6 Ways to Improve Company Morale in Healthcare

Company morale is a huge factor when you’re discussing the overall well-being of your employees. This is especially true in the world of healthcare.

Hospitals, in general, are seeing a shortage of nurses after severe burnout during the COVID-19 global pandemic. To start seeing these numbers increase, it’s time to start improving their well-being.

Here are 6 ways to improve company morale in healthcare.

Provide The Necessary Tools and Resources

As healthcare workers, it’s important to be able to have the right set of tools and resources at their disposal to effectively do their jobs.

Custom containers, PPE, updated technologies, or additional training resources can make a huge difference in an employee’s productivity which, in turn, can boost company morale. The more productive someone is, the more satisfied they’ll be at the end of a long workday.

Improve On Regular Communication

For a hospital or any type of healthcare facility to run properly, you need to have quality leadership. Unfortunately, there is a lack of communication from leadership roles that have made a dramatic impact on morale.

Communication is critical to providing trust, reassurance, and guidance amidst a time of crisis, such as a pandemic. Find ways to provide more regular communication between employees such as company newsletters or quarterly evaluations.

It’s essential that your employees feel like they’re heard. Providing opportunities to share their feedback through surveys or even an open door policy with higher-ups can make a significant difference in your employees’ attitudes towards management.

Offer Incentives To Retain Employees

Many hospitals are offering incentive programs to alleviate the dire nursing shortage. It might be possible for your hospital to work with the financial department to see if there is an opportunity to provide monetary incentives for staff members to ensure they stay onboard.

UAMS (the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences), for example, is now offering $10,000 retention bonuses for nurses who have worked at their facility for a minimum of three years and work in various critical-need areas of the hospital.

Implement Policies for Wellness and Mental Health

Due to excessive burnout, many nurses have left their jobs to either retire, take less stressful jobs, or turn to another career to earn more income. What healthcare professionals should understand is that the root of this is a direct effect on their employees’ mental health.

Wellness programs, or even phone apps, can allow them to do regular wellness check-ins. This is a great way to keep track of the overall well-being of your employees.

You can also implement policies for your staff that change the amount of hours staff members are allowed to work. Some hospitals even offer their employees mental wellness PTO (paid time off) days to address their personal needs and take a much-needed break from work.

Make Mandatory Training Exciting

Regardless of their position, healthcare workers are required to participate in mandatory training to learn new systems or for updates on patient procedures. It’s also a great opportunity for management to make these pieces of training a fun, company bonding activity.

Raffles or games are always a fun way to keep your employees engaged. You can provide fifteen-minute massage chairs or provide your employees with a company lunch.

These added incentives don’t have to be extravagant or cost a lot of money. It’s simply a way to make their experience more fun.

Improve The Break Rooms

The only sense of reprieve an employee has during their breaks is either outside or in the break rooms. These areas should be a sanctuary for healthcare workers rather than a gloomy room with broken furniture and unappealing coffee.

Spend the extra money on these areas such as with comfortable furniture, regular snacks, or even fresh flowers to spruce up the room.

It’s also a great opportunity to survey your employees to find out what they’d like to see in the break rooms. This way, they feel like they’re contributing to something that benefits themselves as well as being heard by management as you implement some of their requests.

Summary

As you begin to reassess your company’s morale and options for improvement, always ask for feedback. You can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken.

It’s the best way to open up a line of communication directly between management and your employees while providing them an opportunity to be seen and heard by others in leadership roles.