Let employees know they are important
If there is one lesson to be learned from Bastone’s success withMission Hospital, it is to never undervalue the importance of youremployees’ opinions.
In fact, Bastone makes it clear that each employee has a responsibility to share his or her input. To make sure the importance ofthat message sinks in, he treats each employee as a key asset.
It starts the first day of employee orientation. Bastone personally speaks at each orientation, and during his presentation, hedetails the commitment each new employee must demonstrate tothe organization’s improvement.
Then, after the new employees have gone through their three-month probationary period, Bastone checks back with them. Bytouching base with them again after they’ve settled in, Bastoneestablishes that treating employees as assets isn’t just a line froma welcome speech.
During the second meeting, he asks the new employees if thethings he told them three months ago match up with what theyhave been seeing on the floor as they work.
From that point, Bastone shares the organization’s vision in quarterly department meetings. Those meetings are his top source ofdirect, from-the-source employee input, which he uses to supplement his view of the big picture.
“The input I get from them may be detailed specifically to theirarea of focus, which is great, because I’m flying at 30,000 feet,” hesays. “Sometimes, people on the ground have to tell me what’sactually going on. I’m giving them the broader picture, but I wantthem engaged in terms of, ‘Here’s the broader picture, but how canyou as a department help us get to where we need to go?’”
Sorting through all the input is a daunting task. Depending onwhat the input is regarding, Bastone farms it out to the people whoare affected by it. If it is regarding technology, the information willgo to the organization’s technology committees. If the input has todo with a specific service line, those recommendations go backnot only to the particular department’s strategy meeting butstraight to the involved physicians, as well.
Bastone has a few keys to getting the most beneficial inputout of your departmental meetings. The No. 1 way to get useful feedback is to establish a process through which your employees see how their ideas are moving through the organization.
“Once you engage them, and once you ask a question and theygive you input, you have to assess that input and get back to thepeople,” he says. “You say, ‘Great idea. We’re going to pursue this.We’re going to go through this process in terms of the organizational structure of how we process ideas.’”
Even if you don’t see an idea immediately being stitched into thefabric of the organization, you still need to show the employeewho originated the idea that their thoughts were carefully considered.
“If that’s the case, we get back to them and say, ‘Great idea, butwe don’t have the infrastructure,’ or, ‘This is a systemic issue, butwe may be able to do it in the future,’” Bastone says. “It’s a matterof cataloging, being an active listener to the people who are inthose meetings, assessing the value of the recommendation andgetting back to the group or individual who made the recommendation with a yea or nay.”
It’s also the CEO’s responsibility to explain the reasoningbehind his or her decision. That goes a long way toward buildingemployee satisfaction, because it shows the employees that theiropinions matter.
Whether you reject their idea outright or simply place it onthe organization’s back burner for the time being, your reasoning doesn’t ma
tt
er nearly as much as the fact that you took thetime to consider their idea. Bastone says that if you show thatyou value their thoughts, not only will you improve the quantity and quality of the feedback you receive, but you’ll reap therewards of having happier, loyal employees.
“When you go through that kind of a process, people say, ‘Hey,you know what, they’re listening to me. Even though they’re notdoing what I want them to do, or they didn’t take my recommendation, at least they went through a process that placed value onmy recommendation.’ That, in itself, develops a high degree of loyalty and engagement with that employee, which is very important.”
Finally, you have to seal the deal. Make sure you follow throughwith your feedback evaluation process. If you don’t follow through,the barrier goes back up and your employees will lose all sense ofthe importance of their role in the organization.
“If you ask a question and if you engage people to be part of theprocess — they have to be part of the process,” Bastone says. “Itcan’t be lip service. It can’t just be someone taking minutes at ameeting. You can’t just send the minutes back to the employeesand say, ‘OK, we’ve talked about it,’ and they don’t hear from youfor two years. Then all of a sudden they see the walls coming downand new technology coming in that they didn’t even have inputinto. It may not be reflective of what their recommendations were.So you have to be not only an active listener but an active participant.”
