Now, let's welcome Lisa Fleming. Lisa is currently director of nursing at Highland Hospital in Rochester, New York. Prior to her current role, she was the nurse manager in the endoscopy unit at Highland Hospital and worked in this unit for 30 plus years. She's been a certified GI nurse for over 30 years. Lisa, the floor is yours. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you to the ASGE for asking me to be here today. And welcome to all the participants. So today, I'm going to talk about employee engagement. And this is my disclosure statement. I have no financial relationships with commercial support to disclose. And the objectives of my talk today are to define employee engagement, describe why employee engagement is essential, list some strategies that promote employee engagement and employee satisfaction, and then identify employee engagement strategies for the endoscopy unit. So, one definition that highlights the essence of employee engagement is the level of enthusiasm and dedication an employee feels towards their job. So, Simon says, and those who may not know, Simon Sinek is an American author and inspirational speaker on business leadership who's well-published and respected in his field. And so, what's the big deal, right, about employee engagement? Well, when people are financially vested, they want a return, right? And when people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute. So, emotionally invested employees are those who are the embodiment of employee engagement. So, why does it matter? Why does it matter if our employees are engaged? Well, I'll tell you why it matters. Employee engagement has emerged as a critical driver of business success in today's competitive markets, especially in the healthcare arena. An employee, we've probably all experienced this, employee turnover can cost organizations a lot of money. So, the Society for Human Resource Management reports that on average, it costs a company six to nine months of an employee's salary to replace them. And in today's current environment, healthcare organizations cannot afford to let employee engagement take a back seat. High levels of engagement, it promotes retention, employee loyalty, it improves organizational performance, and guess what? It translates to happy patients, right? It's something we all strive for. So, you may ask, what do engaged employees bring to the table? Well, an engaged employee often develops an emotional connection to their job and company, and they'll be focused on working toward the organization's overall goal. They'll feel part of the process and highly motivated towards your overall success. And when employees feel cared about, they return the favor. And so, this is something that we want to strive for, especially in our endo units. We want our employees to be engaged and satisfied because of many reasons, right? And these are all in the literature, evidence-based, and I highlighted just a few that I felt were important, at least when I was the manager running the endoscopy unit. And also, having worked in that unit for 30 years, I felt this way as an engaged employee, having increased resilience, higher job satisfaction and commitment, a sense of well-being, and then organizational benefits, which we should all be concerned about, is reducing employee turnover and employee absenteeism. So, today's healthcare needs happy employees, right? The environment, the way it is today, coming out of COVID, we're in times that we've never seen. It's essential that our staff are productive, efficient, reliable, resilient. The healthcare environment needs happy employees, and guess what? Happy employees equals happy patients. So, I had an audience poll. I just wanted to see how others out there, do they, does your endoscopy unit measure employee engagement and satisfaction? Awesome. Look at that, 66%. Some are unsure. So, maybe that's an area to delve in, right? So, maybe that's an area to delve in, right? To explore and to expand and grow on. Awesome. Thank you for your responses. So, I wanted to share with the group some tried and true strategies for recognition. And our organization values employee engagement and consistently strives to enhance the employee experience here at the hospital. And just some examples to share with the group that are employed system-wide and through our hospital, our Shining Star Program. And this is available to all employees, patients, and families in a hard and electronic copy. It's a program that is designed to recognize individuals performing at the highest level and modeling the organizational's values, our mission, and the commitment to serve. There's employee recognition. Employees are awarded a gold, bronze, or silver pin each year. And this identifies the amount of times that the employee has received recognition throughout the year. This has been proven to be a great motivator for engagement behaviors throughout the organization. There are e-greeting cards that employees have access to send an electronic card to a member of the team or even members throughout the hospital. And this information can be shared system-wide for others to view. And employees love this. Employees that have worked for the hospital for 25 years or longer get to pick a gift from a catalog. They also receive a $100 gift card in the mail. They receive a letter sent to them in the mail from the COO recognizing their longevity in their service. And it's something that I've really enjoyed and received for many years. And it shows that the organization is aware and they are recognizing you. And it's been something that has been proven to be well received. So here's another tactic. Tell the world, right? Tell the world about your employees. This is another successful strategy employed by the hospital where I work. This huge banner is posted in a main hallway. And it recognizes this is last year's and then they're going to be putting up 2023s. It shows the shining stars that folks have received throughout the calendar year. It's for all to see patients, families. Staff can see this on their way in, on their way out. They pick out their names. They show others. And this has been a successful strategy hospital-wide. So I'm going to share with you some of the ENDO unit tried and true strategies that I employed while I was the nurse manager. And they continue now with the new leadership, right? Staff recognition, every huddle, every meeting, patient comments were shared with the team. Shining stars were read to the group. The staff comments were posted on a visible board in the ENDO unit that was visible for staff, patients, providers, family members. And this was well received by the staff. They loved seeing their name, loved seeing recognition. Also staff, here's another strategy I employed, manager transparency. The staff always knew where I was when I was available to them. There was no guessing. I was transparent about my comings and goings. Staff appreciated this and modeled this behavior as well. We employed staff flexible schedules. We changed staff schedules from eight-hour shifts, right? Because we work in a Monday through Friday environment. But there was call. However, the hours were pretty much Monday through Friday. We changed them to the 10 hours that allowed for one day off as needed. Staff performed their own scheduling in a web-based platform that's consistent with our department of nursing. Also staff, they would sign up for their call shifts. They would self-juggle. It gave a lot of autonomy to the scheduling and work-life balance. Our unit had a robust shared governance with a unit council, a chairperson, a co-chair. And as a leader in the unit, I highly supported this. I would come on to the unit, take over assignments to allow for the chair and co-chair to be able to put together meetings, get to meetings. And this was well-received. Unit culture, we were a family. It was grown and cultivated. When you care about your teams, they care for their patients and they care for each other. Some other tried and true strategies to share. For the end of unit, we would have snack days, potluck days, dessert days, unit celebrations, circus days. Like I would, welcome to the circus. We needed some comic relief. GI nurses week was always a big deal. And it still is in our unit. We'd celebrate the whole week. I would put out calendars showing what the week would entail. The team would be highlighted on the hospital's intranet, giving a description of what do GI nurses and associates do. They are specialized in their field, highlighting them. And this helped build the team, developed a staff relaxation lounge for the team to decompress and take advantage of. And the staff really enjoyed this. We had mindful sessions that they could tap into. And it was information sharing, swapping, stories. And this also helped build the culture of the team. I just have another audience poll about just finding out from the audience out there, if their unit integrates these strategies or any strategies into their unit that bolster staff engagement and satisfaction. Oh, that is amazing. That is amazing. Yep. The strategies. So I'm sure you folks have ideas in place, just as I outlined for our endo unit, the things that we did. So that's awesome to see. So what does overall success look like? I just want to share with the team. While I was the manager there, for the employee engagement surveys that we subscribed to the last two years under my leadership that we participated, our unit was a tier one employee engaged unit. And this is when the team, a tier one unit feels cared about, recognized for their good work, involved in decision making, and they feel vested in the unit and the organization and highly motivated for success. So this was something to strive for, something to keep in place. And the unit leadership index score for those two survey years was 100% for both years. So that shows me that the strategies were successful, they worked, and it fostered engagement. Great. So I want to thank everybody for your attention and thank you for allowing me to participate today.

employee engagement

healthcare

endoscopy units

organizational performance

staff recognition programs