a growing body of research suggests that employee satisfaction and productivity are not at odds with each other. Rather, exceedingly high levels of staff satisfaction, or engagement, go hand in hand with a heightened willingness to put in extra effort and a dedication to achieving key organizational goals.

Given the confluence of market pressures facing hospitals and health systems, advancing employee engagement represents a critical component of efforts to meaningfully improve health system performance.

Custom-fitting an engagement approach for your organization

HR Investment Center research identified two somewhat disparate schools of thought on how best to engage employees. The first approach comprises a tactical framework and is the more widely used model both within and outside of the health care sector. Organizations pursuing this approach utilize survey data to surface improvement needs and guide unit-level action plans. The second approach comprises a strategic framework and, while less common, is disproportionately pursued by studied organizations achieving the highest levels of engagement. The strategic approach leverages a compact between employees and the organization that speaks to shared values to drive engagement efforts—rather than survey results.

In light of each framework’s unique advantages, inherent risks, and differing up-front investment, readers must select the approach most likely to advance engagement within their own institution. After an introductory section on the case for engagement, this report dedicates two sections to detailing these two differing approaches to engagement and, more importantly, assisting readers in determining which approach their organization is best equipped to pursue.

Lessons from engagement exemplars

The final section of this report contains comprehensive case profi les of four organizations which have achieved and sustained high levels of employee engagement as well as outstanding overall performance. The case studies are designed to provide highly actionable information for institutions pursuing either engagement approach. Each case study includes an overview of the engagement exemplar’s strategic framework, as well as detailed descriptions of supporting best practices. These practices can also be pursued on a stand-alone basis to drive engagement at organizations deploying a tactical approach.

How to use this research

In total, this research advocates for a more deliberate investment in employee engagement. Readers are urged to utilize the tools provided to tailor an engagement approach to their specific institution. Once an approach is selected, or if a framework is currently in place, readers are then encouraged to consider the report’s best practice profiles to help identify a subset of engagement practices to pursue within their own organization in order to elevate overall engagement.

Essay - Evaluating Alternatives for Advancing Engagement Organization-Wide