026, HR Healthcare__Keynote Case Study Presentation_ Elevating Caregiver Engagement

Rhonda Hall, Chief Human Resource Officer, Providence Health: First of all, I love it when I get to be promoted when I come to a conference because I'm the chief human resource officer for a small section of Providence Healthcare. Providence Healthcare, we have about 65 acute care hospitals on primarily the West Coast, but, we threw one in Texas just to kinda spread us out.

And I joined Providence in Jan- in 2023. So I am very happy to say I left healthcare for about six years, and I-- those were the best six years to leave healthcare if you ever could. But by coming back in 2023, and I walked in the door at Providence, I oversee three acute care hospitals in Southern California.

It's about 6,000 caregivers and about 900 beds total. So give you a perspective. One of the things I saw when I walked in the door was our caregiver engagement scores were not where we wanted them. Now, I had just come from an organization where our caregiver engagement scores were recognized by Gallup, and we are an exceptional workplace.

We are in the top 8% of Gall- of Gallup organization. And I came in, and here we were sitting at a 68 and a 71, which was on par with where the larger Providence was. But luckily for the chief executive that I partner with and for me, that wasn't good enough. So we set out to do a few things, and that's what I'm gonna share with you, is what we've done and why we did it.

So first of all, where were we when we started is what up in the red and the two words in blue. That's where we were. And what we learned by mining the data that we already had is that the answers were all there Absolutely every answer was there. Supply chain. You'll see that it told us that we had challenges between nursing and physicians.

You'll see that we had challenges with respect. We had challenges with helping people feel that they belonged. We had challenges with elevators. Does anybody have challenges with elevators? Come on. I- the fact that it was there tells you how bad it was. The word cloud at the bottom was from our April survey, and we're doing so much better because the one area that bothers me the most is people feel replaceable.

But the thing that I love is that they feel appreciated, and they feel supported, and they feel acknowledged. So we've come a long way, but we're not finished. So I'll share with you is what we've done to get us there. We decided to take the approach of not doing large scale, major initiatives and giant announcements, blah, blah, blah.

We instead went with what we exactly ask our nurses and our caregivers to do every single day, which is make a difference through little things. So before you leave a room, don't wait for a patient to ask you to go to the restroom. You ask them, "Do you need to hit a restroom before I walk out the door?"

It's the little things that can make the difference in patient experience. It's the little things that can make a difference in infection control. It's the little things that make the difference, and so that's the approach we took. So we started with stay conversations, and that was more corporate, so all of Providence was rolling out stay conversations, and they were going pretty well.

But what we weren't doing was mining the data from those. So the very first thing I did was I started to mine the data for the stay conversations, and guess what? It matched the word cloud. We have issues with supply chain. Staffing is not up to par. We have issues between our nurses and our physicians.

Our night shift is not-- does not get recognized. Our weekend shift doesn't even exist. Those were all in that first word cloud I showed you. It was there. We just weren't doing anything with it. So we took the low-hanging fruit and actually started doing something with it, and then we started doing exactly one of the things that Minnie just talked about, which is we told people about it.

And in our caregiver news, I started a we-- you said it, we did it. So every month, we let people know, "You said this in the most recent caregiver engagement survey. Here's what we've done." In our town halls, "You said it, we did it." So those were the first things we started to do. That's what I mean by we started with small things.

It wasn't some giant banner, ribbons, the whole shebang. It was little bitty. And these are the other four things we've done, and I also put up there how much time away from the bedside it takes for people to do them. So the first thing we did is we started with something called Caring Connections, and we did this first for our people leaders because we realized if you can't put your oxygen mask on first, you're not gonna take care of the others, right?

So Caring Connections was truly about helping caregivers remember why they ca- answered the call to work in healthcare. It's helping our director of food service remember why are you working in a hospital setting versus in a restaurant or a, a hotel? It's helping our EVS work director. It's helping our director of pharmacy.

Why are you working here in this acute care setting? You could be at a retail, by the way, and probably making more. But why? Why did you choose to come here, and what has kept you here? Because we know that the vast majority of our people leaders and our caregivers are all driving past another hospital to get to work So why are they not stopping?

Why are they not d- reducing their commute? Now we're faith-based, so we have a few f- privileges, and we designed this 15-minute

Reconnection. 15 minutes to help a care help a core leader, a people leader remember why they answered the call to join healthcare. In 15 minutes, how do you do it? You do five minutes of helping them understand why they're in the room. You take five minutes and you have them turn to the person next to them and tell the story about why did they choose healthcare, and they listen to a story about why that person chose healthcare.

And then you take five minutes to say, "Thank you for being here. You're appreciated. If you're not answering the call that you-- the reason you came to healthcare in the first place, let us know what we need to do differently to help you reconnect better." 15 minutes. It was so transformational. We have 120 core leaders at two of our main hospitals.

It was so transformational for those 120 leaders that every single one of us said, "Would you please do this for my people?" It's like will you let them away from the bedside?" "Absolutely I would, for 15 minutes." And so we started the journey of offering this on a regular basis, and we-- I said, "I will offer it, but I'm doing no scheduling.

I'm doing no tracking of attendance. We will offer it, but you, the core leader, please schedule your folks, get them out of the office, get them off the floor, get them to the f- to the chapel," which is where we held this, "and have them leave." At the end of their 15 minutes, they walked away with a pocket card.

I am a big fan of pocket cards. It literally fits in a scrub's pocket. And on the card, it says these words: "Your work is of human hands and your gift to the world. Your work leads to self-fulfillment. Your work is larger than your individual self. Your work is cooperatively creative. Your work contributes to the world, to, to making to the betterment of our world."

It was simply a touchstone for them to have when they walked out the door. We rolled it out to all the caregivers that were interested, or at least the, the people leaders who were interested in going through the effort of making it available to the caregivers. We had over 96% participation of our caregivers that year in a voluntary program.

We started small. We made a big impact. We know that our leaders round, and we know leaders are very comfortable rounding on things such as, "How's your shift going? Who's been helpful for you today? Do you have the resources that you need to do your jobs? Is there anything I can do for you before you leave?"

They can just do that in their sleep. What we found, though, in by mining the data, not only from the stay conversations, but also from our caregiver engagement survey that we do four times a year, is we found that what people were really looking for was they were looking for purpose, belonging, to feel cared for, and growth And so when we started asking core leaders, "Hey, when you round, what's a chance that you're tapping in, you're asking questions about purpose, about belonging, about caring, or about growth?"

And those core leaders were saying I'm not." Why not? I wouldn't know what to ask." So let me help you. Guess what? They got more cards. This time, they got a total of ba-ba- four questions in each of these categories. And to help them get comfortable with it, we paired our core leaders, our people leaders up, the nursing with an ancillary.

Because nursing leaders round all the time, they're very comfortable with it, but your director of dietary may not round as often. They may not be as comfortable. And then we had them round on each other's r- units together. In this session, we pulled them together. The session was actually 20 minutes long.

Then we made them go round for an hour together, and come back for 20 minutes and debrief. These were the types of questions that we asked them to to round on. First que- one question they could have asked around caring is, "When was the last time you felt care- cared for here, and what made it meaningful to you?"

But we didn't just give them questions. We also gave them responses, because what we learned is our people leaders were actually, they didn't know what to say when someone actually answered the question. So we helped them and said, "That is a great reminder why caring for each other is just as important as caring for our patients."

So we helped them by giving them questions. Now, there were some leaders that were uncomfortable rounding, and so what they did is they decided to gamify it. And they took their cards, and they went on the floor, and they said, "Pick a card, any card." Now h- let me have that card back, and I'm gonna ask you this question.

They also... You've heard of carpool karaoke? I love the fact that our core leaders took it, and they started doing elevator rounding. So in the elevators, they would act-- The ones that worked, we do have a couple. They're on the one side of the building. But in the elevators, they would actually pull out their questions and say, "Pick a card, any card, and let's see if you can answer it before we get to your floor."

It was a great way to help leaders get comfortable in rounding with connection and truly listening to what people had to say. And what makes people feel connected? Food. But we can't always afford to order in food all the time. So in my previous, the six years I took off from healthcare, I worked in financial services, and one of the things I inherited in that organization was a call center with 80% turnover rate.

So I implemented a variety of things, and I brought that down to 0% in 12 months, and I did it similarly to what we're doing here. And one of the ways was I sat down with my executive team at that organization, and I said, "Hey guys, are you willing to help me change the organization? Are you willing to help me change the call center turnover rate?"

And they're like, "Yeah, we'll do anything." I'm like, "I'm holding you to it." So I sat down with my core leaders at, my executive teams, and I have three executive teams I work with, and I said, "Are you willing to help me engage caregivers?" "Absolutely. We'll do anything." I said, "Great. I will see you at AM on Thursday."

"Whoa whoa. You're gonna do what?" I said, "Yeah, you're wearing an apron, a hairnet, and some gloves." And we started making and serving pancakes. So the day after Thanksgiving, I bought griddles. We can plug them in outside. We found an outdoor area. We started-- I have executives in aprons mixing pancake batter, rolling flatware in napkins, chopping up fruit, putting peanut butter in bowls, and chocolate chips and pecans, and standing there and making pancakes and serving it.

Start-- First pancakes get served at five thirty AM. It goes until nine thirty AM one day a month. We hit one floor of the hospital. About two hundred and fifty people every single month get served hot, homemade pancakes from an executive every single month. That's about five hundred to seven hundred pancakes, by the way.

And the executive loves it. Every single one of them loves it. They don't love the fact that I did have to do June thirty and July one back to back. They were not happy with that, but it was a room conflict. But this was a huge impact, and it's something we continue to do today. What's the cost? It's minimal.

It's minimal. In fact, the first two months we did it, I bought everything at Costco and brought it in myself So where are we today? Today we're doing languages of appreciation. You've heard of the five love languages. They've adapted it for the workplace, languages of appreciation. Educating our core leaders on how to m- how to understand the four languages of acu- of four languages of appreciation, and then helping them do a-- showing them a real quick survey that people can do so that they can understand how their people like to be appreciated.

There are people that want positive affirmations that are written or that are s- just said to them. There are others that prefer to get a token, a gift, something tangible. There are others that want your undivided attention. And then there are those that want an act of service. It's you offering, "Can I go get that warm blanket for the patient for you?"

Okay? What is their language of appreciation, and are you using the right one for the right people? I love the fact that I was able to get our diversity, equity, and inclusion team to actually own this part of it. And so they were really able to, pardon me, to go in and get our c- our people leaders to embrace this as part of belonging and part of inclusion, is are you truly appealing to people's th- their desire about how they wanna be appreciated?

Do they wanna be appreciated publicly or privately? These were simple things that we're doing. Nothing we've done is rocket science. So here's where we are. We started in twenty twenty-three at sixty-eight and seventy-one. I'm showing you two of our hospitals that are about twelve miles apart. In January of twenty twenty-five, we were up at seventy-three.

We've continued to march in a-- march on in a positive way. Our most recent survey, we were at seventy-six in both locations. That was April of twenty twenty-six. We're really proud of the fact we did hit seventy-eight a- and our December survey, however, that was the first month we offered... I bought them the day after Thanksgiving.

We offered pancakes for the first time in December at that hospital, and it was fascinating. We only had seventy-five people working on the floor the day that the one floor that we were serving that that day, 'cause we started in the basement at that hospital. We served p- pancakes to two hundred and fifty people They loved it, and they let us know it.

None of this is rocket science. None of this is wild and crazy ideas. These are making differences in moments that are small. It's making differences in meaningful moments. It's demonstrating you care. It's demonstrating that people have a purpose. It's demonstrating that the one area we, I haven't talked on is growth, but it's demonstrating that people belong with us.

That's what we focused on, and this is where we are. These are our caregivers. We try to use their photographs because those are the folks that we are here to serve every single day. So I hope that you're able to find something and take it with you. If you're thinking about doing a food, I highly recommend you avoid ice cream.

I have more workers' comp complaints from people scooping ice cream at my previous employer that I decided not to do that in healthcare. So whatever you do, and regardless of how much they ask, do not agree to s- hand scoop ice cream. I'm not kidding. Guys, I hope that you found something here that would be helpful for you.

I will be here and happy to answer questions afterwards. Thank you for your time.