Transforming Workplace Culture with Survey Data

Episode Overview

Daniel J Marino : 

Welcome to Value-Based Care Insights. I'm your host, Daniel Marino. On recent programs, we've spent time talking about different issues affecting workforce in health care, namely things that are going on with physicians and with our clinical staff, and even the non-clinical staff as we know, there's been quite a bit of turnover and issues with in cost and expenses and inflation and all that. But one of the things that I think I've spent a lot of time thinking about is the culture transformation that's really required to make a workforce happy, if you will, or at least content. And really evolved the workforce into a strong team that really helps to grow and create a lot of momentum for the organization. 

 
And there's quite a bit of challenges that we're seeing. I mean, if you think back before the pandemic, we focused a lot on empowering our leaders, particularly our middle managers, if you will, to make some decisions and to give them the ability to work through a lot of the key initiatives with their employees. And frankly, I think that served us well in many of the hospitals and many of the clinics and many of the departments. And then of course, the pandemic came around and there was big changes that were occurring. And those changes happened very fast, right? When we implemented virtual health and telehealth and so forth. What we found is a lot of the senior leaders pulled back a lot of those delegated leadership capabilities and for good reason, right? You know, they needed to make sure that the ship was, was moving in the right direction. 

 
And now we find ourselves, and really since the pandemic, we find ourselves in a situation where we're trying to reinstall a lot of those empowerment activities, initiatives, if you will. But, the circumstances are different. It's not just about giving folks the ability to make decisions, but how do we ensure that we're maintaining the right culture in the organization that allows folks to prosper and in particular work through some things like turnover and retention and making sure that our employees of today are really content in their roles. Well, I'm really pleased to have two folks from an organization that we've worked with in the past. The organization is called Engagement Multiplier. Joining me today is Todd Brook. Todd is the managing Director of Engagement Multiplier, and I also have Danica Wasser. Danica is the client service manager and operations manager of Engagement Multiplier as well. Welcome guys. 

Todd Brook: 
 

Thank you. 

Danica Wasser: 

Thanks for having us, Dan. 

Daniel J Marino: 
 

So, Todd, let's start out with you. I know you work with clients in all sorts of industries, clearly addressing a lot of these workforce issues. I mean, gosh, if it's not the number one issue that's facing many organizations it's clearly the top two. What are some of the big issues or big things that you are seeing right now that has been important or top of mind to a lot of our leaders? 

Todd Brook: 

Yeah and what you're bringing up right now I wish I could say was isolated to a single industry, across the board we're seeing people leave, we're seeing the pressure within the workplace and this idea of wellness. We're seeing employees really struggle to understand their connectedness to an organization, we're seeing friction occur, with the idea of that balance between personal needs and workplace. And it's interesting. I mean, I suppose the good news is if you step back, the same needs have always existed. We love to create fantasies or narratives about how the world has changed. And it certainly has, but I think Maslow did a great job when <laugh> when establishing the hierarchy of needs where really we're talking about the three basic needs. The first one is, and there's five in total, but three of them, really come to mind when we enter this topic. 

 
One is the physiological needs that a person has. Second is the safety needs, and third is a sense of belonging. And when we study, hundreds and hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of data points, the same truth keeps emerging. If those three elements are not in place where ultimately people are ready for that sense of belonging, it really doesn't matter what an organization does, what carrots they dangle, they end up spending more and more money to try to keep those people thinking that that is the key to engagement. And really it's just the key to more economic pressure for an organization. 

Daniel J Marino: 
 

Yeah, I mean, just when you know it can't be about just giving folks more money and giving them higher raises, right? For many of the hospitals, for many of the physicians, we are resource constrained. It's not a never ending black box. There has to be more there to really engaging folks. It used to be when I managed my offices years back, I managed a pretty large physician medical growth. I was constantly worried about losing my clinical staff to the competitor down the street, right, to the medical director down the street. While now, health care leaders have to worry about losing their employees to non-traditional health care providers or even folks that are leaving the industry. 

Todd Brook: 
 

Absolutely. And the trend is going to only accelerate because access to information means access to information. That means I can find jobs easier, I can find new opportunities, people are soliciting me. So the question really goes down to how do we create for our people a genuine sense of belonging so that they can fulfill those next levels up, which is the esteem and the self-actualization. When you're creating that, people will, and I'm not suggesting that you don't compensate them fairly, but paid then isn't the driving Component, it's other stuff, and that other stuff benefits both the individual and the organization, 

Daniel J Marino : 

Right. 

So you really have to think about those other needs that are really the driving force that makes somebody content in their role, I would assume. When you're doing this, and I think this is what a lot of leaders struggle with, it has to be more than an employee satisfaction survey, right? I mean, we're not just surveying folks just to say, okay, are you happy or not? And if you're not, okay, well then let's throw some more money at you or give you an extra half day off or something like that has to be more than that. 

Todd Brook: 

Yeah, 100%. And what we have found, and we joke around saying it's simple as a, B, c, it really is three things that will lead any organization there. But they've got to understand, doing these steps, the consequence of them, of not doing them is a lot of long-term pain. The consequence of doing them and being very direct with them might be a moment of pain, but very quickly, the tides turn in the favor of the organization and the people that are still there. And the first one for us is this idea of alignment. 

Daniel J Marino: 
 

So talk a little bit about the tool, right? You use a tool with Engagement Multiplier,  I'm not sure if that's the name of the tool, but what I've seen it is it sort of gets into the core driver a culture transformation in an organization. So it's more than just evaluating, you know, how a person feels, right? You're actually trying to get into the core on what's driving a lot of their sense of happiness, fulfillment, and so forth. Can, can you spend a couple minutes talking about that tool? 

Todd Brook: 
 
I absolutely can. And what may be a good segue, and Danica, I might bring you into this  in one second here,to that would be to just explain one concept that I think will then line itself really nicely to the tool, if you're okay with that, Dan. 

Daniel J Marino : 
 

Sure, absolutely. Go ahead. 

Todd Brook : 
 

And what that is, is when we go ahead and we look at all the different types of businesses out there, I don't care what industry, there are industries that can say to an employee, I expect you to come to work and be happy. It's an expectation. And it could actually be that expectation that you will terminate somebody if they're not happy, and you can say, that's impossible. Yet that is a core value of Disney. You can go ahead and say that we are going to work around the clock seems against culture today, right? But there are people that absolutely love it. And the reality is, when we talk about any product that we put into the market, and in this case Engage Multiplier is a platform we've built to apply these learnings. What we're really talking about is developing a listening system. And that's what engagement multiplier is, that asks very intentional questions. 

 
So this score you get a score because it gives you an understanding of a point in time. But what we're really trying to understand is what is the vision for the organization? Who are the right, who's to be on that bus to help the organization get there? And if you're acting through the mindset of desperation, I just need butts in seats, you're going to lose. But if you know exactly who you are, you are going to recruit people, even in markets where you say, there is no available staff. And that's the magic of what I perceive and look at as engagement is it makes recruiting easier. It makes retention easier because you know who you are and what you believe, right? 

Daniel J Marino: 
 

Right. Well, and you know, again, I've said for many, many years, my background has all been in operations and it's in finance, and I dive into the numbers, right? And it's important to be able to understand what drives those, those performance indicators, if you will, because then you can, then you can act on it. Danica, let's bring you into the conversation here. What's an example that you've seen as you've used engagement multiplier, looked at some of the data, what's an example on how it's driven some level of change, or at least an understanding of what's incurring within the organization? 

Danica Wasser : 

Absolutely. So Todd mentioned, a couple of key themes that we see consistently, both with our health care clients, but then really at that larger scale across industries. And one of those top themes is belonging. Do employees feel a sense of belonging with their hospital, with their overall organization, and that they are playing a valuable role. They understand the purpose and why they are driving towards that overall change. Another key theme that we see pretty consistently, and we have seen it time and time again before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and we will continue to see it moving forward, is this overall understanding of just communication. And as much as we want to work and perfect it, we will continue to do so, but it really starts with understanding and knowing the truth. So being able to identify what are some of the key drivers of communication and are we doing it properly? Are we communicating the overall purpose of the organization to the employees? And do they understand how they fit into that? In terms of the health care space, it could be something as mundane and simple as routing calls when someone is calling into the hospital to be more efficient to something, again, really at that larger strategic vision and understanding where they are going. 

Daniel J Marino: 
 

If you're just tuning in, I'm Daniel Marino, you're listening to Value-Based Care Insights. I'm here today talking with Todd Brook, Danica Wasser, and we're talking about culture transformation in the workplace and really getting into some of the key drivers of some of that transformation. Danica, let me throw this question out to you, and Todd, maybe you could follow it up as well, with the trend, one of the things that we've seen really since the pandemic is a lot of our clinical staff and in particular, nurses have experienced a lot of clinical exhaustion. I mean, they went through a really tough time when the pandemic hit, and it caused a number of our really key clinical staff, our nurses and so forth to say, you know what? I can't do this anymore. I don't feel like I'm connected to our mission. How have you used a tool or this level of data to sort of change that thought process and get our clinical staff reconnected back to what's important to them, why they got into health care in the first place? 

Danica Wasser : 
 

Absolutely. Nurses are a very special breed of humans. They care about their patients and they have hearts of gold. I am very fortunate to be able to experience some of these and be able to review insights from nurses, firsthand. I think when we were talking a little bit more about a listening system and being able to understand exactly what they need. Todd, maybe you can step in on this one a little bit, but in terms of creating that culture of continuous feedback and starting with the basics and understanding what they are thinking and what they do need, and then going on and reconnecting them to the original reason they joined the hospital and they joined the health care system and creating that sense of belonging, right? That is something that we see consistently, 

Daniel J Marino: 

But really using communication as a mechanism to realign them to their mission, why they got into patient care in the first place. Todd, what is some of the trends though that you're seeing that have been sort of a success that organizations have put in place to drive some of this change or transformation? 

Todd Brook: 
 

Yeah, I would say one of the biggest trends is the organizations that are winning are the ones that are slowing down and asking the right questions. When a doctor walks into the room they are diagnosing and the way they diagnose is either by figuring out what it is or very often what it is not. Yeah. Ultimately leads to a conclusion. When we ask the right questions, things like, what recharges your battery? What are your energy vampires? We can actually understand from the employee where it is anonymous and confidential. It gives them the freedom to communicate where we don't have to worry about the social side of it, where it's this loud negative noise. We don't have to worry about the fear of retaliation at the leadership level. 

 
If you're able to ask the right questions in a confidential and anonymous way, what we're seeing is those business leaders can often make slight adjustments and have a pretty profound impact. Because if you don't know what those things are that are absolutely burning out your staff, and you're assuming, remember all humans are different. So what is burning the root cause may be similar, but the remedy may be quite a bit different. You got to ask the questions they know the answers to what will make them feel better if you ask for the right insight. 

Daniel J Marino: 
 

Do you feel like though, that it's more powerful for the questions just to be asked and for the employees to be heard? Or do you feel like along with that there has to be some true action being taken? Right. So do you really, I mean, where does that balancing act come in? 

Todd Brook:
 

Yeah. I believe if you ask a question, only ask it if you're prepared to do something about it. Yeah. That doesn't mean you have to give what they want, that's a misconception. It simply means that you've got to have a response, within our tool, we have a component called suggestion box. It allows people to anonymously and confidentially submit suggestions. We just encourage leadership to respond. It could be yes, it could be maybe later, it could be no, but give them that two-way feedback. If somebody submits an anonymous and confidential comment on an engagement report, we have the ability for that two-way communication, the importance here, and all we did was we added tools to a problem that we saw in the market, which is, how do I create that safety from retaliation and safety from the organization, from something going out into the world where it is truly anonymous and confidential so that we can learn that real feedback and then ultimately engage differently. 

Daniel J Marino:
 

Right. You know, the turnover factor is definitely what many organizations are working through, right? So the turnover rate has increased, the retention rate has decreased, clearly that that has to be flipped. And I guess it really depends upon the area of the organization that you're working through, right? So if it's nonclinical staff, I would think the retention initiatives that you put in place will, will be probably different than the clinical staff, although I'm sure there's going to be some similarities there. What have you seen in terms of the nonclinical staff or even the clinical staff that have really been important towards improving that retention rate? 

Todd Brook:
 

Yeah, as simple as it sounds, I really think it's universal. Ask yourself as a business leader, a few questions. Do we have a purpose, a why that we genuinely believe it? Forget the team for a minute. Do we as leaders genuinely believe in this? Does it energize us? Does it motivate us? Are we clear on what we're trying to do as an organization and where we're trying to head? And if we communicated it, are we 

Daniel J Marino:
 

I think Todd is such a great question, you start to really engage leaders, and I've done this many times in a lot of our strategic planning sessions. It's amazing how leaders aren't aligned on that connection to the mission. So you can't help 

Todd Brook:
 

With your team to be 

Daniel J Marino:
 

Exactly right, <laugh>, if they're not aligned, how could their team be aligned? 

Todd Brook:
 

If the role of a C E O of any organization is to grow and support its leaders, and the role of the leaders is to support its employees and the role of its employees is to support its clientele, then if we are not aligned as leaders in what we're trying to achieve and why we're trying to achieve it, we are not going to have a team that is energized to go through the tough times and reflect on them with positive energy. They will look at those tough times and all they will see, and they will truly, they'll trip into the drama triangle. I am a victim, I am a martyr, or I am a persecutor. And it is a really negative downward spiral. It's contagious within an organization, and the best thing you could do is reset. And the beauty of all this is it's number too late, right? 

 
And point in time, you just have to kill off options and make a decision to go ahead and lay out some basics. And that's why I said at the beginning, it's a short and brief period of time, but once you've gone ahead and really taken that moment to align leaders, reinforce it in regular intervals, and everyone is clear on what we believe in terms of our purpose, why and what those, what the vision is, and then finally what the values are. What are those measurement sticks that we're saying are non-negotiables? If our values aren't, guys, we want a team here that works around the clock, say it, don't hide it, they're going to figure that out. And they'll be really unhappy if you get it wrong. Tell them what you are and who you are. And then what you're going to find is there is a huge pool of people that believe what you believe. Once you know what you believe. 

Daniel J Marino:
 

Oh, absolutely. And they are going to line around those beliefs. I absolutely agree with you. I think, you know, somewhere along the way, if the leadership is not connected around that truly connected, the staff is going to know that. Another question that I'm sort of been working through and to a certain extent struggling with, you know, since the pandemic, the whole working remotely has really become a major factor. I think we're starting to come back around where many of our companies are going back, you know, having their employees come back to work and health care. That was really not much of a choice, right? I mean, if you're a clinical staff, you have to be there. How do we manage through that? How does an organization address it? 

Todd Brook:
 

You know, it's interesting to me where people work and all the conversations around it. We each accept a lifestyle, we each accept certain principles for that lifestyle. And the beauty, and we should look at it as the beauty of it is people are being given the choice now of what they want. And I think it's important that an organization identifies what is the benefit and the value of our work environment. What is it? What makes us special, what makes us famous within our walls? Even if you're not it today, that's okay. But you've got to know what you want that to be. You've got to say it. And then you got to find people that want that too. So going back to the question, I can't tell you how much time we invest into remote or hybrid or all these terms, but what we're really saying is there are people that, for better or worse, some would say it's better need to get their butts outta bed. 

 
They've got to actually get dressed in the morning, make it all the way to the office every day. So the question is, how do you give them things that will make their life better, easier? If that's something that is, what they're really asking for is what flexibilities can we offer that no one else can, right? Because we got people in all the time together. It's asked those tough questions. And the team will help tell you, you could even ask them what would, how great would it be to ask your team? Obviously, we're in an industry where we can't work from home. What can we do as an organization that would make us 10 times better than any other place by doing these things that will offset the fact that we can't be from home? 

Daniel J Marino:
 

Right? So really focusing on lifestyle alignment, right? As we start to think about how we're addressing this. Well, this has been great, Todd, and Danica. I love this discussion, this clearly is a challenge that many of our leaders have struggled with, and they continue to kind of put some new things in place. If any of our clients want to reach out to you and follow up and just gain more information, any thoughts, Todd, where, how, how can they get ahold of you? 

Todd Brook:
 

Well, I mean, first of all, anyone can go to, engagemultiplier.com. One of the things that we are happy to do is walk them through an assessment so that they understand where they sit today. Then Danica, if you want to give your contact info as well for any direct questions in terms of any of the content from today, we're happy to help as well. 

Danica Wasser: 
 

Absolutely. You can feel free to go ahead and reach me at Danica, that's d a n i c a @engagementmultiplier.com as well. 

Daniel J Marino: 
 

Well, this is good. And as we've talked about if you're going to, if you know you have an issue and there's a lot of workforce issues there, you have to be able to get to really the root cause of what that issue is, be able to measure it and create a path towards improving it. And I am a huge proponent of being able to identify what the issue is, but able to measure the improvements. And again, I think, you know, as you've described your tool, it's a wonderful opportunity for organizations to really advance the culture. Well, I want to thank you both for joining the program today. Great discussion. Love to have you back again, some other time where we can maybe dive into a little bit more of the trends if that works out. Great. My pleasure. Well, and to our listeners, I want to thank everybody for joining in today. Really appreciate your time. Until the next insight. I'm Daniel Marino, bringing you 30 minutes of value to your day. Take care. 

About Value-Based Care Insights Podcast

Value-Based Care Insights is a podcast that explores how to optimize the performance of programs to meet the demands of an increasingly value-based care payment environment. Hosted by Daniel J. Marino, the VBCI podcast highlights recognized experts in the field and within Lumina Health Partners