It is time to get serious about changing the onboarding process for new hires, and there is no time to lose. Maggie Keen, Vice President of Corporate Development at MissionCare Collective delivered this impactful message for AGE-u-cate's February Virtual Road Trip entitled, "Building Culture: Rethinking recruitment, onboarding, and retention to drive better care and a better workplace."
"Each person is unique, what they want out of the company is unique, their existing knowledge and training is unique, and their desired next step is unique."
MissionCare Collective is the parent company of MyCNAJobs, and the powerhouse team lead by CEO Brandi Kurtyka builds bridges with partners, aging services communities and the workforce to bring meaning and purpose to healthcare careers. They accomplish this with a one of a kind CoachUp Care platform that brings together training, employee engagement, recognition and retention tools all in one place.
Problem: 57% of front-line healthcare turnover occurs within the first 90 days of employment.
Ms. Keen offered three action items to help reshape the philosophy that drives new employee onboarding.
1. Get to know your new hires; what do they want, what's their baseline education, and where do they want to be in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 2 years?
This is definitely a new way to think about your housekeepers, dining room staff and nursing assistants, among others. Painting a vision for their future with your company is a powerful retention strategy.
2. Create a goal/next step for their first 90 days.
An example of a 90-day goal for a nursing assistant could be to complete a non-regulatory, skill and knowledge building course on preventing caregiver burnout. Such an action communicates that you care about the person you hired vs only their productivity as an employee.
3. Connect the new employee with a mentor.
87% of companies report that a buddy program speeds up productivity. A mentor does not have to be a co-worker in the same department or the Human Resources Director. Consider asking an employee or even a director from another department to help a new employee feel welcomed and acclimate. Possible ideas for connecting a mentor with a new employee could include offering them a free lunch once per week for a month and providing them with technology that can easily and efficiently inspire communication and engagement.
Ms. Keen concluded with a compelling message:
"Companies with high employee engagement are more profitable and have lower turnover."
High employee engagement is the pathway to retention for aging services, and AGE-u-cate and Mission Care Collective have the tools to support a culture of employee engagement.