Do you have a plan for your internal communications during a crisis? Take a look at these crisis communication best practices so you know ahead of time.
Crisis communication best practices: the only 4 you need to remember
Do you have a plan for your internal communications during a crisis? Take a look at these crisis communication best practices so you know ahead of time.
If you’re like most people, you’d probably prefer not to imagine what happens in a worst-case scenario, or a situational crisis.
However, imagining what could go wrong — and how you’ll react to it — is one of the most important things you can do for your business.
An effective crisis communications plan starts with your employees. With early, clear, and consistent messaging, your team can become advocates for your company during any crisis.
By following these four straightforward crisis communication best practices, your stress levels will go from 100 to 10 (hopefully).
The 4 crisis communication best practices you need to remember
Make messaging consistent
Back up statements with action
Balance timeliness and precision
Practice empathy
Let’s have a more in-depth look at each of these practices.
1. Make messaging consistent
Your internal communications during a crisis should convey the same stance and expectations to every member of your team, regardless of level.
That is more effective if you already have an easy, direct line of communication with each member of your organization.
While different roles may need to respond differently, it’s crucial t foster a sense of transparency rather than secrecy to ensure a better response across your organization.
Communicate often to make sure everyone is on the same page, even with constantly changing information.
In a 2020 Edelman study on internal communications during the COVID-19 pandemic, 63% of employees wanted daily updates, and 23% wanted communications multiple times a day.
2. Back up statements with action
It's important for your team to understand how to talk about a situation, but it's even more important for them to understand what's being done — and their role in the process.
As soon as you have a response plan, communicate it to your team. That way, what's being done to resolve an issue is at the forefront of the conversation. Share what your organization's plan is to prevent situations from arising and use as many concrete steps as you can.
Recruit those in your organization who can help with definite tasks. Perhaps the PR team needs to create an official statement, or the development team needs to redesign a product. Whatever it is, let everyone know how they can help to react to the crisis.
3. Balance timeliness and precision
The moments immediately following an event are often the most critical for your internal communications during a crisis.
You don’t want there to be a sudden vacuum of silence where others may be left to speculate. That is the time to get your initial response out quickly, to guide the narrative.
It’s alright to let your employees know there are some things you still don’t know. It’s better to be upfront about how you’re addressing uncertainties than to wait to communicate at all.
With that in mind, it’s also appropriate to take your time to craft a more thought-out response for the long term. Planning for crises means you’re prepared immediately in the event.
While it can be impossible to plan out the details of your crisis response, it's vital to create crisis response documents that lay the groundwork processes for establishing more detailed responses with your team.
4. Practice empathy
The crisis will undoubtedly affect your employees day-to-day, some certainly more than others.
It’s critical to empathize with your employee’s struggles throughout the crisis and recognize where their duties have become more difficult.
A 2020 Catalyst survey on the effects of empathy in the workplace during COVID-19 found that empathetic leaders and managers increase productivity, innovation, and engagement.
Although you don’t want to dwell on how the situation is causing setbacks or difficulties, you can still empathize with your workers while returning to the positive.
Communicate your gratitude for their continued hard work and outline plans to alleviate their stressors.
The Catalyst study states empathetic leadership entails:
Respecting life circumstances
Supporting both life and work needs
Fostering inclusion
Open lines of communication to hear their input and experiences. Solicit feedback through forms, polls, and one-on-one interviews. Let your employees know that you want to listen to their thoughts on tackling the crisis from their point of view.
Show up in more than just writing. Video messages and calls communicate more empathy than written statements.
Final thoughts: 4 crisis communication best practices
Your internal communication during a situational crisis is just as important as your public communication — and perhaps even more so.
That’s why it’s essential to lay the groundwork for a plan so you can react effectively if necessary. Your internal crisis communications should be consistent, actionable, timely, and empathetic.
All the members of your organization deserve frequent, comprehensive, and accessible updates during a crisis.
Psst – looking for crisis communication tools?
Blink’s employee communications app provides an efficient way for you to communicate with everyone in your organization. From company-wide status updates to policy changes through the intranet, the all-in-one app makes connecting with your employees simple.
If you’re like most people, you’d probably prefer not to imagine what happens in a worst-case scenario, or a situational crisis.
However, imagining what could go wrong — and how you’ll react to it — is one of the most important things you can do for your business.
An effective crisis communications plan starts with your employees. With early, clear, and consistent messaging, your team can become advocates for your company during any crisis.
By following these four straightforward crisis communication best practices, your stress levels will go from 100 to 10 (hopefully).
The 4 crisis communication best practices you need to remember
Make messaging consistent
Back up statements with action
Balance timeliness and precision
Practice empathy
Let’s have a more in-depth look at each of these practices.
1. Make messaging consistent
Your internal communications during a crisis should convey the same stance and expectations to every member of your team, regardless of level.
That is more effective if you already have an easy, direct line of communication with each member of your organization.
While different roles may need to respond differently, it’s crucial t foster a sense of transparency rather than secrecy to ensure a better response across your organization.
Communicate often to make sure everyone is on the same page, even with constantly changing information.
In a 2020 Edelman study on internal communications during the COVID-19 pandemic, 63% of employees wanted daily updates, and 23% wanted communications multiple times a day.
2. Back up statements with action
It's important for your team to understand how to talk about a situation, but it's even more important for them to understand what's being done — and their role in the process.
As soon as you have a response plan, communicate it to your team. That way, what's being done to resolve an issue is at the forefront of the conversation. Share what your organization's plan is to prevent situations from arising and use as many concrete steps as you can.
Recruit those in your organization who can help with definite tasks. Perhaps the PR team needs to create an official statement, or the development team needs to redesign a product. Whatever it is, let everyone know how they can help to react to the crisis.
3. Balance timeliness and precision
The moments immediately following an event are often the most critical for your internal communications during a crisis.
You don’t want there to be a sudden vacuum of silence where others may be left to speculate. That is the time to get your initial response out quickly, to guide the narrative.
It’s alright to let your employees know there are some things you still don’t know. It’s better to be upfront about how you’re addressing uncertainties than to wait to communicate at all.
With that in mind, it’s also appropriate to take your time to craft a more thought-out response for the long term. Planning for crises means you’re prepared immediately in the event.
While it can be impossible to plan out the details of your crisis response, it's vital to create crisis response documents that lay the groundwork processes for establishing more detailed responses with your team.
4. Practice empathy
The crisis will undoubtedly affect your employees day-to-day, some certainly more than others.
It’s critical to empathize with your employee’s struggles throughout the crisis and recognize where their duties have become more difficult.
A 2020 Catalyst survey on the effects of empathy in the workplace during COVID-19 found that empathetic leaders and managers increase productivity, innovation, and engagement.
Although you don’t want to dwell on how the situation is causing setbacks or difficulties, you can still empathize with your workers while returning to the positive.
Communicate your gratitude for their continued hard work and outline plans to alleviate their stressors.
The Catalyst study states empathetic leadership entails:
Respecting life circumstances
Supporting both life and work needs
Fostering inclusion
Open lines of communication to hear their input and experiences. Solicit feedback through forms, polls, and one-on-one interviews. Let your employees know that you want to listen to their thoughts on tackling the crisis from their point of view.
Show up in more than just writing. Video messages and calls communicate more empathy than written statements.
Final thoughts: 4 crisis communication best practices
Your internal communication during a situational crisis is just as important as your public communication — and perhaps even more so.
That’s why it’s essential to lay the groundwork for a plan so you can react effectively if necessary. Your internal crisis communications should be consistent, actionable, timely, and empathetic.
All the members of your organization deserve frequent, comprehensive, and accessible updates during a crisis.
Psst – looking for crisis communication tools?
Blink’s employee communications app provides an efficient way for you to communicate with everyone in your organization. From company-wide status updates to policy changes through the intranet, the all-in-one app makes connecting with your employees simple.
For comms leaders who want to bring their teams together, employee engagement is a critical element in creating a sense of belonging in frontline organizations. There are a number of different employee engagement frameworks available.
Therefore, it’s important to understand their respective strengths and weaknesses to make the right decisions for your teams.
How can you know which one is right for your organization?
The answer lies in understanding the goals that you want to achieve through engagement, and how the different frameworks can help you do so.
At Blink, we believe in the importance of employee engagement, which is why we've carefully evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of key frameworks on the market, to help you find the one that aligns with your organizational goals.
Whether you're an SME looking to create a fast-growing startup culture, or a large enterprise looking to make your employees feel more empowered and innovative, this guide will help you understand what an employee engagement framework is and find the right model for the job.
What Is An Employee Engagement Framework or Model?
An employee engagement framework or model is a strategic structure created to help you understand and measure the factors that drive employee engagement within your organization.
These models work to identify the specific factors that are most important to creating an engaged employee workforce, and provide a strategic framework for improving these factors as part of your wider employee engagement strategy.
But why does this even matter? Why bother? Well, studies have shown that engaged employees see increased customer satisfaction, boosted job satisfaction and improved turnover (43%) compared to their competitors, amongst a range of other competitive benefits. We know, we've told you before! But that's because it's true.
As for the framework, it provides a core structure to your communications and engagement efforts and helps you to focus on the elements that are most important. So whether you're looking to drive innovation, retention, or productivity within your organization, there's bound to be an engagement framework or model out there that can help you achieve these goals.
Before we dive into how to choose the best employee framework for you, let's take a look at some of the main employee engagement models.
Employee Engagement Framework Examples
When it comes to employee engagement theories, specifically frameworks, the sector is dominated by a few major players. In this section we'll outline the key focus and aims of each employee framework example, hopefully providing you with some insight into which model might be best for improving employee engagement in your organization.
1. The Zinger Model
The Zinger model of employee engagement consists of 14 employee engagement elements, with key symbols for each element. Together, these elements make up a symbolic framework for measuring employee engagement, with each element representing a specific part of the engagement process. These 14 elements include:
Achieve results
Craft strategy
CARE (Connect, Authentic, Recognition, Engage)
Enliven work roles
Excel at performance
Esteem organization
Foster community
Serve customers
Develop career
Leverage energies
Experience wellbeing
The model is designed to help organizations evaluate and monitor the factors that impact employee engagement over time, and track progress towards their organizational goals.
While this theoretical model lacks depth in terms of human resource management theory, it does provide a useful visualization of different engagement factors and mechanisms, making it a great choice for comms leaders looking to map out their employee engagement strategy in a visually appealing way.
2. The Deloitte Model
The Deloitte model of employee engagement was created after two years of discussions and research with clients, revealing five major elements and 20 underlying strategies that work together to make an organization truly “irresistible.” The 5 major elements included in this framework are:
Meaningful work
Hands-on management
Positive work environment
Growth opportunity
Trust in leadership
All of these factors work together to form a core system of engagement within an organization (See Figure 1 below) that maintains itself through strong company culture. And while the model is aimed at maximizing employee satisfaction, it also works to improve productivity and profitability.
This framework has been used by hundreds of organizations around the world and boasts a high success rate in improving organization-wide employee engagement and company performance. If you’re looking for an evidence-based approach to employee engagement that can help you achieve results across the board, this might be a good fit for you.
One central idea in the JD-R theory is that although workers may be based in various sectors–think transport, manufacturing, or finance–their job characteristics can be classified into two categories: job demands and job resources.
Job demands are job aspects that require continuous effort and usually come with physical and mental costs. Some examples could include a heavy or unmanageable workload, conflicting demands from managers and customers, and workplace bullying.
Job resources help workers progress in their careers, make their jobs less demanding, and improve their day-to-day life both professionally and personally. Some examples of resources could include anything from an easily accessed Central Hub storing core company resources to scheduled breaks during the work day and access to line management training, enrolling on employee engagement training programs and other development initiatives.
Using a variety of methods to study leadership and workers, such as Employee Surveys, interviews and administrative data, the JD-R model has been proven to be a valid method for assessing how employees feel about their job resources and demands, and in turn their engagement levels.
4. The Gallup Employee Engagement model
The Gallup model of employee engagement refers to their Q12 Survey, which consists of 12 employee engagement survey questions. After taking the Q12 survey, leaders and managers will be able to effortlessly work each item's concepts into conversations, meeting agendas, performance evaluations and team goal setting. The 12 questions are:
I know what is expected of me at work.
I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
There is someone at work who encourages my development.
At work, my opinions seem to count.
The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
I have a best friend at work.
In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
The 12 questions are split into four levels (See image below) required for an environment of trust and support in the workplace. By meeting the needs of the three levels of foundational employee engagement drivers, leaders can drive top level personal and professional growth for their employees.
Using these levels as a guide to manage your team, you can improve their performance and continue developing them professionally.
It's important to note that these four levels do not represent consecutive phases. Managers do not complete level one and then level two, etc. Leaders must ensure that employees' needs are met on level one first, however they must then continue to deliver on that level while meeting their needs on the second, third and fourth levels.
Simply put: if you don't meet your employees basic needs on an ongoing basis, the other levels won't follow.
5. The AON Hewitt model
The AON model of employee engagement consists of three main sectors, Say, Stay and Strive. Based on employee responses to "say, stay, and strive," engagement levels can be determined and used as a predictor of business outcomes.
AON goes on to recommend some key steps when implementing an engagement framework, which include:
Define your improvement strategy
Boost the impact and effectiveness of your managers and leaders
Create an aligned employee value proposition
Design and implement total reward programs.
By using these steps, leaders can successfully improve employee engagement and drive better business outcomes for their organizations.
How to pick the right employee engagement framework for you
What business targets are you aiming for?
To choose a fit-for-purpose engagement model, you need to understand the goals that you want to achieve through engagement. Some of the most common business targets are: improved innovation, increased employee retention and productivity, and better financial performance.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) built around employee engagement metrics can also make strong targets for your engagement framework. For example, some organizations might aim to increase employee participation in the workplace and their willingness to contribute to company goals – both of which are important metrics for measuring employee engagement and satisfaction.
Some key questions to ask yourself at this point could include:
What's the main engagement problem you’re currently facing?
What are your business targets?
Does the engagement framework align with KPIs and company goals?
Understand your team setup
The first step in choosing the best employee engagement framework for your organization is to understand the different types of teams that you have. This will help you to better understand the specific engagement needs of your team, and tailor the framework accordingly.
For example, a frontline workforce is going to require specific framework targets, such as increasing employee engagement in nurses or on the factory floor. On the other hand, an office-based team may be looking to increase employee participation in company events or projects.
The truth is, frontline workers are often left with no engagement projects that meet their needs. Unfortunately, this has led to a growing number of frontline workers left feeling unheard and disengaged.
To do better for your staff, start by really getting to know them and their team setup.
Assess your current technology
When choosing your framework to engage employees, run-of-the-mill employee engagement activities and boring old company practices need to stay in the past.
From employee engagement platforms and digital communication tools to online learning resources, there's a growing number of technology solutions available to help you improve your organizational culture and increase engagement.
In our humble opinion,Blink is the absolute frontrunner when it comes to tech solutions for engaging employees. Blink offers:
Secure Chats to drive feedback loops, two-way communication and meaningful workplace relationships
Central Hub for instant access to core company policies, procedures and files
Blink Feed for company announcements and engaging day-to-day updates
Frontline Intelligence to help you measure and analyze how your employee engagement strategy is performing
Employee Surveys to drive a movement of listening within your organization.
With these digital features in one Frontline Engagement App, Blink really is the perfect fit for any business looking to improve employee engagement and, ultimately, business outcomes.
So if you're ready to start taking your employee engagement efforts to the next level, how about trying Blink today? You'll be able to easily meet your communication, collaboration and company culture goals!
Identify engagement framework allies
Employee engagement framework allies are those who are invested in improving your organization's culture and are willing to work alongside you to help achieve this.
For example, if you're looking to boost employee participation in your workplace, it might be worth reaching out to HR teams or management to see if they can dedicate budget towards more frequent team meetings or staff events.
Alternatively, if you're a comms or HR leader, you might need to get CIO or even CEO buy-in in order to implement the right digital tools to kickstart a new framework.
Overall, finding allies for your employee engagement framework can be a powerful way to get more support behind your goals, and achieve better results in the long run. So make sure you reach out to anyone who might be able to help you move forward.
How do you implement an employee engagement model?
It’s important to choose the right model and identify your allies to ultimately achieve your goals. To implement this thinking, it's important to approach implementation in a structured way. This will help you have a clear plan to manage the process from start to finish.
Some key steps include overhauling your digital employee engagement tools, testing and setting measurable goals, creating regular check-in points for measuring progress, and ensuring that everyone involved is aligned with the same vision and implementing employee engagement best practices.
What Blink can do for you...
Now that you have a better understanding of how to implement an employee engagement model in your organization, you can think about implementing a tool like Blink.
At Blink, strong employee engagement is at the heart of what we do. That's why our mobile engagement app offers a range of powerful tools and features to help frontline organizations improve their culture and build better relationships with their staff.
With an average activation rate of over 85% across numerous deskless industries, Blink can help you drive more open and honest communication, increase employee participation in your initiatives, gather feedback from across all departments, all of this to help you drive key metrics and KPIs.
Searching high and low for the perfect employee to fill a complicated role can be difficult. It stresses you out if you’re already short-staffed and in a rush to get more hands as quickly as possible.
Of course, it would be preferable not to worry about hiring at all. Retaining employees you already have can be a lot simpler than constantly hiring. And it can benefit your business too.
While you’re probably familiar with some of the benefits of employee retention, there are several hidden advantages of employee retention that you may not have considered.
If you’re ready to get motivated to kick your retention efforts into high gear and retain your top talent, keep reading and learn some of the lesser-known benefits of staff retention.
Why employee retention is important
Employee retention is important because it can improve the productivity of an organization.
Organizations with high employee retention profit from increased employee engagement, higher employee morale, more experienced employees, and lower employee turnover costs.
That’s why 91% of Human Resources leaders are concerned about employee turnover in the near future.
Besides the revenue, companies with a lower turnover rate can spend time on their employees, build a cohesive company culture, and achieve innovations that outperform their high-churn counterparts.
Employee retention’s effect extends beyond your annual revenue or quarterly performance reports — it improves each day for your workers, managers, and customers.
In short, it’s hard to overstate the importance of effective employee retention strategies as they can impact just about every aspect of your business, including revenue, service, and company culture.
1. More quality hires
Hiring typically increases when employees leave your company. So it should decrease as your retention goes up.
The hidden benefit of high retention is that you can allocate more resources to the time-consuming job of sourcing new hires. You can be more selective in finding candidates with relevant experience and perfect cultural fit instead of rushing to fill a vacancy.
The candidates you hire this way are more likely to stick around and better fit your organization, which further improves your retention rate.
Ultimately, more employees staying means more business growth and more new positions. You can focus your hiring efforts on adding to the team rather than replacing previous talent.
2. Better employee training
Hiring new employees takes up a significant portion of your company’s HR budget and time. It’s estimated that replacing an employee costs anywhere from 50% to 200% of their annual salary.
Retaining just one extra employee means thousands of dollars saved you can use in other areas.
One often-neglected management area is training, with 78% of workers saying they want more training. By saving on hiring, you can spend on training.
With more time for training, your employees will be happier, more skilled, and even more likely to stay with your organization.
3. Improved customer relationships
Most of your return customers and clients don’t think of your business as a logo or physical store. They think of the person with whom they interacted. Your employees are the face of your business, from frontline workers up to account managers.
Your customers rely on your employee’s knowledge of their needs and history with the company to deliver the highest level of service. So when an employee leaves, the relationships they built with your customer base leave with them.
A PWC report found that 80% of Americans think a knowledgeable staff is the most important element to customer satisfaction, along with speed and convenience. They also pay more for things when they experience a positive customer experience.
The benefits of employee retention reach beyond your current staff and bottom line and impact the customer experience. A high employee retention rate ultimately improves your clients’ and customers’ perception of your business.
4. Faster progress
While onboarding and formal training programs are essential for satisfied, efficient employees, these resources are hardly the only way employees learn on the job.
One of the most valuable sources of guidance and information is your current employees. Studies show that 91% of employees with a workplace mentor are happy with their jobs.
By retaining most of your employees, you get:
Strong relationships between your employees that impact their performance
Employees who possess in-depth knowledge in their fields
Great mentors who have the technical skills and know little-known tricks in the field to help the newcomers
You benefit from the perks of high employee retention: Employees have a wealth of team members to turn to when they have a question or need advice. This turns your newest employees into your best employees.
Also, when turnover is low, you keep the work environment of cultural cohesion and the know-how of experienced employees. This results in less stress and high productivity.
Final thoughts: 4 hidden benefits of employee retention you should know
Why retain employees? The answer is clear.
The benefits of employee retention are wide-reaching for your entire organization. Employees, management, and customers all reap the benefits of employee retention.
Employees benefit from greater satisfaction, higher productivity, and better support on the job. Employers can enjoy greater profit and less uncertainty. And your customers can rely on consistently high-quality and personalized customer service.
These benefits are well worth the expense of managing incentives like healthcare, training, and work-life balance.
If you’re ready to improve your employee retention, an all-in-one employee communication tool like Blink can maximize your organization’s initiatives.
C-suite leaders in the healthcare industry have long been interested in ways to improve their hospital performance. Now, studies show that one factor with a profound positive impact on meeting your business goals is increasing staff engagement in their jobs. HBR’s research showed that higher employee engagement levels can improve outcomes such as:
Hospital costs (Any legal action taken by a patient against a hospital for negligent complications)
Treatment effectiveness and patient outcomes (Measured by the rate patients are readmitted)
The level of hospital acquired infections and conditions (Surgical complications, etc)
The research also found that just a small increase (1%) in employee engagement leads to a 3% reduction in hospital acquired complications and a 7% reduction in hospital readmissions. In addition to this, research supports that the quality and care with which their company leaders engage their healthcare employees influences key aspects of the care those employees go on to provide.
Simply put, employee engagement initiatives lead to better patient care. And if you treat your employees right, they'll in turn treat their patients right.
It's clear that C-suite leaders need to act now if they want to see improvements in hospital performance. But how can hospital leaders improve employee engagement among their staff?
Well, there are a few key employee engagement trends in healthcare that organizations should keep an eye on, which our experts have delved into in this handy guide.
Trend 1: Moving towards consistent & clear communication
Our research has found that almost one-fifth of frontline workers state they don’t receive relevant communications from their employer organization. Our research also found that over one-third (34%) of workers can’t easily access workplace systems on their mobile, nearly 2 in 10 aren’t using their intranet, and of those, two-thirds don’t know how to.
But, so what? What does this downward trend in effective comms mean for leaders of healthcare organizations? Well, it turns out that ineffective communications can actually have a negative impact on patient safety, a critical concern for anyone in the healthcare sector. As NIMH states:
"When health care professionals are not communicating effectively, patient safety is at risk for several reasons: lack of critical information, misinterpretation of information, unclear orders over the telephone, and overlooked changes in status."
On the flip side, consistent, clear and transparent communication within a healthcare organization creates highly engaged employees, which in turn improves the quality of care your employees provide their patients.
So, if your paper announcement boards, sporadic emails and disparate communication tools are no longer working to effectively engage your staff, don’t just brush it under the carpet. With the pressure on for HR and IT leaders to digitize, a mobile-first, all-in-one approach to employee engagement can provide the perfect solution to both problems.
When using mobile communication tools, you are able to easily and directly communicate with your frontline staff. Whether it’s instant company updates and news to the palm of their hands, simplified and secure document access at the drop of a hat, or direct and open two-way communication channels available 24/7, a mobile-first approach is a great way to engage and empower your healthcare employees – and improve patient safety.
Trend 2: Actioning employee feedback
Whilst consistent communication will be vital to your employee engagement levels, you can’t simply provide workers with the means for communication and expect improved engagement. You have to use your communications channels to truly listen to, and action feedback from, your workforce in order to engage them.
Not only does this show your staff that their opinions matter, but it can also improve the overall work culture and job satisfaction within your healthcare organization, as they feel more autonomy over their work.
And the benefits don’t end there. Research from HR healthcare found that 60% of healthcare workers claim listening to employees drives changes for a more progressive business. Additionally highlighted in HR Healthcare's research, effective employee feedback has been found critical for improving patient employee environments.
As such, by perceiving employee engagement as an outcome-related effort in which patients themselves are directly affected by its success, healthcare leaders can better understand the impact that their engagement initiatives have on the overall patient experience.
Unfortunately, current trends in healthcare seem to be working away from these potential benefits. Our recent employee engagement statistics highlight that 87% of healthcare workers believe their employer should do more to listen to the needs of their workforce, and nearly 4 in 10 workers don’t feel that their feedback will be acted on. To combat this, leaders need to do more to ensure they are consistently making efforts to collect and act on direct employee feedback.
Finding the right employee engagement tools to facilitate clear communication around worker issues will be important, but one key feature you should look out for when it comes to worker feedback is Employee Surveys. By creating customized and targeted surveys for key demographics, departments and employees in your workforce, you can show them that their input is valued and taken into account when the big decisions are made.
Trend 3: Driving employee recognition
According to research, recognition is a key driver for healthcare worker engagement.
However, our research shows that nearly 4 in 10 (37%) healthcare workers don’t feel as valued as their desk-based colleagues. This is a huge missed opportunity for healthcare organizations, as recognizing and rewarding your frontline staff not only boosts morale and job satisfaction, but can improve patient care as well.
A simple shout-out or a direct message goes a long way in showing your appreciation for your employees' hard work, but a one-on-one approach shows the organization is willing to go the extra mile to show they care about their team members.
Ask your team questions about how they like to receive feedback. Do they prefer you shout it from the rooftops or keep it private? If your organization uses rewards, does your teammate prefer gift cards or meals? Asking these questions will provide you many options to meaningfully recognise employees.
Other ideas include:
Recognition events (paid for team lunch or dinners etc)
Providing development opportunities
Personalized rewards
Giving managers exposure to senior leaders.
At the end of the day, taking the time to recognize and appreciate your employees' efforts will go a long way in improving the overall employee experience – and your engagement levels will follow suit.
Trend 4: Understanding quiet quitting
While it's not a new concept to the healthcare sector, quiet quitting—where employees slowly disengage and eventually leave their job without giving notice—is a growing problem in the industry.
Unfortunately, Gallup found that 32% of US employees were actively engaged at work in 2022 (compared with 34% in 2021) and that the largest decline in engagement was found among health care professionals, who realized a 9 point drop in engagement scores year-on-year. Some reasons cited for employees becoming disengaged include:
They receive poor communication from management
They don't believe management has their best interests in mind
They feel a lack of autonomy and control
They do not have the resources needed to career out their role effectively
They face little or no career advancement opportunities.
In addition to this, another recent survey found that 61% of physicians are currently experiencing burnout, and when asked about the cause, 62% of physicians blamed their current employer. The impact of this on the healthcare industry has been drastic.
The true impact of the quiet-quitting trend in healthcare
This phenomenon can have detrimental impacts to your healthcare organization, as it not only results in decreased productivity and higher turnover/low retention rates, but also requires additional resources—and costs—to recruit and train new staff members.
Jeremy Sadlier, executive director of the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration, commented on how this trend is playing out in hospitals all over the US:
“Ultimately, this trend has the potential to make a significant impact in the industry. Any lack of engagement on the part of staff ultimately impacts patient care, teamwork, safety and throughput, all of which impact the financial health of an organization and the patient experience.
It's incredibly important for leaders to focus on engagement, growth opportunities, and to recognize and reward hard work. These are a few ways to focus on your employees to help them feel engaged with their work."
In order to combat this growing trend, healthcare leaders should prioritize open communication with their staff to address any concerns or issues that may be causing employees to disengage in the first place. By understanding and addressing these issues with strong engagement initiatives, healthcare organizations can prevent quiet quitting and improve the entire employee experience.
Another way to tackle the quiet-quitting crisis, Forbes suggests, is that leaders humanize work. This could include offering flexibility and autonomy in the workplace, as well as recognizing and valuing employee contributions and investing in a mobile-first, intuitive solution to healthcare employee engagement.
Trend 5: Pushing diversity, equity & inclusion
One trend we're seeing in the healthcare industry is a greater focus on creating a diverse and inclusive workforce, as well as providing DEI training for employees.
And it's not only a recent trend. According to one study, the number of HR leaders identifying DEI efforts as a top priority was 1.8 times higher in 2020 than in 2019. In 2021 leaders indicated that “setting goals and tracking DEI progress through metrics” was one of their two top priorities for the year.
This trend is supported by further research from Deloitte, who surveyed 20 CEOs within the healthcare industry to find that addressing and improving health equity was one of their top goals. But why is that?
By promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace at every level, healthcare organizations can improve employee engagement levels by making all staff members feel valued and respected. In turn, this can lead to improved patient care and better overall organizational practices.
Rola Aamar, PhD, Senior Clinical Effectiveness Consultant at Relias states:
“Commitment to consistent DEI initiatives, especially training, not only is important for patient safety and better health outcomes, but also can be key for retaining qualified, engaged employees. Organizations that create and promote inclusive work environments and consistently let staff know that DEI is a priority are the ones that are most likely to reduce moral injury and burnout among staff.”
Research has also shown that diverse patients who see themselves in the healthcare workforce, are more likely to trust their healthcare provider. This in turn leads them to be able to communicate better about their condition, more likely to understand and follow treatment plans, and overall are more satisfied with their healthcare.
It really does matter at every level.
DEI is important at every level, with CEOs recognizing and pushing it forward this trickles down into other levels of management right down to the frontline.
In their 2021 State of Healthcare Training and Staff Development Report Relias found that over half of respondents indicated that their organization was moving to actively address DEI-related issues. However, only 40% of those with DEI training require managers to participate.
With this in mind, healthcare business leaders need to take action now: review your organization's current DEI practices, set goals for improvement, and make a plan to implement them effectively.
And don't forget to regularly track and assess your progress along the way. Consider utilizing resources such as DEI training programs, diversity consulting services, and healthcare employee surveys to gather feedback and ensure your DEI efforts are truly making a positive impact.
Trend 6: Prioritizing mental health and wellbeing
The mental health and wellbeing of your healthcare workforce has to be a priority if you want to succeed as an organization. However, historically, the healthcare sector has seen elevated stress levels.
Numerous factors contribute to elevated stress among healthcare workers, including heavy workloads, long shifts, a high pace, lack of physical or psychological safety, chronicity of care, moral conflicts, perceived job security, and workplace related bullying or lack of social support.
And this elevated stress isn't without its challenges. Physician burnout and caregiver stress is a real issue and, according to Frontier's research, work-related stress can have a negative impact on health care providers' professionalism, quality of care delivery, efficiency, and overall quality of life.
As such, it is critical that leaders in the healthcare sector are prioritizing the mental health and wellbeing of their employees. This includes offering direct and easy access to communication solutions to allow employees to reach out for support when needed, support resources such as employee assistance programs and crisis resources, mindfulness/resilience training, and flexible work schedules.
Whilst mental health should be a key focus, you can’t neglect physical safety.
In the quote above, Frontier cited “lack of physical safety” as one of the factors that contribute to stress. This is supported by research from NSC which found 40% of people who reported feeling “very” unsafe at work reported having symptoms of depression all or most days, while only 1% of people who felt very safe at work reported the same.
From the research, there are 3 key ways frontline safety can impact mental health:
Employees who feel unsafe at work are more likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Employees who feel the most unsafe at work are also the most likely to meet the criteria for clinical diagnosis of mental illness.
Feeling unsafe at work impacts employees on and off the clock. The feelings they have at work can follow them home.
By prioritizing the mental health and wellbeing of healthcare workers, organizations can improve overall employee engagement levels and decrease burnout rates, in turn driving patient care success and overall organizational success.
So let's take action now and prioritize the mental health and wellbeing of our healthcare employees. It's time to put an end to burnout and promote a culture of support within our organizations. The benefits, for both our employees and our patients, are worth it.
Trend 7: Using people analytics tools
People analytics tools are gaining traction in the healthcare industry, as they offer a way to track and measure employee engagement levels, analyze performance data, and inform HR decision-making. With the rising trend of big data and analytics in the healthcare sector, these tools can offer valuable insights to organizational leaders.
Deloitte tells us that with people analytics, healthcare organizations can:
Increase employee satisfaction.
View employees as a critical and valuable asset in the supply chain; an asset that can be analyzed and optimized to benefit individuals and the company as a whole
Uncover opportunities to transform HR practices and optimize talent-focused programs.
By utilizing people analytics tools, healthcare organizations can gather valuable insight to inform and improve their HR strategies, ultimately driving employee engagement and overall organizational success.
Healthcare firms are also using people analytics to increase profitability, as employee engagement has been proven to be a strong predictor of financial performance.
With Blink's Frontline Intelligence, healthcare organizations can analyze and track employee engagement, satisfaction, and other key metrics in real time, using them to guide their employee engagement initiatives and reach their goals.
Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, Healthcare networks can be complicated enough, without staff having to download and juggle a number of different employee systems.
The Blink mobile-first employee app connects them to core industry apps in seconds, without requiring a password. From shift scheduling to PPE requests to Sharepoint, everything's ready for your staff in one (digital) dashboard.
By providing a platform to help you stay on top of the latest trends, facilitate communication, and track performance and satisfaction, we can help drive HR success within your organization. With Blink, you can achieve:
10X higher communication rate using an employee app
300% increase in feedback through survey responses
Higher employee retention and engagement
People analytics to focus on burnout and DE&I initiatives.
So why wait? As healthcare leaders, it’s vital that you keep up with the latest trends and take action to improve employee engagement within your organization. And we can help you do just that.
Employee retention in healthcare has never been more important — or more difficult. We know that one in five healthcare workers left their jobs in 2023.
Healthcare work is demanding and, at times, emotionally exhausting. Violence against caregivers is on the rise. And with staff shortages a problem in many healthcare settings, stress and burnout are an ongoing concern.
But we need more healthcare staff than ever. The global population is aging, increasing healthcare demand. Staff continuity also improves the patient experience and outcomes. Healthcare providers need to do all they can to hang onto employees.
So what can you do to improve healthcare employee retention? Research shows that nearly one-third of healthcare employees are currently disengaged in their work. This is a worry — but it’s also an opportunity.
Disengagement is linked to high levels of attrition. So increase staff engagement and you reduce staff churn, too. It all starts with listening to, understanding, and acting on the needs of your frontline workers.
Effective employee retention strategies for healthcare providers
Healthcare retention is a challenge. But one that can be met with a combination of employee engagement, communication, and development.
The most effective staff retention strategies in healthcare include the following:
1. Invest in employee development
2. Use technology to improve healthcare worker communication
3. Create an open and inclusive culture
4. Recognize and reward employee efforts
5. Offer competitive wages
6. Make schedules more flexible
7. Give employees a voice and act upon their feedback
Now, let’s take a closer look at these ideas.
1. Invest in employee development
Training, development, and career advancement are key to healthcare staff retention.
The 2024 NSI Nursing Solutions report reveals that career advancement was one of the top reasons for healthcare employees resigning from their jobs in 2024.
And according to Press Ganey, nurses who don’t receive training and development opportunities are 1.4 to 1.5 times more likely to leave their roles than those who do.
Despite the importance of learning and career growth, only 60% of healthcare employees say skill building is offered by their organizations. So, to hang onto employees:
Be transparent about your promotion policies and opportunities
Find out where employees want to go in their careers
Commit to a policy of continuous learning and development
Make training more accessible with mobile learning tech
Beyond those early days of onboarding, offer mentoring and cross-training. Keep employees up-to-date with advancements in healthcare technology and practices.
Note this research from Gallup, which shows that 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined by the manager. Ensure that your managers have the training they need to support employee motivation, engagement, and retention more effectively.
Time is another important factor. Busy healthcare staff on the frontlines of your organization don’t just need training opportunities. They need dedicated time in which to access them.
The takeaway: Invest in ongoing education and training programs suited to your employees’ needs. Also, facilitate learning by giving easy access to learning tech and building training time into employee schedules.
2. Use technology to improve healthcare worker communication
Healthcare organizations tend to use a variety of internal communication channels. These may include a noticeboard, staff pagers, and email.
But there are problems with these methods of communication. First, you can’t be sure that a message has been received and read. And second, these channels don’t inspire two-way communication, a key pillar of employee engagement.
To make internal communication at your healthcare organization more effective and less fragmented, you can create a communication hub using a mobile-first employee app or intranet.
Here, you can share mandatory reads that employees have to click to acknowledge. You can create open channels of communication between healthcare staff and their managers — and give employees easy access to documents and resources that support them in their roles.
You can also segment your workforce by role, department, tenure, and location so they only receive relevant communications. This helps to avoid unnecessary distractions and information overload for time-strapped healthcare workers.
When Elara Caring adopted Blink as their primary communication tool, they were struggling with high staff turnover and low levels of employee engagement. Since adopting Blink, the organization has transformed engagement, with 95% of employees feeling more connected to Elara and each other.
The takeaway: Use an employee app or mobile intranet to make work-life easier for frontline employees. Give workers unified access to internal communications.
Next on our list of employee retention strategies is workplace culture. A positive, inclusive, and supportive culture makes your organization a happier place to be. This leads to better healthcare staff retention.
It also impacts patient outcomes. Because when healthcare staff feel supported and operate in a culture of psychological safety, they can ask questions and raise concerns without fear of repercussions.
To develop this type of culture you need open, two-way communication across the whole of your organization. A digital communication tool can help you achieve this. It allows everyone, including hard-to-reach frontline employees, to share news, ideas, and opinions.
You can create dedicated spaces for 1:1s, group chats, and organization-wide Q&As. This helps employees to feel heard and valued. It also helps them to build meaningful workplace connections.
Wellbeing is also paramount right now. With around half of all physicians and nurses experiencing symptoms of burnout, a positive workplace culture relies on adequate stress management and mental health support.
The takeaway: Take time to analyze your organizational culture and find areas for improvement. Prioritize open, two-way communication to support psychological safety at work. Also, provide stress and mental health support to address the symptoms of burnout.
4. Recognize and reward employee efforts
Gallup shares that when healthcare workers are recognized for their work, they’re four times more likely to be engaged and five times more likely to feel connected to company culture.
Employee appreciation also affects patient safety. Gallup found that employees recognized for good work in the last seven days experienced fewer patient safety incidents.
That said, only 18% of healthcare workers feel that employees are recognized and valued at their organization. That’s below the national average of 22% for US employees and much lower than other sectors — financial services stands at 34% and professional services stands at 28%.
Put simply, healthcare providers need to do more to recognize and reward their employees. The best recognition and rewards programs are tailored to your healthcare workers and their preferences — but here are a few ideas:
Recognition via internal communications: You can publish achievements and recognize hard work publicly, on your communications platform. The rest of your workforce can then see praise and add their congratulations, too.
Direct appreciation: Some workers may prefer to receive praise privately. Direct appreciation from managers is another way to make employees feel seen, heard, and valued.
Appreciation gifts: Incentivize your healthcare team with gift cards, cash prizes, fun experiences, or benefits like extra paid time off. These are great ways to recognize your employees’ hard work and boost morale.
The takeaway: Make employee recognition an integral part of your workplace culture. Learn about employee recognition and reward preferences. Then, ensure managers regularly offer praise for employee effort.
5. Offer competitive wages
Money isn’t everything. But when you’re working a demanding and emotionally draining job, a competitive salary makes it easier to sustain motivation during those tough days.
Offering good salaries shows that you appreciate and value your employees. So keep an eye on what competitors — in and outside of healthcare — are offering. Also, consider polling your employees to learn if pay is one of their primary workplace frustrations.
When deciding what you can afford to pay, bear in mind the cost of losing employees.
According to NSI Nursing Solutions, the average turnover cost for a bedside registered nurse (RN) stands at $56,300. And — when you factor in lost revenue, interview expenses, locum costs, and the inevitable dip in productivity — the cost of losing a physician can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The takeaway: Offer fair compensation. When your workers know they’re fairly paid, they’re more likely to stay working for your organization, which means you retain your best employees and their collective knowledge.
6. Make schedules more flexible
Advances in AI, virtual healthcare, and telemedicine, mean it’s easier than it used to be to support flexible employee schedules. And this is something employees are looking for.
According to O. C. Tanner, 80% of healthcare workers say having flexibility at work would influence their decision to stay at their organization.
So how do you make flexible working a reality for frontline healthcare employees? You can offer:
Staggered hours
Part-time hours and job shares
Fixed or rotating shift patterns, depending on employee preference
Advance warning of shift schedules
You can also give employees more autonomy over where and how they work. Start by finding out what employees want from flexible working. And try to harness the potential of virtual healthcare wherever possible.
Digital tools, like an employee app, are useful here too. They can help you structure and track staff schedules — and give employees the tools they need to swap shifts independently.
The takeaway: Offer flexible scheduling to help your employees achieve work-life balance and keep them working in healthcare. Find out what flexible working means to your employees, then do your best to facilitate it.
7. Give employees a voice and act on their feedback
Keep your finger on the pulse and you prevent employee engagement and retention issues from sneaking up on you. An annual check-in with your healthcare employees is not enough. You need to regularly gather and analyze employee data and feedback.
So look at the analytics provided by any employee communication and engagement software you use. Discover how workers are interacting with the platform and your communications.
Also, run regular surveys to find out what workers think of the employee experience — or any other aspect of your organization and its operations. In doing so, you give employees a voice, which makes them feel valued and respected.
Just bear in mind that employee surveys and polls can damage the employee experience if you fail to act on the feedback your employees provide. In Blink’s survey of frontline health and social care employees, there was one standout message from an employee to senior management:
“Please listen to your staff and follow up on promises. Too many empty promises.”
So use employee feedback wisely. Identify ways you can improve the healthcare worker experience. Create and clearly communicate your plan of action. Then, keep employees in the loop as you progress toward your employee experience goals.
The takeaway: Use analytics and employee feedback to inform healthcare retention strategies. Find out what employees like and dislike about working for your organization. Then keep them in the loop with survey results and your plan of action.
Boosting healthcare employee retention with Blink
Staff retention in healthcare is a challenge. But by implementing these employee retention strategies, you’ll find it easier to hang onto your existing staff — and attract new hires too.
As you implement these workforce retention strategies, keep the needs of your healthcare workers front of mind. Their needs differ from those of desk-based employees.
Healthcare workers spend their days caring for patients, so they have little free time. They don’t sit at a desktop computer — and they’re dealing with high stress and burnout.
So when putting any of these strategies into action, ensure that you make life as easy as possible for your healthcare team. Give them easy, mobile access to the information and resources they need.
A tool like Blink is designed to support employee engagement and internal communication for busy frontline teams.
Blink’s secure employee app is a hub for two-way communication, feedback, and recognition. It gives employees easy access to workplace resources, development opportunities, shift swap tools, and wellbeing support.
Available via smartphone, Blink fits seamlessly into the work day of your frontline employees, improving their employee experience and encouraging them to stay with your organization.
Ian Gordon has worked in the US healthcare space for close to 30 years and has held executive roles in several large payer and provider organizations — most recently, as President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring.
Throughout his career, he has also led large frontline organizations and created environments where employees thrived, and customers were highly satisfied. As a result of his experiences, few people can speak to the healthcare frontline engagement challenge as well as Ian.
Blink and Ian sat down together for a February 2023 webinar, discussing topics including company culture, senior leadership engagement, digital transformation, and the opportunity to boost engagement, loyalty, and retention with frontline employees.
Listen to the full webinar conversation ‘Why Engaging With Frontline Healthcare Workers Makes Both Dollars and Sense’ hereor keep reading for the main discussion points.
Speakers:
Ian Gordon, Former President of Administrative Operations at Elara Caring
Marcy Paterson, Head of Solutions Consulting, Blink
How would you summarize the frontline engagement challenge organizations face in 2023?
The first point to make is that frontline disengagement is not a new challenge. What is new, however, is how this challenge has risen to the top of the Executives’ problem list — and I think there are four main reasons why:
Unprecedented disruption to the workforce
Employee burnout and generational differences between older participants in the workforce, Millennials, and Gen Z: the rise of the “gig” mentality and younger workers’ drive for work/life balance
Changing societal demographics and the desire for people to live independently and “age in place”
And, crucially, the huge competition for workers. Employers have had to significantly increase compensation and offer more flexibility, which drives up the cost structure
What’s essential now is that we develop a more acute understanding of the implications of dissatisfaction among frontline employees: how it leads to employee turnover and what that means to our companies.
Because, if we’re honest, what we've tried in the past hasn't worked to create significant levels of employee satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty.
Frontline workers feel under-appreciated and under-supported and, as a result, that makes them less loyal and more likely to look for the next opportunity. You might have their hands on the job for now, but you haven’t got their hearts.
What are the impacts of disengagement?
I call it the quadruple miss. When frontline employees are disengaged, this has an:
Impact on patients who experience high caregiver turnover and inconsistency of care; they simply don’t get the comfort they are looking for when aging in place
Impact on patients’ families who step up to fill the gaps caused by interrupted care and must meet and re-brief caregivers on a regular basis. This can hurt them in their own personal and/or professional lives
Impact on frontline workers who are the ones confronted by the family’s frustration. And, in instances of high attrition, new incoming frontline workers feel responsible for the family’s frustration, and they become frustrated as well
Impact on the company who suffers in terms of resources spent on recruiting and training a revolving door of employees. Plus, the cost of reputational damage and lost annual revenue
Attrition is a huge issue, and a lot of money is being spent on recruitment to address those challenges. But is it a long-term losing proposition?
I use the analogy of a leaky bucket because turnover at the rates we’re seeing now — as high as 70% in some companies — has organizations in a panic. They need to bring on so many new frontline employees; they’re recruiting, hiring, and training teams, spending money on advertising, and investing in higher salaries.
And yet, they still can’t keep up with demand.
I saw a survey recently that claimed 85% of home health agencies had turned away business because they didn’t have the staff and almost 60% said they did this "consistently".
Long-term, this attrition issue becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you use recruitment as your primary solution to a retention issue, you will never fix the root cause.
If recruitment isn’t the solution, what is? What have you seen work?
I think that leadership needs to acknowledge their contribution to the problem. As leaders, we are responsible for creating a supportive environment and we need to acknowledge that we’ve helped create the employee dissatisfaction and engagement problem we have today.
Then, you need to spend time with and listen to your frontline.
This needs to be managed authentically; it’s often not a frequently occurring event and so employees don’t feel comfortable openly and honestly engaging with executive leadership. Leaders go in with more of a (potentially scripted) corporate message, ready to tell the frontline what the corporation wants them to hear rather than what they really need to hear. That’s not going to move the dial for employees and encourage them to become more engaged.
Healthcare employee surveys are a step in the right direction. They are valuable and give you data at a point in time that you can trend. But what I’ve seen happen is that people spend more time debating the validity and accuracy of the survey. If you torture the numbers long enough, they’ll confess to anything, and people get caught up in that.
What we’re talking about here is bi-directional communication — who do you think should be responsible for that?
I think the answer is the same in every company: you need to find someone who has the energy, passion, and is empowered enough to lead the initiatives. That person could be the project lead, but preferably it’s someone from the frontline or with frontline experience. The frontline needs to have that relationship with management all the way up and be comfortable to share their concerns.
Communicating issues is a team effort. It starts with the CEO and runs the full way through to the frontline. Everybody has to own it.
Is there an opportunity to better engage that first line manager and leverage them?
The first line manager might just be the hardest worked and most undervalued level of management in any company. They have passion and commitment and do everything they can, but if you look at the amount of administrative work that’s burdened on top of them — in addition to what they should be doing already — it’s tremendous. They barely have any time to try to manage their teams.
And yet we do need to engage them. They are the closest to the frontline and so if you’re not getting everything you need from the frontline or hearing what you need to hear, these are the people who know them best. Often, they’ve done the job; they’ve experienced the challenges first-hand.
But before we can engage them, we need to make sure that they’re okay. We need to understand what’s helping them be engaged or causing them to be disengaged in their jobs. It’s impossible to ask somebody to help drive engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty when they don’t feel those things to the company themselves.
You mention the administrative burden. The same digital transformation that desk-based workers get is yet to reach the frontline. How have you tried to alleviate that?
You need to understand the experience of having to perform repetitive mundane tasks. You need to go through that process yourself to discover what a horrible use of their time it is and why it’s no surprise that it doesn’t excite them each morning.
Then, you can look at how technology can be leveraged to simplify these tasks. It’s about taking away the administrative tasks that aren’t exciting, aren’t adding value, or aren’t rewarding for the employee so that people can be more satisfied and engaged.
If you can do that, then the quality of their work will go up and human errors will go down.
That’s what Blink really brings to the table. Using Blink, we were able to simplify our internal communication. We also gave frontline workers the tools to create communities, have single sign-on, and one place for information (versus the 5 or 10 that many nurses experience).
I’ve yet to meet a clinician or caregiver who got into this line of work to be on a computer all day. If we can reduce this non-cognitive load, then we can give them back the time they need to improve patient care.
How do you look to create a return on investment from these programs? Where have you seen that return and how have you been able to qualify it?
Administrative savings are easy to qualify. You know the jobs that people do, and if you can eliminate tasks and enable them to get more done in less time, then it's easy to say I need fewer people, or the same number of people can take on more work.
But the investment you need to make won’t pay for itself with administrative savings alone. That’s when you look to the impact on turnover — loyalty, satisfaction, and engagement — to make frontline workers more productive.
And when turnover declines, then that's tremendous because of the amount of savings that can be reaped from reducing the spend that companies have poured into their HR: recruiting, hiring, and training.
If you can redeploy those training resources to the frontline instead, giving them the skills and capabilities to enhance their service, then that can be a differentiator in the marketplace. It is also a good reason for your frontline to feel appreciated and invested in.
What are the pitfalls you’ve seen in organizations embarking on initiatives like this?
One would be rushing head-first into a solution before you truly understand the problem. You need to take the time to learn what’s important to different people in different positions.
Then there’s having a lack of clear direction or rapidly changing direction. It’s better to follow through on fewer, more meaningful activities. When employees don’t see the follow through, they become numb to the activities and disengage at another level.
And lastly, talking at employees instead of with employees.
How important is it to create a simplified experience specifically for the frontline?
Many organizations are comfortable with solutions for tethered employees — those who are in the office or working at a desk all the time, with access to a community of help.
But being a frontline worker can feel like you're on an island by yourself, and the solutions that you need must be quicker and more succinct. You can't spend a lot of time signing in and navigating. You need to get to your answer now.
You may be doing it while you're in front of a patient or, in the in the case of home health, while in between patients. Either way, you haven’t got a lot of time, and so having hub-based access to all-inclusive and easy-to-navigate information can really be a benefit to employees.
As leaders, the question we need to ask ourselves is this. Are more worried about playing it safe and trying to protect our jobs, at least in the short term, or are we willing to do what’s right for our employees and our customers: ensuring we create an environment where customers can be satisfied and employees can feel trusted, respected, and appreciated?
In theory, everyone loves employee empowerment. Empowered employees are more productive and engaged, more likely to trust senior leadership and more likely to approach situations. What’s not to like?
Equally, that initial process of letting go can be hard – and that’s nothing to be ashamed about. Employee empowerment is a relatively recent philosophy, and many of us will have progressed our careers with a top-down approach to workplace management.
With the huge rise in remote and hybrid work, this approach is crumbling. As many workplaces are set to remain remote, and many others are losing employees in droves due to lack of career progression and low pay, it’s not a viable long term strategy.
Your managers can add huge amounts of value to your business in the projects they oversee and the bonds they build with their teams. Micromanagement is wasting them as a resource.
Staff empowerment involves trading some control over various aspects of your work environment for higher productivity and greater job satisfaction. Here’s how to embrace letting go in return for these tempting performance gains.
“Employee empowerment is a management philosophy that emphasizes the importance of giving employees the autonomy, resources and support they need to act independently and be held accountable for the decisions they make.”
“Autonomy, resources and support” encompasses a range of things here, and could include:
Offering employees freedom over where they work (e.g. remote or hybrid working arrangements).
Offering employees freedom over how they work by building managerial trust and avoiding micromanagement.
Providing resources for skills development and career progression
Structuring your organization in a way that allows employees some say in how it’s run, for example employee voice initiatives and shareholder schemes.
Employee empowerment, engagement, and satisfaction…what’s the difference?
Employee engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward the work they do, their teams and their organization.
Employee satisfaction is a measure of how happy an employee is in their role, and with their place of work in general.
Employee empowerment is providing the resources and support needed for your employees to act independently.
If you’re the type for metaphors (don’t blame you, they’re super useful!), consider employee satisfaction and employee empowerment as two key building blocks for employee engagement.
High employee engagement is the ultimate goal – companies with engaged employees are 21% more profitable than companies that aren’t. Workplace satisfaction and empowering employees with control over how they work are essential contributors to this.
The benefits of empowerment in the workplace
Your workforce is more flexible
Empowered workforces can work across locations and time zones, innovate more, and find solutions to problems quicker. That’s a real asset across your business – you can create better products, offer a vastly improved CX and build watertight internal processes.
Your workforce is more productive
Employees who feel trusted are more likely to get more done in the same space of time. This is partly because it’s easier to feel driven when you have autonomy over your work, and partly because micromanagement is a major time drain. Free your colleagues from this over-hierarchical hellscape and they’ll be more willing to go the extra mile.
Your workforce trusts leadership more
Trust is a two-way street. You’ll find that if employees are trusted to manage their workloads and have a say in how your business is run, they trust senior leadership to make mutually beneficial decisions as a result.
Research by the Great Place to Work Institute and Fortune suggests that trust between managers and employees is the main factor in the world’s best workplaces. Workplaces with the most mutual trust beat the average annualized returns of the S&P 500 by a factor of three.
How to empower employees in the workplace
Employee empowerment isn’t a bandaid that you can tack onto your existing workplace to make it better. It needs to be woven into the fibers of your company culture.
Bad news: this takes time and effort.
Good news: this investment will absolutely pay off in the long term. Creating new management practices, investing in new ways of working, sharing feedback regularly and creating a culture of recognition all help you maximize the value you get from employee empowerment as a business.
Feedback: give it and receive it
The more feedback you give on performance, the more you empower your employees to work dynamically, creatively and independently.
The more feedback employees share with you about the workplace, the more your workplace can meet their needs – and the more likely they are to stay.
Recognition: little and often is key
Did you know that a simple ‘thank you’ just once per month to your employees doubles employee engagement, halves the risk of them leaving and triples the likelihood of them sticking with you in the long term?
By all means celebrate the big milestones, but don’t forget to create a supportive, encouraging atmosphere day to day as well. Self belief is empowering – let your employees know that they’re doing a good job and watch performance improve.
Career development: make sure employees are working towards something
Career development motivates employees to act independently. Why take the risks that come with autonomy and decision-making responsibilities if there’s no payout?
In a recent survey 63% of workers cited lack of career opportunities as a reason why they left their position – the joint most popular response alongside ‘poor pay’. To create an empowered workforce motivated to stick around for the long-term, take a look at your career progression structure. What could be improved? Or, if you haven’t got any formalized structures in place, how could you design them to support the needs of your workforce?
Communication: two-way, not one-way
Watching your employees’ every move makes your workforce resentful and erodes trust. Instead of monitoring behavior, start thinking about how you can facilitate meaningful two-way communication between managers and employees.
As well as the right software – employee apps, instant messengers and project management software are all useful here – take a look at shifting your concerns away from regulating behavior and more towards focusing on results.
Responsibilities: avoid making things too top heavy
The classic scenario: managers are expected to maintain a huge degree of control over their teams, resulting in time pressures, delays and a lack of feedback for frontline teams.
By sharing responsibilities across employees and teams, you reduce this pressure drastically and encourage employee autonomy. You also avoid gradual erosion of trust and performance stagnation, as you empower your managers to spend time with their teams and invest time in employee development.
Barriers to employee empowerment and how to overcome them
Stuck on building a naturally empowering workplace? Check these common barriers to employee empowerment.
Your remote employees can’t communicate
To empower employees in a remote environment, your communications strategy needs to be stronger than it’s ever been.
If performance is suffering and deadlines are being missed due to confusion, invest in remote employee communication tools and make sure your managers are checking in at least daily.
Fear of position loss
If your employees are increasingly autonomous, what’s in store for middle to lower management positions?
Ease your managers’ concerns about this by communicating new expectations for different roles. If they know that employee empowerment is as much about reinvesting their time in meaningful work as empowering the workforce, they’re significantly more likely to get on board.
Lack of clear goals
“Be empowered” won’t cut it. To maximize returns on your employee empowerment strategy, you’ll need to be specific about what these goals look like. This could include:
Employees handling specific tasks on their own
Employees contributing regularly to strategic discussions
Employees shaping their workplace via employee voice initiatives
Employee empowerment in different industries
Not all industries work in the same way. What empowers employees in one industry might be impossible in another. Your healthcare workers might not be able to work remotely, for example, or there may be a particularly rigid professional hierarchy in place that you need to work around.
No matter your sector or organizational structure, there are ways to empower your employees. If flexible working is difficult, or there are real limits on the responsibilities you can share, try focusing on:
Employee voice initiatives like surveys and focus groups
Career progression – if your industry is hierarchical, work with it!
Recognition – a little ‘thank you’ never goes awry
Employee empowerment resources
There’s no such thing as being “too nerdy” about the wellbeing, productivity and performance of your employees. If you’re up for a bit of further reading, take a look at these resources.
And, don’t forget to check out our Frontline of the Future podcast! Listen here.
Employee empowerment examples
Need some real-world empowerment inspiration? Take a look at how these three businesses encourage their employees to reach their full potential.
Timpsons
British service retailer Timpsons is a renowned example of what happens when you trust your employees.
The business’s ‘upside down management’ philosophy was borne of owner John Timpson’s realization that “the only way to provide truly great customer service is to trust our customer-facing colleagues with the freedom to serve customers the way they know best.”
Timpsons’ frontline team members are encouraged to do whatever they can to provide a brilliant customer experience, including changing prices, rejigging displays and paying up to £500 to settle a complaint – without having to justify themselves to anyone senior.
John Lewis
If you’re looking for the ultimate employee empowerment strategy, look no further than employee ownership. Your employees become shareholders in your business, and get a share of annual profits and a say in how the business is run.
It’s definitely a commitment, but UK department store John Lewis makes it work. According to recent figures, 84% of John Lewis retail partners recommend John Lewis as a great place to work and 86% of customers feel valued when they shop with John Lewis outlets. Positioning their workforce as partners rather than employees drives empowerment; the retailer regularly tops ‘best workplace’ polls as a result.
Google
It’s no surprise that worldwide innovation leader Google expects the best from its employees. To facilitate this, Google invests a lot in building a creative work environment where employees are empowered to develop new skills at every turn.
Google Cafes encourage employees to build connections across the business, whilst the Google Moderator management tool draws a wider audience into meetings with a range of interactive features.
Google also allows its engineers to spend 20% of their working week on projects that interest them but show no immediate promise of paying dividends. Employees have the chance to develop new skills and work with their interests, whilst Google keeps ahead of the pack on long-term innovation.
Employee empowerment: final thoughts
As how we work continues to change, employee empowerment is becoming essential. Your teams need to be flexible, adaptable and engaged if you want to remain competitive – particularly right now, as open vacancies soar and workforces are asked to do more with less.
Employee empowerment will look different in different workforces. For example, you might not be able to offer flexible working, but you can still allow employees control over their processes and a say in how the workplace is run. Or, you might have strict protocols that need to be followed, but be able to offer some degree of time and location flexibility.
Whatever staff empowerment means for you, encouraging meaningful communication between managers and employees, setting clear expectations and building a culture of mutual trust is essential to success.
Blink is an employee app that enables two-way conversations, builds trust and empowers employees as a result. Get your free demo today!
