Healing the healers with employee engagement

Dr Rajani Tewari, HR Head, Wockhardt Hospitals, speaks on the measures that can be implemented in hospitals to improve employee engagement and enhance the workplace environment

“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.”
– Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup

In today’s economic world, while everything is driven by numbers, it has now become a mandate to focus on a softer yet hard-hitting aspect of organisational functionality – the engagement level of the employees on whose performance the survival and thriving on the entire organisation depends. An ‘engaged employee’ is one who is optimally enthused and captivated in his/ her work, while at the same time has a positive attitude which directs action when furthering his/her organisation’s goals and reputation. This involves going above and beyond the call of duty and applying one’s ‘discretionary’ effort to take his/her task (and organisational goal) to its fruition. All organisations have admitted that engaged employees can make or break the bottom-line performance of the organisation by increasing productivity and innovation levels and by reducing expenses associated with high employee turnover.

Employee engagement is, thus, the term given to the approach employed by organisations to ensure commitment of employees to the values and objectives of their organisation and motivation to align their personal goals with those of the organisation. Employee engagement is about creating the right culture and working conditions for employees to offer more of their capability by tapping into their latent potential. Employee engagement, by its definition, has its roots in the ‘Internal Generator Theory’ and ‘Herzberg’s 2 Factor Theory’ which talk of ‘hygiene’ and ‘motivation’ factors at work which eliminate employee dissatisfaction (like working conditions, pay, etc) and generate employee satisfaction (like recognition, developmental opportunities etc.) respectively. Most practices employed by organisations revolve around this theory and most of the efforts are spent to eliminate dissatisfaction and hardly any, if at all, to increase satisfaction / motivation to deliver one’s best at the workplace.

In the wake of the increased need for employee engagement for employees in a healthcare setting, we at Wockhardt Hospitals have adopted a 360o engagement model that espouses a holistic approach towards employee engagement. It involves a combination of strategies to eliminate the dissatisfiers and increase the satisfiers. The 360o model resides on three engagement pillars – creative engagement (fun at work), intellectual engagement (career enhancement initiatives) or social engagement (corporate social responsibility and industry connect).

The model comprises four quadrants – each of which focus on different levels of hygiene and motivation. The first quadrant focuses on basic hygiene – this involves knowing your payslip, benefits, policies, tax rules, etc. The second quadrant focuses on personal growth – this involves personal grooming, personal finance management, exploring your creative side, health and wellness programmes, etc. The third quadrant focuses on fun at work – this involves festival and birthday celebrations, talent hunt competitions, inter-departmental team building programmes and so on. The fourth quadrant focuses on professional growth and learning. This involves creation of a platform for learning where one gets the right blend of technical, behavioural and other soft skills to enhance one’s skills in the current role and also upskill himself/herself to the next rung of the corporate ladder. As one can note, the first two quadrants focus more on hygiene factors whereas quadrant three and four increasingly focus. Thus, the model holistically addresses both functions that need to be addressed by any engagement strategy – minimising the dissatisfiers and maximising the motivators.

Each of the engagement pillars has specific activities/ initiatives that were lead by the HR department. Creative engagement comprises associate –family connect, HR payroll helpdesk, concierge desk, talent hunt contests etc. Wockhardt Hospitals is associated with Partners Harvard Medical International (PHMI), an international arm of Harvard Medical School, US. We also have a robust nursing leadership programme designed to develop nurse leaders and help them move up the clinical and corporate ladder. Knowledge enhancement activities for better clinical care involves doctors and nursing managers visiting Harvard Associated Hospitals to learn the global best practices in healthcare and help implement the same back at Wockhardt. We also sponsor higher education for associates and even our senior leadership go through various internal and external management development and leadership development programmes. We don’t believe in restricting development to internal associates – we also have progammes that foster the importance of the ‘power of dialogue in crucial situations’. These programmes received excellent participation and feedback from the topmost medical consultants in India who are associated with Wockhardt Hospitals. The result – all round intellectual engagement of Wockhardtians. We also cater to the newer trend among the working population worldwide- to find the higher motive of life – which brings us to the third pillar – social engagement. A number of initiatives like the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan, Wockathon and Medical Partnering with the ISL in 2014 for all football matches held in Goa help our associates to give back to the community as well as network within the organisation and the environment outside.

Engagement Pillars

• Creative engagement (fun at work)
• Intellectual engagement (career enhancement initiatives)
• Social engagement (CSR and industry connect)

In order to ensure that our initiatives are in line with the need of the hour, we keep ourselves abreast with the pulse of the organisation. We place a lot of importance on ‘listening’ and ‘speaking practices’ within the organisation. As part of the 360o engagement model, a workplace engagement (WE) survey was rolled out function wise to check the engagement levels of the associates on four parameters – role engagement, supervisory engagement, environment engagement and aspirational engagement. Post data collection, the results were analysed and that was followed by a one-on-one dialogue with each respondent by the Wockhardt Hospitals Corporate HR to discuss issues, if any, and to discuss the career aspirations of the associates.

This was done to create a culture of candour and to encourage feedback not just top down but also from the subordinate to the superior. Other similar practices involve activities like focus group discussions, voice of Wockhardt (VoW) suggestion box, coffee with HR, bi-annual employee satisfaction surveys, Town Hall meetings and so on. All aim at ensuring that the engagement strategies are aligned to the organisation and associates as well as to course-correct if necessary.

The value proposition of the innovative, internally-developed 360o engagement model is three-pronged: internal customers are happy and hence are more engaged on the job. Also, engagement brings multidisciplinary teams together, leading to greater team building/ bonding. They, in turn, deliver better service to the external customers – leading to better customer service scores and more recommendations to other prospective customers. This leads to greater satisfaction among the management because of greater associate productivity, better team-work, better service and improved bottom-line.