5 Ways to Boost Healthcare Employee Morale
There is no doubt that positive employee morale is a key component in your organization’s success—it can either make or break your organization. Statistics reveal that letting engagement slide can cost companies 20 percent less revenue growth than their competitors. Therefore, it is critical that healthcare organizations prepare and support their team during this challenging time of new technology and constant change.
Unfortunately, there is no magical formula to boost employee morale, and improving engagement can come with its unique challenges. Below are five methods we gathered from a collective of authors who offer distinct perspectives on how to steer your team toward organizational success.
1. Schedule Regular Team-Building Activities
According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), there are endless opportunities and several ways to re-energize your employees. For example, allowing your team to take on volunteer projects at local shelters or charities is not only great for team building, but it also makes everyone at the company feel good about themselves. Additionally, participating in ongoing professional development activities together, or even fun, interactive, group-based cooking classes can encourage employees to connect and build lasting relationships outside of their busy day-to-day grind.
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2. Recognize Achievements
Indications of low morale are not always obvious. Primitively recognizing and addressing issues such as lack of cooperation, poor performance or attitude, and/or increased turnover rates are key to keeping your organization running smoothly with minimal setbacks or interruptions to your overall productivity, says Jayson Demers, Founder and CEO of AudienceBloom. He suggests that organizations recognize individual and group achievements because morale tends to sink when people feel their work isn’t being recognized or appreciated. A simple gesture like “good job” can go a long way, especially in front of their peers, clients and upper management. Your goal should be to create an environment where your team realizes their efforts are appreciated.
3. Reassessing Task Alignment
This approach to employee behavioral change begins with the identification of key issues in the work units within the organization and asks employees to realign their roles, responsibilities and relationships to perform necessary tasks, says laboratory management professional Caroline Satyadi. The feedback gathered from this training should be used to focus on what needs to be improved from both the employee and management perspectives. Management should try to understand and clarify what their team does through dialogue and feedback loops, reassessing task alignment, increasing employee power and reciprocity, and improving organization transparency and working environment. That would in turn increase employee accountability.
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4. Set (Fun) Team Goals
“Setting team goals is the backbone of every good management strategy,” says The Muse contributor Ashley Fidel. Although project goals, yearly performance metrics, and department-wide deliverables are all great motivators, they can also be hard to relate to on a daily basis. Therefore, working with your team to establish fun, safe and immediate goals, like who has the highest patient satisfaction scores, can build excitement and give clinicians something to work toward outside their demanding schedules.
5. Improve Perks and Benefits
Your team can become weary when tasked with routine responsibilities every day. So surprising them with a catered meal each month or providing a health club membership can demonstrate that you value their dedication and hard work, states Raphael Crawford-Marks, Co-Founder and CEO of Bonusly. If your organization already has similar perks, Crawford recommends offering more intangible rewards, such as giving them more responsibilities, participating in decision making, or even more of a say at work.
The common theme in all these ideas is caring, recognition, rewards and appreciation. Your employees are the force responsible for executing your directives, and if you can keep them happy and motivated, you’ll have a much easier time achieving your long-term goals.
Source: PreCheck
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