8 Easy Tips for Keeping Employees Happy in Your Medical Office
Are your employees happy? Do you know the answer to that question? Research finds that more than half of all Americans are unhappy at work. If your medical office employees are unhappy with their jobs, there are ways to improve your organization.
Unhappy employees have a domino effect in the office and impact everyone they come into contact with. Don’t let unhappy employees plague your medical practice. Figure out what’s impacting them and find ways to fix the problem.
Here are 8 easy tips for keeping employees happy in the workplace.
The Importance of Keeping Employees Happy
Employees who are happy are more productive, engaged, and loyal to their employers. These are some pretty significant benefits in keeping employees happy.
In a medical practice, employees are likely interacting with patients often. Unhappy employees can have a negative impact on the patient experience. One worker’s negative attitude can make their entire interaction with your medical practice poor.
There is often overlap between employee satisfaction issues and patient satisfaction issues. By addressing any issues with employees, satisfaction for them and patients will increase.
How to Keep Employees Happy
A monetary reward is not the only way to keep employees happy. Many people think that to make their employees feel good, they need to give them a raise or a bonus. This isn’t always the case. There are many ways to improve employee happiness in a medical practice that don’t involve a raise or a bonus.
1. Make Work-Life Balance a Priority
Creating a work-life balance where employees feel valued and able to meet the needs of their employer and the needs of their family is important.
You could allow employees the flexibility to take time off for ill family members. Another step is limiting contacting employees outside of work hours. Working towards the work-life balance for employees goes a long way in improving happiness.
2. Always Say Thank You
This seems like it should be a no-brainer, but many employees don’t become unhappy or leave their jobs because of money. They leave because they feel like they aren’t valued.
Creating an environment that thanks employees for their hard work is a simple gesture that goes a long way toward improving employee happiness and satisfaction.
3. Build Employees Up
Related to always saying thank you, building employees up is also important. Recognize employees who are doing well or going above and beyond. Make an effort to validate their skills and improvements they may be making, and reward them as such.
Changes in title, more advanced responsibilities, or designating them the expert on an aspect of the company builds them up and gives them confidence.
Providing paths for advancement also may help increase employee happiness. If they have something to aspire to or a clear path for promotion, they often will be more satisfied and productive as they work towards their goals.
4. Promote a Positive Work Environment
Create a positive work environment where employees praise each other for a job well done improves employee happiness.
Foster collaboration instead of competition. These relationships between employees will benefit everyone involved, including patients.
5. Offer Extra Benefits
There are many ways to provide benefits to employees that aren’t salary-based. You can contribute more to their insurance premiums and offer paid family leave. You could also contribute to gym memberships and provide daycare services to show employees that you value them and their work.
You could also provide them with a yearly allowance for purchasing scrubs or allow them to purchase modern and trendy scrubs. Blue Sky Scrubs is a great option for modern scrubs for men and women.
6. Seek and Take Feedback
Making employees part of the big picture of the medical practice is important. They’re the ones who are on the front line of the practice. They are the first face a patient sees upon entering (or the first voice a patient hears when calling the office). Seek out their feedback on how to make things more efficient or improve processes.
The employees doing the work are the ones who can best tell you how to improve it. Changes coming from the top down, from those who might not understand the issues employees face, are unlikely to be popular. Seek out feedback from your employees and actually use it to make positive changes.
This allows them to feel valued and gives them a stake in the organization.
7. Give More Vacation Time or Flex Schedules
If you can’t provide raises or bonuses, vacation time or earning flex time employees can use to leave a few hours early can help increase happiness. Part of promoting work-life balance is making sure employees have the ability to have a fulfilling life outside of work.
Allowing employees to share a job is another way to create satisfied employees. Having two employees each working part-time to share a job ensures that you’ll always have coverage if one person needs to be out. It also allows them time to take care of any family or other needs outside of work.
8. Be Transparent
Transparency in decision making is critical to employee happiness and retention. If you seek feedback from employees, share that with them and also share how you plan to make improvements. Be clear about why you are making decisions rather than making changes from the top down with no real understanding of why they are happening.
This will help create a positive work environment. It also shows employees that the organization values them.
The Bottom Line
Keeping employees happy has many benefits to your medical practice. Creating an environment where employees enjoy working and want to come to work will spill over into patient satisfaction as well. Use these tips to start now!
Check out our blog for even more tips on how to make your business more effective and efficient.