From a Conversation with Robert Earley, President/CEO, JPS Health Network, Fort Worth, Texas
With HealthStream continuing to provide consulting support, JPS leadership has set forth new challenges for itself as it continues to build upon the positive improvements already evident throughout the entire system. Among these is a renewed commitment to meaningful goal-setting - equipping managers to empower their employees to be even more active contributors to the positive culture being re-established at JPS. To this end, JPS continues to identify specific ways to continue to enhance employee satisfaction and engagement, including:
Transparency: • Goals for the organization have now been closely aligned within the entire workforce and are transparent to all. This had not been a previous practice at JPS.
Employee Involvement: • A greater emphasis on employee rewards and recognitions. A special committee has been established to seek the best ways to reward and recognize all employees in the organization.
Employee Recognition: • A proposal is being discussed that would devise a way to recognize, employees, nurses, and physicians at monthly Board meetings for their contributions to the organization.
Having Fun – Texas Ranger Style!: • Special events are scheduled—such as JPS night at a Texas Ranger baseball game. This includes (among other things): an internal talent competition for those employees to tryout for singing the national anthem at the game; the JPS police department serves as the color guard on that night; and the Volunteer of the Year and the Physician of the Year are recognized at the start of the game.
With a history dating back more than 100 years, JPS Health Network is a county-sponsored, urban healthcare system serving Tarrant County, Texas. Long established as a main trauma center for the county, it has changed over the years to reflect the growing needs of the community. JPS now includes a hospital licensed for 567 beds, attached to a Patient Care Pavilion—a five-story acute care facility, along with an outpatient care center, a dedicated facility for psychiatric services, and most recently a Level I Trauma Center.
Employee satisfaction at JPS had reached a low ebb in 2007. In 2008, a change in leadership was made. The new leadership team assumed responsibility that year with one of its highest priorities being to better understand the reasons for the low levels of employee satisfaction and thereby improve the relationships among employees, managers, and hospital leadership. If the hospital was to build its reputation as a good place to work, improving employee satisfaction and engagement had to be an essential goal.
HealthStream Research was first engaged in 2007 to administer surveys to help JPS measure levels of employee satisfaction. Baseline survey results from that initial cycle documented an extremely challenging work environment. Overall satisfaction among employees was at the 55th percentile nationally. Overall satisfaction among nursing staff was at the 30th percentile. Perhaps most telling was the finding that the level of trust between employees and administration was only at the 29th percentile.
It had become generally accepted fact that the nature of communication between administration, managers, and employees needed to improve. Aware of the challenging set of results obtained in the initial survey, the new JPS leadership initiated the following actions in response to the results of the initial survey: Executive Rounding: All Executives are • expected to round on the departments that they oversee. Monthly video: CEO does a monthly video • that provides updates to all employees regarding good things that employees have done that he has observed as he walks the floors. Special events: CEO also has pancake • breakfasts with departments to thank them for the work they are dong at JPS. JPS Pride: Another program that was • implemented was JPS PRIDE—a program that highlights why employees are proud to work at JPS. Their comments are published both on the JPS intranet site as well as in the bi-monthly internal publication Network News.
“As a management team, we really try to listen and learn at every step along the way. Of all the things we’ve done to revitalize the spirit of our workforce, I think the most important is the commitment we make to our employees that we appreciate what they do and we are interested in their ideas on how we can all make things better. We can’t always act on every suggestion, and we can’t always do everything we want to do when we would like to. But even when we have to prioritize, I think our employees now understand that we are making every effort as a team—doing all we can together” - Robert Earley, President and Chief Executive Officer
After allowing time for the changes to take hold, the new leadership made it a priority to re-measure employee satisfaction and engagement, and assess the progress they had made. Their goal in the follow-up survey was to preserve trending and benchmarking from the prior survey, enabling them to document the true impact of their efforts.
As a result of action steps taken by JPS leadership, the second survey process showed remarkable improvement compared to the baseline results. Of the 29 items on the Employee Satisfaction and Engagement survey, 28 items showed improvement.
Further, trends from cycle to cycle showed the following progress: Employee Survey (Percentile change 1st cycle – 2nd cycle): Overall satisfaction improved from the 55th to 75th.JPS is a good place to work moved from the 47th to 84th. Overall engagement improved from the 16th to 44th. Nursing Staff Survey (Percentile change 1st cycle – 2nd cycle): Overall satisfaction improved from the 30th to 87th.JPS is a good place to work from 47th to 86th. Nurses’ overall engagement from 16th to 52nd. Administration – Employee Communication Improved: The employees’ view of the quality of the communication between themselves and administration improved dramatically, as well. “During the past year, communication between administration and employees has improved.” This measure improved from the 29th percentile to the 82nd percentile. Physician – Nurse Teamwork Improved: In addition to dramatic improvements made in employee and nurse satisfaction and engagement, the nurses’ view of the quality of the working relationship of between nursing staff and medical staff also improved. “The physicians and nurses in our hospital have a good working relationship” improved from the 84th to the 96th percentile nationally.