Healthcare Culture Series Part 2: Trends Disrupting Your Workplace

Today, we’ll be sharing results from our recent whitepaper which highlights the vital trends disrupting today’s workforce. After analyzing over 40,000 responses from our TINYpulse survey, we uncovered remarkable trends about how employees feel about their organizations’ culture, management, recognition, and their fellow co-workers. They fall into seven distinct points:

1. Only 42% of employees know their organization’s vision, mission, and values. That’s an alarmingly low number. Too many executives are not communicating and reinforcing their company’s guiding principles and mission.
2. 82% of respondents claimed that their manager clearly outlined their role and responsibilities. At the day-to-day team level it seems that managers are able to effectively set expectations and accountability.
3. Employee happiness is more dependent on co-workers than direct managers. Employee happiness is 23.3% more correlated to connections with co-workers than direct supervisors. Colleagues have an incredible influence on company culture and peer retention.
4. Team play and collaboration are the top trait employees love about their co-workers. In the recruitment and interview process, leading companies must incorporate opportunities to test and screen for these vital characteristics in candidates.
5. When offered the opportunity, nearly 20% of employees will proactively offer suggestions or ideas to improve the organization. Businesses that don’t crowdsource innovation and suggestions from their employees are missing a huge opportunity. If you’re relying on an open door policy, then you’re not fully leveraging your most prized asset - your people.
6. 36% of employees offer peer-to-peer recognition when provided with a resource to do so. As organizations become more decentralized, virtual, and matrixed, there’s a growing need to provide regular recognition that goes beyond the antiquated one-on-one supervisor-to-employee relationship.
7. Management transparency is the top factor when determining employee happiness. Management transparency has a .93 correlation coefficient with employee happiness. The cost of improving transparency is almost zero, but requires an ongoing dialogue between management and staff. We see an increasing number of companies using transparency as a weapon to attract and retain top talent.

What does this mean for you? Do your colleagues feel their environment is transparent? Do they feel supported by their colleagues? Do they have an opportunity to make suggestions or recognize their peers? If the answer is “no” or “I don’t know,” it’s time to start asking your employees.

As we mentioned in Part 1, the cost of replacing one of your skilled nurses can be as great as $67,100, not to mention the hit to morale when an employee gives his or her notice. Ask your nurses today and help keep retention up.

Interested in learning more?

Stay posted for Part 3 in our series, releasing next Tuesday, and learn how employee surveys can isolate morale killers.