Senior Care Employee Engagement Tips: The Rounding Rule

With countless tips and tricks circulating around how to best engage senior care staff, providers might have difficulty determining what practices can actually be considered “best.” Providing competitive wages, focusing extensively on recruiting, and many other time-consuming and costly efforts have been touted as necessary to improving retention. 

While all facets of employee oversight are tremendously important, perhaps it’s time that senior care operators specifically hone in on relationships between leaders and workers, in order to improve employee engagement across the board, and in turn drive better patient outcomes. 

Many health care employees don’t leave their jobs because of pay, or even because they don’t like the job itself, but rather because they don’t have the best relationship with their supervisor, according to Studer Group, an organization that coaches health care companies to boost clinical and financial outcomes. Taking that into consideration, it’s important to prioritize nurturing relationships. 

The Studer Group has long advocated the practice of “rounding,” which is when leaders consistently make rounds at their community to ask specific questions and establish relationships, similar to the way health care professionals such as doctors conduct “rounds” to touch base with their patients. The information gathered during rounds can help leaders and employees connect on a more personal level and illuminate issues. 

According to Studer Group, rounding questions should revolve around the following: 

• Building relationships: Making personal connections with employees is key. Supervisors should ask employees how their family is doing, or pose pointed questions about major events in their lives. This shows that leaders care about their employees as people, and in turn fosters a strong workplace and employee engagement.
• Learning what’s going well within an organization: By speaking to employees directly, a senior care provider can learn what is working within the company, and who is particularly deserving of recognition. Workers tend to notice what’s wrong or dysfunctional within a workplace, as opposed to what’s going well, so making a point to look for the positive and ask what’s going right is crucial to facilitate an overall positive work culture. Plus, offering recognition to staff who are setting a good example through their actions builds upon the culture providers strive toward.
• Pinpointing areas for improvement: Asking questions about what areas of your company’s functionality need attention can lead to improvement, and thus will keep employees around longer, if they’re happier with how things are going. Along this vein, identifying specific pain points in carrying out work, in terms of whether the right tools and equipment are in place for workers to get their jobs done, can streamline processes, significantly drive efficiency and make tasks even easier and more manageable.

Rounding takes only a few minutes each day, and can trickle down through the company. Senior management should round on those they oversee in different divisions; unit leaders round on the workers they’re responsible for; and frontline workers round on their residents, taking the process one step further. 

What if you don’t have time for rounds each day, or you can’t interact with all employees at the time you make your rounds? Technology can be a great way to acknowledge and connect with employees with whom you are not able to see face-to-face. Sending a quick email or text helps employees know you care and are available to help them succeed. 

The best part is, employee rounding doesn’t require new infrastructure, more manpower or significant effort. All providers must do is form relationships with their employees on a regular basis, pay close attention to their needs and desires, understand what’s working and what’s not and then take action for a better workplace.