As a Human Resources (HR) leader, you face constant pressure to find innovative ways to combat recruitment and retention issues that threaten the stability of your organization. These problems are only worsening due to social, economic and health stressors that are not letting up. Yet, despite everything, you’ve become an influential decision-maker, guiding the way your organization cares for its workforce. But the weight of these responsibilities is taking a toll – leading to burnout and stress. Do you wonder what it will take to start making progress, increase retention, drive employee satisfaction and loyalty, and turn this around?
As Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer at HealthPartners, I've been standing at the front lines of these demanding challenges over the last few years – helping lead our 26,000 employees who work across our hospitals, clinics, specialty centers and insurance administration teams. And on the toughest of days, I took solace in knowing that leadership isn't always about knowing the correct answer.
Instead, it’s about centering your organization around your employees' voices – their perspectives, interests, needs and concerns. By identifying what matters most to them, you can create strategies that will impact business performance and retention, helping guide where your organization is going next.
All strategies must consider the employee experience, which includes everything your workforce learns, feels, sees and hears at your organization throughout their employment.
Here are four practical steps to create a dynamic employee experience that will motivate more people to join your organization, stay the course, and feel connected, supported and inspired daily.
1. Reenvision your business strategy through the voice of your workforce
When executing a business strategy, it's easy to get lost in the numbers like operational data about key performance indicators (KPIs), savings, profits, losses, etc. Yet your workforce is the engine behind what keeps those numbers healthy and moving in the right direction.
That’s why it's essential to invest in and empower your greatest asset – your employees – making their experience at your organization productive, happy, healthy and fulfilling. It’s a small investment that will pay off tenfold through retaining valuable talent, not to mention helping you get your business strategy back on track.
And at the end of the day, people are motivated by more than a salary or an hourly wage. They want to feel like they belong, see themselves in your culture and know that your benefit offerings are equitable. For these reasons, we worked hard at HealthPartners to ensure that our culture – across our care and coverage business lines – is inclusive and feels like family.
Your competitive edge ultimately relies on your ability to hinge together what your employees want from their experience with your operational business strategy.
You’ll then be able to define gaps and connections across your operating plan and their experience – from recruitment, onboarding, development and retention to why someone left. It will help you take a hard look at your organizational culture and how diversity, equity, inclusion, leadership, technology, flexible working arrangements, benefits and other factors play into each stage.
Remember that there are no one-size-fits-all employee experiences that will work for everyone. Instead, it's about meeting your workforce where they're at, listening to what they need and want and making that experience as personalized as possible.
2. Cultivate candid employee feedback that fosters meaningful culture changes
It all starts with listening. Millennials and Generation Z want more opportunities to be heard at work. Understanding how they think and why is essential because what motivates them might differ from other generations. Look at ways to incorporate listening elements at critical moments through each employee's experience and make sure you’re not leaving anyone out.
Start with listening sessions
At HealthPartners, our diversity, equity and inclusion listening sessions are one way we’re working to drive meaningful organizational changes. They cover topics like how we can support one another, LGBTQ+ experiences, racism, disability and ableism, and ageism. Any employee can attend to hear what we’re doing to address these issues, and they can share their personal stories and perspectives. It’s a valuable, judgment-free space to listen and learn from one another.
Our Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism cabinet, comprised of diverse employees from across our organization, uses insights from these sessions to create inclusive plans, policies, decisions and procedures that inform benefits, leadership training and career opportunities.
Let a third-party administer annual surveys
Another common way to gain valuable feedback from your employee population is to administer an annual survey. Instead of designing it yourself, hire a third-party company with experience administering surveys nationally. This ensures that you base it on standard data that lets you know where you stand compared to other organizations in the same industry. Third-party surveys invite more candid feedback, too, without fear of retribution.
Annual surveys also offer those specific, thorough insights you can use to help your supervisors and managers improve on how they coach, train, support and develop their teams. Again, we give this crucial information directly to our leaders and managers at HealthPartners.
Create time for regular one-on-one check-ins
Sharing this feedback is incredibly important for many reasons, but primarily because there has been a rise in those who feel alone and isolated. So, we need to listen – not just once a year, but all the time.
Managers are in a unique position because they can break down any isolation and routinely check in on their employees' lives, both at work and outside. Without this, people may suffer in silence, and that’s bad for mental health, productivity and retention.
It’s also a chance for your employees to discuss how they feel about their workload, determine if there are signs of stress or burnout and find ways to remove barriers to getting work done efficiently and effectively.
3. Create an inclusive, flexible environment
One of the most significant issues discussed is flexible work environments when it comes to supporting the well-being of your workforce. Many organizations, like HealthPartners, never considered a completely remote or hybrid workforce pre-pandemic; now, it’s hard to think of it any other way. Our employees are thriving, and they’re just as productive as before. The feedback we got from our annual surveys was loud and clear, too – people wanted this flexibility to continue. After sharing this information with our leaders and managers, they decided which work structure would best suit their team – remote or hybrid – and then made it permanent.
Then it’s about surrounding your team with the right support, technology and tools within that environment to ensure collaboration, social time, engagement and recognition continue. Leaders and managers should also look at ways to drive workplace inclusion, like minimizing conscious and unconscious bias, prioritizing flexible hours and ensuring participative decision making and equitable treatment.
How teams communicate, socialize, measure efficiency, celebrate accomplishments and ultimately come together may look different across our organization, but one thing remains true.
By collaborating to address and accommodate diverse people with diverse needs, we’ve created a strong company culture and a stronger sense of purpose, belonging and inclusiveness. That matters and leads to a highly productive workforce and positive employee experience that will encourage people to stay the course.
4. Prioritize health and well-being throughout your culture
When we talk about burnout, what’s behind that is unmet needs. We’ve heard about how the pandemic has affected mental health, but it's bigger than that. It’s considering how to proactively take care of whole health – the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, social and financial.
You can’t let those needs go unchecked for too long – you have to be proactive and surround your workforce with tools, information and support to help them thrive. Retention depends on it.
And as you do your best to care for your workforce, you can’t forget that you're human, too. So, sometimes you need to ask for help.
Lean on a partner, like your health plan, that offers comprehensive, robust support and not simply a laundry list of disjointed apps and programs.
Health plans that prioritize prevention and proactive outreach can help you be well-equipped to meet unmet workforce needs and create a positive employee experience. Look for a strong health plan partner that offers more than medical insurance. Explore multiple integrated options, like dental insurance, mental health coverage, pharmacy benefits and comprehensive well-being programs tailored to your workforce.
At HealthPartners, our integrated medical, dental and pharmacy coverage and health and well-being support take a systemic approach to improve workforce health through connected teams, technology and programs. That means we can easily refer people to different services to meet ever-changing needs, offer the right support at the right time and make life-saving treatment decisions, all while sharing vital information to help detect conditions earlier.
When choosing a vendor, consider how their programs work together to help you defray costs and improve the health of your entire employee population across the Care Experience Curve. That includes keeping people healthy, avoiding rising health risks and managing new diagnoses and chronic health conditions.
The right partner will help you care for all the needs of your workforce, not just those with chronic conditions, giving you more time to shape the inclusive culture your employees want.
Every person wants to feel heard, understood and recognized. Therefore, investing in personalized employee experiences that directly address ever-changing needs is much more likely to positively affect retention – and make your bottom line healthier for it.
If an employer wants to stay competitive in today's world, they need to take a more holistic approach to support their employees. Learn more about how you can surround your employees with invaluable support at HealthPartners.com/ProactiveCare.