Keys to Hospice Employee Engagement

With longstanding labor shortages reaching unprecedented levels, hospices are getting creative on recruitment and retention.

The factors contributing to this scarcity are multi-faceted. They include questions about employee compensation, burnout, work-life balance, reimbursement levels, and rising rates of retirement as hospice workers age with the rest of the population, among others.

As part of their efforts to bolster their ranks, some providers have sharpened their focus on employee engagement to help them stay invested in their work and more likely to stay in their jobs.

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“Retention is a big issue for all clinical organizations right now,” Jaysen Roa, president and CEO of Avow Hospice told Hospice News. “With the shortage of clinicians and large bonuses offered by every medical group trying to hire, you have to look at other ways to stand out from the crowd.”

Florida-based Avow conducts regular employee surveys to identify staff members’ priorities and gauge their job satisfaction.

Perhaps more importantly, they follow up on the results. After one recent survey, the company implemented a permanent pay raise for all employees to help them cope with rampant inflation. 

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Avow’s compensation package covers 100% of health, dental, disability, and life insurance, in addition to a tuition reimbursement program. The kitchen in the organization’s hospice house also began preparing lunch for staff during the early days of the pandemic and has decided to continue in the long term.

Avow also sought ways to keep senior executives in touch with frontline staff, with C-suite leaders, directors, and managers participate in home visits alongside clinical staff, according to Roa.

“We make a point to show our appreciation to our team for their work,” Roa said. “We highlight employees when they go the extra mile for patients and their families or achieve new licenses and degrees. A win for one is a win for all at Avow.”

Avow is not the only hospice provider to devote more attention and resources to employee engagement in recent years. 

Chapters Health System, like most providers, saw recruitment and retention become more difficult during the pandemic. Amid the crisis, they benefited from the groundwork they laid before 2020.

Chapters provides hospice, palliative care and home health services throughout Florida, as well as durable medical equipment and pharmacy services.

Though shortages worsened after COVID-19 struck, the labor pressures were starting to build long before then. Looking ahead, Chapters leadership realized that they needed to be prepared.

“Obviously, we couldn’t predict the pandemic, but wage pressures, regulatory and supply pressures, staff aging out of the workforce — all those things were on the horizon,” Chapters President and CEO Andrew Molosky told Hospice News. “We chose to make our focal point our employees, with the logic that only when you have highly engaged employees can you truly deliver a highly engaged clinical product. So all the pillars were there when the pandemic came along.”

In addition to a number of revamped recruitment initiatives, Chapters emphasized communication as a cornerstone of their employee engagement strategy.

The company set out to identify the aspects of their jobs and work environment that employees most appreciated and valued, and began working to orient their organizational culture around those priorites.

They also worked to ensure that frontline employees has clear lines of communication with management, including senior executives. 

Both Avow and Chapters recently received certifications from the organization Great Place to Work, which recognizes employers who create an “outstanding employee experience.” Certification involves a two-step process that includes an employee survey and a questionnaire about a company’s workforce.

The national average of surveyed workers who say their employer is a “great place to work” is 57%, the organization reported. Avow and Chapters reached 94% and 81% in 2022, respectively. Both the hospice providers have received the award multiple times from year to year.

“It’s about how you define that culture. Is the culture one of co-creation, meaning everybody collectively determines the rules of engagement, does the executive suite say ‘it’s our way or the highway?” Molosky said. “If you really want to have an engaged workforce, it needs to be about what makes them happy, gets them out of bed, and makes them proud to wear the badge.”

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