Not Hitting the Mark

We have tallied the results of the employee engagement pulse survey, which asked you to rate the following: “I am involved in decisions that affect my work.” Almost 500 (more than 1/3) of you responded and I thank you for that! Just as a reminder, one of our 6 corporate goals for this year is to improve the score at each site in response to this question. A positive movement in this score has a direct correlation to how you feel about us as your employer. 

As I say during each orientation, we know there will be times when you spend just as much time here as you do at home and we want to create an environment that allows you to be fully engaged in your work for our patients and families.

Here are some key findings from the recent employee engagement survey:

• Bayonne, Clifton, Lakehurst Road, and Egg Harbor all increased their score AND happen to be our smallest locations 
• New Brunswick remained EXACTLY the same
• Every other location went down

These findings sparked a series of questions for Senior Leaders. 

• Ok, what are we missing?
• What are the decisions people want to be involved in or feel involved in that they are not?
• Is it communication?
• Is it process?
• Is it the people?  

It would be tremendously helpful if you would be willing to share your ideas on things that you think would help you to feel more involved in the decisions that impact your work.

Here’s my promise – share your ideas, comments, and suggestions here and we will follow up and let you know what we can and cannot do about it.

Deal?

Always Room for Improvement

Great news - The employee engagement survey is back and as promised you gave us very important feedback that will help us improve our life at Children's Specialized.

Your Managers and Directors will discuss the data with you in early February for your specific area. There were some important themes that I would like to share with you ahead of time and also ask for your input to help me understand how we can improve our employee engagement.

Our overall scores showed us in the 86th percentile compared to the other Children's Hospitals surveyed.

We scored the highest on – “Would I recommend Children’s to my friends or family who need care.” To me, this speaks volumes and is the highest possible endorsement anyone can give to an organization or business.

This is the EXACT question our federal government will evaluate from our patient satisfaction surveys of Medicare patients. We should all feel very proud of this because it reflects our performance of our core business, the exceptional care we deliver to the children who we are privileged to treat.

We scored higher than our comparative group in the areas where we spent a great deal of attention on improving since our last survey. These were questions that dealt with communication by your Manager or Director, working cooperatively between work units and being respected by the person you report too. This has been a very important focus to us and the results of this survey showed you valued our improvements.

The survey identified two areas where we need to reestablish focus: recognition of the work you do and career development.

It would be really helpful to hear from you, besides more money, what would be recognition that would be most meaningful to you? In the same vein, understanding that in health care, frequent title changes or promotions are not the norm. We will be using the 100 day work out to begin to identify solutions to improve these areas for us.

In that same way, we will be doing the survey again in 2012. Just as we have moved on the speed to change and respond in our quality and efficiency, we need to do the same with employee engagement. We must measure where we are, create changes to improve, and then measure again.

Please share your thoughts on the blog about recognition and career development. Your suggestions are always so helpful and the blog could provide a forum to get different opinions out there.

Many thanks as always.