In Part 1 of our 2-part blog about attracting and retaining Millennial healthcare employees, we discussed two strategies to help you improve employee engagement and employee retention among the ever-increasing largest share of the U.S. workforce: promoting your mission and investing in education.
Social media in healthcare can be invaluable for attracting Millennial healthcare employees. For example, Hospitals & Health Networks reports that All Children’s Hospital in Tampa, Florida uses social media to engage potential new hires with stories, images, and videos that highlight what it’s like to work at their facility and live in their city:
“At All Children’s, a new nurse blogs about her experiences behind the scenes. The transport team writes a periodic series about their adventures. The hospital home page features ‘Shift Change,’ a one-minute video with action music that includes fast-paced scenes from a single day at All Children’s mixed with shots of Central Florida night life and beach sunsets.”
Exceptional internal communication is also essential for retaining Millennial healthcare employees. Many Millennials desire more feedback from their managers at work and are accustomed to instantaneous communication. Commit to increasing the amount of feedback you provide to improve employee engagement and ensure you have a system in place that enables real-time communication among employees and departments.
Millennial speaker Ryan Jenkins describes gamification as “the use of game design techniques and mechanics in a non-game context to solve problems and engage users.” He provides the gamification examples of tracking frequent flyer miles, credit card points, and fantasy football scores and explains the attraction:
“When humans achieve new levels in games, the brain releases dopamine which prompts excitement, encourages exploration to try new things, and helps combat the stagnation caused by failure. The reward-motivated behavior induced by dopamine is the key to increased employee engagement, overcoming challenges, and increased innovation through exploration.”
Incorporating gamification features like competition, rewards and incentives, point scoring, and real-time, instant feedback into the workplace may appeal to Millennial healthcare employees (who grew up playing video games and games on their mobile phones) and can improve employee engagement for all generations.
For instance, try implementing tools that monitor registrars’ patient encounter accuracy relative to their peers, and provide performance incentives to improve employee engagement and recognize accomplishments. This will create a fun, competitive atmosphere and provide Millennial healthcare employees with the feedback they crave.
As noted in Part 1 of this blog, most Millennials want the opportunity to learn at work. Gamification can be used to improve employee engagement with training and online learning as well.
Many Millennials want to work in healthcare; according to a survey of 18,000 Millennials, about 40% plan on working in medicine or health-related fields. Healthcare facilities that consider the values of this generation of workers in their efforts to improve employee engagement and employee retention will have the most success in attracting and retaining Millennial healthcare employees.
These strategies, embracing social media in healthcare and utilizing gamification, along with those outlined in Part 1 of this 2-part blog (promoting your mission and investing in education), will appeal to Millennial healthcare employees and lower your turnover rates for this group of workers.
Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 in a 2-part blog series.