Using Employee Feedback Tools: 5 Tips for Healthcare Facilities
Healthcare administrators are always looking for creative ways to optimize care quality. Unfortunately, facility leaders typically work in offices far removed from patient care. This can lead to less visibility on medical operations and workflows which is often necessary to develop effective and meaningful change. Employee feedback tools can help facilities garner vital clinician insights to boost satisfaction scores, improve patient outcomes, and optimize engagement.
What are clinician feedback tools and how do they impact patient care? We discuss the importance of collecting employee feedback, list some of the healthcare industry’s common feedback tool types, and provide five tips for utilizing staff feedback to develop care improvement efforts and drive system-wide change.
What Is an Employee Feedback Tool?
Employee feedback tools are software programs used to collect, analyze, and draw insights from clinician suggestions and recommendations. Healthcare leaders often use these tools to identify:
- Clinical workflow deficiencies.
- Barriers to providing safe patient care.
- Levels of employee engagement and job satisfaction.
- Factors that impact the workplace experience.
- Employee perception of their own job performance.
How Do Employee Feedback Tools Improve Care?
Many healthcare leaders may wonder what the advantages are of using an employee feedback tool. For managers and other facility administrators, the process of distributing, collecting, and assessing feedback data can seem costly and time-consuming. However, the benefits of using these tools significantly outweigh the burdens. Soliciting employee feedback can help facility leaders to:
- Enhance staff engagement and satisfaction: Staff that feel empowered and listened to often have higher levels of workplace satisfaction than employees who don’t feel supported. This can reduce clinician burnout and improve employee retention.
- Optimize patient health outcomes: While providing clinical care, healthcare providers often develop creative strategies for improving workflow and meeting patient needs. When they’re encouraged to share their ideas, health outcomes improve.
- Boost patient satisfaction scores: Studies show that when healthcare staff feel supported, patients are happier with the care they receive. This improves patient loyalty and promotes a positive brand image for your organization.
Frequently-Used Employee Feedback Tools: Examples for Administrators
Understanding the importance of using feedback tools is only the first step to kickstarting meaningful change initiatives. Knowing which type of tool can best address your facility’s needs is equally important. The table below lists a few of the most common healthcare feedback tool types to give you a better understanding of the options available.
| Type of Tool | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Staff Surveys | These gauge how an employee feels about their workplace. Questions can be clinical in nature (“Describe any barriers you face to providing accurate and thorough patient teaching”) or can directly assess employee satisfaction (“On a scale of never to always, how often are you excited to come to work?”). These surveys are usually distributed by an online employee feedback system or through an anonymous employee feedback tool. |
| Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots | AI chatbots help improve employee engagement by providing links to company resources, streamlining employee communication, gathering feedback about culture and business practices, and promoting company events. |
| Performance Reviews | Many organizations encourage staff to provide input when conducting annual performance reviews of clinical managers and administrative leaders. This feedback is most often collected via an anonymous feedback box or through the distribution of an emailed performance review. |
Utilizing Employee Feedback Tools: 5 Strategies for Facilities
Once you’ve received feedback from your employees, coming up with productive ways to address the findings can be a challenge. These five strategies can help you get the most out of your valuable employee feedback data. Once you’ve taken these tips to heart, you’ll be able to develop lasting solutions for many of your facility’s challenges.
1. Solicit Feedback Proactively, Not Reactively
Many healthcare leaders believe that listening to employee feedback is only essential when their facility has glaring concerns or problems. However, obtaining employee feedback data periodically, not in response to any particular event or concern, can help prevent issues from arising in the first place.
Try to gather suggestions and opinions at all stages of the caregiving process, not just during moments of triumph or struggle. Visualize employee feedback trends over time to track your initiative’s progress or success.
2. Determine Your Team’s Preferred Feedback Method
Some employees prefer sharing opinions anonymously, while others may feel comfortable sharing suggestions during a conversation with their manager. Asking your employees how they prefer to share and receive feedback can help you procure detailed and honest information.
3. Be Receptive to Critical Feedback
It might not always be easy to hear what your employees have to say. Don’t take their feedback personally — instead, use their suggestions to guide change efforts in a way that’s helpful and meaningful to them.
4. Share Feedback with Staff
Once you’ve received the results from your employee feedback survey or questionnaire, make sure to disseminate the findings with your entire clinical team. Staff morale may plummet if employees feel like the feedback they provided wasn’t heard or appreciated.
One way to notify your staff of survey results is to present them in a graphic or chart. Be sure to distribute this data in a facility-wide email or staff meeting to ensure everyone gets the message.
5. Involve Staff in the Development of Solutions
Clinicians enjoy getting involved in the creation of quality improvement initiatives and are more engaged and satisfied in their work when they’re included in unit projects. Once your team has identified an area of concern, establish a workgroup or shared governance council to explore and develop solutions for the issues they’ve addressed. This keeps employees tapped in while also showing them that you value their input and suggestions.
Discover More Innovative Ways to Improve Care Quality
Utilizing employee feedback tools can help your organization develop new and creative strategies for improving care quality. Need more tips to help you improve performance and results? Our expert-written newsletter provides additional evidence-based strategies for optimizing staff engagement, boosting patient health outcomes, and improving satisfaction scores.