Still the “Best” (and Getting Better)

Good morning!

Before I begin, if you have not done so, I would like to remind you to complete your Security Awareness Training module in HealthStream.  The deadline for this mandatory training is Friday, Jan. 31, and as of today, only 52 percent of our workforce has completed it.  Thank you for attending to this.

Now, it gives me great pleasure to report:  We won again!

If you’re a follower of the Jackson Free Press, this week’s issue contains the publication’s annual list of “Best of Jackson” winners and runners-up, as voted by its readers.  There are several of these “best of” contests in Mississippi, but the JFP’s may be the oldest and most widely recognized.

So it makes me happy to see that once again, readers voted UMMC the “Best Place to Work.”  And we’re kind of on a roll.  This is the fifth year in a row we have won this category against some formidable competitors, because there are many good places to work in the metro area.

While I’m proud that readers, including presumably many of our own employees, think of UMMC as a good place to work, and I’m grateful for this recognition in our community, I don’t kid myself that this is a scientific result or that we don’t have work to do to become an even better employer.  We do.

The good news is that we have a blueprint for improvement.  A year or so ago, the Office of Well-being facilitated a series of focus groups that asked diverse sets of employees about ways to improve their workplace experience at UMMC.  This work set the stage for last February’s Well-being Index survey, in which 2,000 employees participated.  

The focus group participants, who included faculty, staff and residents from across the institution, were guided through a series of questions by a facilitator.  Between the focus group responses and the results of the Well-being Index, nine common themes emerged across all employee groups.  They include:

• Low pay and lack of regular cost-of-living raises or merit-based increases are demoralizing for employees.
  
  
• Employees want help decompressing away from work, with no email, texts or calls about work after hours.
  
  
• More faculty and staff are needed in some areas so existing employees will not feel overwhelmed in covering their duties.
  
  
• Employees want more praise, recognition and appreciation to feel valued.
  
  
• Employees want better communication with leadership and between departments.
  
  
• Employees want more opportunities for professional growth and training.
  
  
• Employees want more safety, support and transparency from Human Resources and their respective managers.
  
  
• Parents want day care on campus for their children.
  
  
• Employees want a fitness center on campus.

These themes, in and of themselves, are not a surprise to me.  Most of them are issues we’ve known about and, to some extent, have been working on for some time.  Some of them, frankly, are complex issues that will require a complete overhaul of what we’ve been doing.  

But just because the problems are difficult to solve doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and do nothing.  On the contrary, what this data provide is greater definition of each issue and a set of recommendations – in many cases a starting point – as to what we might do about them.

It’s interesting to note that at least four and possibly five of the nine themes do not necessarily require additional resources to address.  More and better communication and more timely and effective employee recognition are things that should be under our control within our existing financial constraints.  Other themes may require an additional investment, greater efficiency, a shift in our priorities, or all three.

Here’s a rundown of the recommendations for each of these themes.

• Compensation: Continue to work on the comprehensive analysis of our compensation system and develop a sustainable model that rewards employees fairly for their contributions and accommodates needed growth.
  
  
• Decompression: Develop policies that support disconnecting from work during non-work hours in non-urgent situations.
  
  
• Staffing Levels: Review current staffing levels and perform a needs analysis to include number and types of employees and resource allocation.
  
  
• Recognition: Through additional follow-up, gain a better understanding from frontline staff about preferred methods of recognition. Train managerial staff on the means to express meaningful appreciation.
  
  
• Communication: Offer more town hall-style meetings hosted by executive leaders to share the current state of affairs in the institution. Develop and implement plans to share negative news and other high-stakes developments in a timely manner.
  
  
• Professional Growth/Development: Offer additional training for professional growth. Offer appropriate on-boarding education for new and transferring employees. Create more structured mentoring opportunities between experienced and novice employees.
  
  
• Human Resources: Create a manager’s toolkit and training paradigm (comparable to what is in place in the clinical enterprise) in the non-clinical areas of UMMC. Create an “ombud” office to review complaints/issues involving UMMC processes or administrators. Post minimum pay scales by grade levels for all positions.
  
  
• Day Care on Campus: Conduct a feasibility study of onsite or nearby day care for employees.
  
  
• Fitness Center on Campus: Continue to pursue an option for onsite fitness activities.

As should be obvious, this is not an exhaustive list of areas that rank as “dissatisfiers” among employees.  (I expect parking would be on a lot of people’s lists.)  But these are the ones that were cited in a diverse cross-section of our employee population.  I think it’s a good list that gives us a lot to work on.  But that doesn’t mean we won’t be working on other challenges as well.  

At the end of the day, it’s not about being the best, however that might be defined.  It’s about the continuous, data-driven journey to improvement – for our employees’ benefit and for A Healthier Mississippi.