How healthcare providers are fighting employee burnout & turnover

The last few years have been particularly hard on the healthcare industry. Burnout, high turnover, staffing shortages, understaffing, and a lack of professional development opportunities are just a handful of the pressing issues facing healthcare providers. In fact, one survey found “workforce challenges” was hospital CEOs’ top concern in 2023 – for the third year in a row.

Businesses and their employees aren't the only ones affected by these challenging times. Over half of healthcare providers (HCPs) believe that burnout frequently impacts physicians' ability to provide high-quality clinical care to their patients, and two-thirds of HCPs say burnout has worsened since the pandemic. To safeguard patient safety and ensure top-notch care, organizations must protect the well-being of their staff.

To address this ongoing crisis, healthcare providers must actively listen to their workforces, identify areas of opportunity, and implement changes to enhance working conditions. Many leading healthcare companies are doing these things – and reaping the rewards. In this article, we highlight how four top healthcare organizations have made significant strides in retaining talent, improving workplace conditions, increasing employee engagement, and, most importantly, delivering better patient care.

1. Investing in employee career growth

In 2019, biotech company Blueprint Medicines had no structured performance reviews and career development practices. Reviews were typically stored in Word documents and seldom referenced throughout the year, which limited their effectiveness in guiding employee growth. As the company expanded, Blueprint Medicines recognized the need for a more dynamic approach and adopted Culture Amp’s performance reviews, engagement surveys, and career development tools.

Blueprint and Culture Amp’s People Science team worked together to incorporate Blueprint’s competencies into Culture Amp’s Develop tool, providing managers with quick access to employee competencies, development goals, and performance data. With these tools at their fingertips, managers can identify available opportunities for individual employees, conduct more effective development conversations, and make informed decisions on how to best support and grow their teams.

What’s changed since rolling out Culture Amp? Employees now write self-reflections and engage in development discussions, while managers are better equipped to support their career growth. And Blueprint Medicines’s survey results support just how impactful these new tools and processes have been. The company’s achievements include:

• An 88% positive score for “I know what I need to do to be successful in my role.”
• An 80% positive score for “My manager has shown a genuine interest in my career aspirations and actively supports me in pursuing my career goals."
• An 80% positive score for "My manager provides me with useful feedback about what's working well and how I can improve."

2. Improving employee engagement and patient safety

Munson Healthcare, the largest healthcare system in Northern Michigan, sought Culture Amp's help to explore the potential relationship between employee engagement and patient safety. By partnering with Culture Amp to conduct a linkage analysis, the company discovered a strong correlation between the two, revealing that higher employee engagement leads to better patient safety scores.

“With the help of Culture Amp’s people scientists, we have been able to measure just how much our nurses value patient safety. So, if we want to prevent nursing turnover, we have to continue to emphasize our strong focus on patient safety. What Culture Amp brings to the table, which we really appreciate, is the ability to make those kinds of connections,” shared Sarah Robinson, Manager of Learning & Organizational Development.

The analysis segmented employees into patient-facing, non-patient-facing, and organizational groups, and discovered that engagement levels in all groups – even those not directly involved in patient care – significantly impact patient safety. With these insights, Sarah and her team confirmed that improving patient safety requires strong employee engagement across the entire organization. Today, Munson Healthcare is committed to creating programs and opportunities that enhance holistic employee engagement and strengthen connections to the leadership team, using the linkage analysis to garner broad support for this initiative.

3. Advancing diversity and inclusion

Covered California, the nation's largest state healthcare exchange, serves one of the most diverse populations in the U.S. In order to connect authentically with the communities it serves and its workforce, the company wanted to prioritize diversity and inclusion in 2020. Initial steps included hiring an external DEI consultant, creating an internal DEI group with employees from across the organization, and launching DEI surveys using Culture Amp.

After diving into the survey results alongside Culture Amp’s people scientists, Covered California debuted a three-year strategic DEI plan. Initiatives included:

1. Hosting an ongoing DEI speaker series, which received an 86% employee approval rating
2. Launching an informative DEI web page on the employee hub
3. Sharing the company’s strategic DEI roadmap
4. Including a DEI highlight in the company’s monthly employee newsletter

Together, these actions resulted in a 10% surge in perceived DEI progress and over 500 comments attributing positive impacts to multiple DEI initiatives, demonstrating Covered California's commitment to creating a more inclusive and supportive workplace.

4. Committing to retaining talent

To proactively reduce employee burnout and turnover, primary care company One Medical set out to understand what factors would keep its employees happy and satisfied in their roles. After partnering with Culture Amp, the company quickly launched an employee engagement survey to identify key engagement drivers and areas for improvement. The survey’s findings? Employees wanted better communication around internal changes and process updates, as well as more support and improved wellbeing.

Even though 71% of employees participated in the survey, many remained skeptical whether their feedback would actually result in meaningful change. “Our single lowest scoring answer on the survey was, ‘I believe that action is going to be taken as a result of this survey.’ We want to prove people wrong. We want people to believe that when we ask them their opinion about something, we’re going to do something with the data,” said Danny Briskin, the company’s VP of HR.

With targeted data and employee feedback in hand, the One Medical HR team decided to focus on improving three key areas of the business: communication, career development, and employee total rewards. To demonstrate their commitment to change, One Medical shared the survey results and their follow-up plans with the entire business in a town hall. They would hire an internal communications director to increase organizational transparency, invest in a new learning and development platform, and reassess their total rewards package. Together, these improvements demonstrated the company’s commitment to keeping employees happy and engaged, and proved that employee feedback leads to tangible improvements.

Diagnose and treat your employee experience with Culture Amp

Just as diagnosing patients requires a thorough understanding of their symptoms, addressing workplace issues demands the same level of care. With Culture Amp, your business can utilize employee surveys to gather both quantitative and qualitative data, providing valuable insights to inform and drive meaningful improvements.

Then, using Culture Amp’s entire people experience platform, your business can take action to empower your employees – whether that’s by helping them set ambitious goals, understand internal career growth opportunities, give and receive feedback, and more.

Learn how Culture Amp can help your healthcare business put your people first.

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