Monday, 9 December 2013

GAINING CUSTOMER CONFIDENCE IN HOSPITALS THROUGH AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE

It is often said that “The way you treat or engage your employees reflects directly on the company’s image and profits”. In recent times, many customer-centric healthcare providers have been researching methods and ways to improve the quality of service offered by their client-facing employees, exploring different avenues to increase the interface. From my experience of working with various healthcare providers, I have observed that there is an overwhelming correlation between customer satisfaction and employee engagement. Like any other service industry, healthcare is prone to the risk of people being dissuaded from coming back to the same place from the way they are treated by the employees whether it is a doctor, nurse, or support staff. Unlike a hotel or a restaurant which receives customers seeking  relaxation or a  holiday,  hospitals tend to  have customers who are tensed, upset or “on the verge of losing it all”, seeking restoration and care.  Given the predisposition of the customer,  healthcare providers have a larger risk of losing customers for petty reasons, making focus on better customer satisfaction a major differentiator. Therefore the pertinent question now is, how to improve customer satisfaction using employee resource pool.  
There are many ways to do so but one surefire method to ensure improvement and continuous excellent customer satisfaction is by finding out how much your employee is engaged in their jobs. Employees would out-perform their peers in other hospital when it comes to customer satisfaction provided they are highly engaged and motivated. The level of engagement will determine if employee would sell the company to the clients in a negative or positive light.
Given below are a few ideas to increase the employee engagement within a company:
Individual employee recognition: The need and value of staff members who have worked for a longer time with the company should be identified by recognizing them and providing them opportunities for growth, as they are the key contributors to employee engagement. In addition, recognition should not only be viewed as an acknowledgement for a job well done, but also for participation in decision making, and for being listened to by management and fellow employees. These practices will result in “more respect and visibility” for positive contributors.
Long-term designs: Programs and activities in the hospital should be designed to contribute on the long run to the employee engagement needs and it should be viewed by the management strategically rather than short-term efforts or efforts initiated on multiple fronts would weaken the overall impact of the programs and may distract the staff from meeting the patient care demands.
Enhance sense of belonging: Couple of years ago, a large manufacturing company back in my hometown decided on a new technique; they brought an idea called “the talking stick”. It was simple and very effective, the management and the entire workforce would listen to the individual who holds the “talking stick” during team meetings. Through  this initiative,  employees were given a platform to express themselves by giving new ideas and solutions to the management for improving the company. The result was simple; the workforce became comfortable with the management and even better, they became more engaged in the work and the profits increased. Managers should hold team meetings with their staff in which they should present the need to improve customer satisfaction, ask for suggestions, discuss ideas and decide to implement the best ones. Thus they would not only engage the employees to come up with ideas on how to improve the quality of service that is provided, but also create the sense of “My Company” feeling which further enhances the employee engagement.
Personal touch: Further, the expanded use of technology for diagnostic testing and vital signs monitoring have reduced the patient’s feeling of being personally cared for. As the popularity of electronic prescription and records rises, healthcare employees need to exercise “the personal touch” in caring for patients. Management should train the employees in interpersonal skills and encourage one-to-one interaction with the patients.
Organizations are heavily dependent on employees to make a positive impact on customers and to deliver high level of satisfaction. More than any other source of marketing promotion, word of mouth recommendations are a primary driver in patient health care decisions. Hospitals that have higher levels of employee engagement provide better experiences for patients, and patients that have higher levels of satisfaction are most likely to recommend the hospital to others. 



Christy Koshy is a management consultant specialising in people management and operations. As a functional expert at Medallion Hospital Consulting, he provides coaching and transformational support to Medallion’s clients across India. He holds a Masters in Social Work and is passionate about redesigning people development and motivation frameworks in hospitals. 

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

Lessons from the movie "Gravity" for Healthcare Missions
A practical learning
The other day I wesas watching the Hollywood block buster,Gravity and it gave me a lot of understanding on my own experiences working with Mission Hospitals in India. I often ask this one question while working for Missions, "are they going to make it?"
What is that makes the mission to space or working in mission hospitals really daunting? Both have one thing in common - survive with absolute bare minimum. Often your plan A becomes a mockery and what only makes the difference is your test of grit and the will to make it happen with a spirited team ( who may or may not make it in the end). These propositions make missions extremely un-attractive to many doctors and healthcare professionals. From my little working with various teams, I have seen a very small fraction of resources having the dare to make the difference in today's world of opportunities. What is appealing for me personally is simply the love of making it happen and that keeps some of us going on and on through all the challenges we face. It is often that feeling of re-writing earlier formulas and creating new solutions. For that one moment when George Clooney ( astronaut in the movie) comments " my new record of walking in space will remain un-broken for a long time, even if it meant risking his life". Now it might be called "in-sanity" for many but then for those with the love of making it happen it is sheer ecstasy and even a higher calling. Well that's the point I am trying to make to all those watching and marvelling at achievements. Be it a profession that explores new un-known frontiers in space or un-ravelling
NOVEMBER 2013 !1
the original values of an old institution and making it tick. It all needs that bit of in-sanity and the genius from within. We have had heard a lot on how missionaries came forward challenging every logic of why they need to do it in the first place. India's independence in 1947 gave the churches free gifts ( hundreds of invaluable gems - well established and truly serving mission hospitals) not sure how our country's health index would have been without them? I am not advocating old missions to be honoured, all i am trying to highlight is the zeal and spirit of how we make things happen when all odds are against us. This is the missing link that we need to re-configure into the DNA of Indian healthcare missions. This is not going to happen by signing a bond with young medical professionals to serve as part of their sponsorship obligation. These hospitals will make it only if young professionals come forward from their comfort zone and fight this almost loosing battle. For me this battle is no way over and we will inspire many more to join the race of a "Renewed Missions in India. A way that still will treat the sick with dignity and caring love. Do we need this for our people? I
guess we all the know the answer....and we will " never let goThis is a tribute to those few missionaries (some of them even not recorded in any history), who made all this happen out of a
challenge

About the Author:
Manesh Mathew is a healthcare management consultant, with over 20 years of experience in India and abroad. He is the founder of Medallion Hospital Consulting and provides strategic advisory services to several hospitals in the country. Presently he is involved in the revival strategy for a 85 year old mission hospital in Assam. 

Friday, 25 October 2013

Impression Management in Hospitals

 
“All the world's a stage.
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.”     —William Shakespeare
 
This monologue from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” aptly compares human lives to a stage play, each playing different roles in their lifetime. I must say that, it is also true about the various roles performed in the day-to-day life by managers, their peers, superiors, sub-ordinates and others in an organizational setting. Individuals perform as in a stage play in front of a target audience. Mostly these behaviours have a script as in a stage play based on previous experiences of the individual and are practiced before. According to Rosenfield, the famous sociologist, Impression Management is a process by which individuals manage the impressions others form of them. Well, we get only one chance to make a first impression. But as long as we interact with individuals or groups the impression keeps building up. Hence, there is a constant need to learn the art and science of Impression Management especially for professional. This is particularly true about people who are constantly interacting with clients. That would be any service industry such as Healthcare, Education, Banking, Hospitality etc.
Like in any other service industry, between the product and the beneficiary there is an intermediary in healthcare industry as well. Often the beneficiary (patient) relates quality aspects to the intermediary (healthcare service provider) who delivers the product through his professional practice, which determines service quality. Service quality determines the success or failure of the business. In the service industry, the effect of outcome of employee interactions with the clients is an inevitable part of portraying organization’s identity and quality. More so, in the globally competent market it has become a matter of survival for service based industries such as banking, insurance, healthcare etc. In 1990, the Hospital Corporation of America found a strong link between perceived quality of patient care and profitability across many of its hospitals. In an industry like Healthcare, the patients are ignorant about the technical aspects of medical care and most factors such as medical equipment, infrastructure etc., and factors other than human resources are identical in comparable hospitals.  Patients’ perceptions of service quality might shape their confidence and subsequent behaviours with regard to choice and usage of available healthcare facilities. Patients perceive service quality through a variety of dimensions such as responsiveness of staff, assurance, communication and discipline. Hence, the extent to which healthcare professionals can present themselves appropriately for a favourable disposition determines the extent of service quality rendered. And that’s where Impression Management comes to play its role!
 
About the author:
Dr Sandhya is a Healthcare Management Consultant and Researcher. She has published various research articles in Journals and presented papers in conferences and also authored a book “Impression Management and Ego Styles”, LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing (November 10, 2011). She is an acknowledged trainer in the areas of organizational behaviour, emotional intelligence and transformational leadership.