Leadership

Healthcare organizations and facilities generally serve many different patients. These patients belong to different demographics, such as age or race, or have a range of complex diagnoses or health needs, such as food insecurity or homelessness.

A key aspect of retention in any organization is a culture of inclusion. When your employees feel as if they’re excluded or lack support in their workplace, it can breed feelings of frustration, fear, isolation, lack of motivation, and more.

On the other hand, when inclusion permeates your organization, employees feel their ideas and contributions are valued, and they are supported on every level. Bonus: they are even less likely to leave your organization.

Many healthcare organizations that have weathered the pandemic are now focusing on diversity as their next high priority. As human resources and other healthcare leaders seek to implement specific strategies, here are three key elements you must keep in mind.

1. Create SMART Goals

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in healthcare can look different across communities and facilities. This can make success more challenging to define. However, that does not mean that diversity strategies have to be nebulous.

During the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, organizations had to come face-to-face with the strengths and weaknesses of their leadership skills. Emotional intelligence (EI) emerged as a crucial part of effective leadership when leading hybrid and remote teams.

Here's how you can approach, develop, and apply EI going forward.

Healthcare providers looking to promote equity in healthcare outcomes and reduce cultural healthcare disparities might want to look inward, particularly at the diversity of their leadership teams.

An inclusive leader can successfully lead a diverse group of people, while showing respect for each person’s unique perspective and contributions. Today, nowhere is this more important than in healthcare, where patients’ lives are on the line every day.

Inclusive leadership requires a certain combination of traits, including:

During our current health crisis, it is even more vital that healthcare organizations blend patient-first care with operational expertise. Physician leaders are on the frontlines of the coronavirus crisis, and they’re under a lot of pressure to provide exceptional care while maintaining operational excellence.

Employee engagement has the potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery. Within the past decade, healthcare HR teams demonstrated a strong correlation between employee engagement and better patient outcomes and experiences. Today, the evidence is insurmountable. 

I recently attended a Healthcare Talent Symposium with a group of organizational leaders in the healthcare industry and had the unique opportunity to hear from both speakers and participants about their most significant concerns, challenges and struggles in talent acquisition today. One thing stood out above the others, and it’s something every HR leader and team member faces: workforce planning.

Mental health is not the easiest conversation to have in the workplace. In fact, 61% of employees feel there’s a social stigma in the workplace toward colleagues with mental health issues, according to a report from Unum, a provider of employee benefits.