5 Creative Ways to Keep Your Healthcare Staff Happy
Whether your practice has been treating patients for years or you are just getting started, you need great employees in order to be successful. Failing to keep high performers can leave your practice understaffed, with a less qualified workforce, and ultimately hinder your ability to provide quality patient care. In fact, the cost to replace a highly-trained employee can exceed 200% of their annual salary!
We understand that replacing employees and hiring new healthcare professionals is expensive. And the cost of doing business in healthcare continues to rise, as reimbursements continue to fall.
How do you keep your staff happy without drastically increasing costs?
Create a Sense of Community
The more support your employees feel from each other, the better they will work together. If patient scheduling and time permits, encourage your staff to eat lunch together by creating a comfortable communal area with snacks, coffee/tea, and water. Hold opportunities for staff to get to know one another outside of work by having events like family picnics, holiday parties, or potlucks a couple times a year.
Huddle Up
Take a few minutes once a day or on a weekly basis to have a “staff huddle” to share stories, recognize employees, and get to know each other on a more personal level. This is also a great time to ask for feedback and insight from your staff and ensure that everybody is aligned around shared priorities, patient needs, and practice goals.
Encourage Staff to Take Time Off
The best way to recharge is to take time off. While giving all your employees a week off during your busy season is not realistic, encourage your staff to take a day off when they need it. Create a culture where the staff is encouraged to support each other and take care of themselves. Employees shouldn’t feel guilty about using PTO; they’ve earned it!
Student Loan Repayment Assistance
A growing trend in healthcare is offering a program to provide financial assistance to help your staff pay off their student loans. Including this program in your benefits package is a great way to attract and retain recent college graduates. In fact, according to Forbes, “student loan repayment is the hottest employee benefit of 2018.”
Offer Personal and Professional Development
Besides financial compensation, growth is one of the biggest driving factors of successful employees. Give your staff the opportunity to grow by offering seminars, trainings, book clubs, medical certifications and more. Personal and professional development opportunities are significant drivers of employee engagement.
A happy staff is a more productive staff, and a more productive staff provides better patient care, which ultimately leads to an improved patient experience. Use these tips to get started and you’ll notice the positive impact it can have on achieving your overall business goals.
To learn more about how to improve your private practice, check out our latest ebook, “How to Improve Patient Care Through HR Excellence.”
