In a recent webinar hosted by Becker’s Healthcare and Perceptyx, Jason Coffey, Director of Employee and Patient Experience, and Conrad Kresge, Manager of Employee Experience and Insights at Norton Healthcare, shared valuable insights into their organization's successful employee listening strategy. Their comprehensive approach has led to significant improvements in reducing burnout, supporting employees, and increasing retention.
A Comprehensive Listening Strategy
Norton Healthcare's listening strategy encompasses numerous touchpoints throughout the employee lifecycle. Kresge explained the evolution of their approach: "We've developed a very robust listening strategy with various listening mechanisms in place to assess the personas of all of our different employees and their experiences."
The organization's listening strategy has expanded beyond traditional annual surveys to include a more dynamic and continuous approach. Kresge detailed the various components: "We first implemented new employee onboarding surveys. We call these career cycle surveys. They are surveys that are always being sent out to our newest employees at two weeks, six months, 12 months, and 18 months of seniority."
These surveys capture critical information at different stages of an employee's journey. For example, at 12 months, they focus on career development opportunities, recognizing that the first year is crucial for retention. At 18 months, they ask employees what compels them to stay or potentially leave the organization.
In addition to these lifecycle surveys, Norton Healthcare has integrated safety surveys with employee experience assessments, developed welcome surveys for newly acquired facilities, and implemented targeted crowdsourcing surveys for specific issues. They've also begun testing AI-assisted action planning to help leaders respond more effectively to survey results.
The Power of Employee Rounding
One of the most impactful elements of Norton Healthcare's listening strategy has been its employee rounding program. Kresge drew a parallel to patient rounding in healthcare: "We've implemented an employee rounding program. We've been familiar with patient rounds within the healthcare space for decades. Rounding is when a clinician or leader comes into a patient's room and asks, ‘How has your stay been? Are you receiving the type of treatment that we expect? Is there anything I can do for you?’ Well, we took a look at this and said, ‘Why aren't we doing this for our staff?’"
This rounding approach has allowed leaders to engage directly with employees, asking how they can support them and improve their experience at Norton Healthcare. It also provided an opportunity for real-time recognition and problem-solving.
Closing the Feedback Loop
Another aspect of Norton Healthcare's strategy is ensuring that employee feedback leads to visible action. Coffey emphasized the importance of this: "If you're going to ask people for their feedback, you have to show them how you're going to use it or how you use it. And even if you were unable to or you hit a barrier of some sort, it's important to communicate that as well."
To facilitate this, Norton Healthcare follows several best practices:
- Monthly communications about the implementation of feedback
- Encouraging leaders to review survey results with their teams
- Following the "1-2-3 Action Planning" approach
- Holding leaders accountable through survey items to determine if results were shared and actions taken
Kresge elaborated on this action planning approach: "We're using Perceptyx's best practice action planning. It's called ‘1-2-3 Action Planning.’ And it's so simple. It's absolutely terrific. Choose one item, one area of opportunity, or one item that you want to improve, two things that you're going to do about it, and then three times to follow up."
Linking Employee Experience to Business Outcomes
Norton Healthcare has noted clear correlations between their listening and employee experience initiatives and key business outcomes. Their data shows:
- Leaders who frequently round on staff and provide recognition see a 92.4% improvement in employees feeling valued.
- Frequent leader interaction and recognition led to a 42% improvement in stress and burnout scores.
- Teams where action was taken on survey results have significantly higher engagement scores.
Kresge highlighted the impact of recognition and rounding: "What we found was that when our leaders round on staff frequently and recognize staff frequently, we see an impressive 92.4% improvement on the item, 'I feel valued as an employee of Norton Health'. That's a stark difference."
Addressing Employee Burnout
Recognizing the growing concern of healthcare employee burnout, Norton Healthcare has taken a proactive approach. They started by developing a clear definition of burnout, aligned with the World Health Organization's definition, and embedded this definition within their surveys.
Kresge laid out their approach: "We honed in on a definition of burnout for our organization and that allowed us to be very intentional. We communicated this to our teams and we embedded it within our survey, so that way we were specific with what we were assessing and what we were trying to improve."
They've also categorized unique types of burnout (e.g., financial, social) to better target interventions and connect employees to the appropriate well-being resources.
Empowering Front-line Employees
Norton Healthcare has shifted towards a more employee-centric approach, recognizing the value of front-line insights. Coffey elaborated on this transition: "Across the board, there's been a real move from employer-centric to employee-centric thinking. With our current listening strategies and technology, whether it's rounding or surveys, we're now able to listen and respond directly to our front-line employees. It's no longer just about top-down, multiple-choice Likert scales. We're listening and responding to our front-line employees. They are our idea generators, they're our innovators."
This approach has led to creative solutions, such as quickly addressing a night shift microwave shortage identified during leadership rounds. Coffey shared this anecdote to illustrate how small changes can have a significant impact on employee experience and psychological safety: "We actually had a somewhat new hospital leader, a president of a particular location. She started rounding using her listening strategies, gathering feedback from employees to better understand the location that she was now leading. During her rounds, a nursing assistant mentioned it was taking a long time to warm up their lunch due to microwave shortages. This wasn't an issue during day shifts, but at night, many people brought food to warm up. The next day, the president ordered three more microwaves. We never would have known about this issue without engaging directly with our front-line staff."
Continuous Improvement and Accountability
Norton Healthcare maintains a culture of continuous improvement by meeting quarterly with service lines to review results, sharing best practices among high-performing leaders through a "Culture Champions" program, and integrating survey results with other business metrics to drive organizational health.
Kresge emphasized the ongoing nature of their efforts: "Even if we're reviewing results from last year's survey or our latest instance of the career cycle surveys, it's driving improvement all year long."
By implementing this comprehensive listening strategy and taking visible action on employee feedback, Norton Healthcare has successfully reduced staff burnout, improved employee support, and increased retention, ultimately leading to better patient care and organizational outcomes.
To learn more, click here to listen to an on-demand recording of the webinar.