I was recently speaking with the owner of an agency who said to me:
“I am exhausted. Look at my calendar. There is no time for me. I am slamming and jamming through the day from one meeting to the next. I don’t have time to think strategically. I am struggling. What’s worse is I see my staff struggling with the same issues.
They are tired of being on zoom for 6-7 hrs a day in meetings. They tell me our clinical and caregiving staff is getting “burned out,” and I am afraid they might be running into the ground. I am worried.
My staff IS the agency. No nurses or Aides or Caregivers – NO AGENCY
Day to day, I don’t know my staff situation because of COVID and having staff out on quarantine. COVID tracking is taking up a tremendous amount of time and resources.
We have plenty of referrals – that’s good – the reps are following your inside sales process – that is not a problem.
The problem is I am overwhelmed and tired.
And it feels like everyone else is too.
I need help. I need a plan. Not just a couple of morale boosters but a plan to honor my staff. And help me get out of this “funk” of groundhog day that has been my life for that last 6 mos.”
I told this owner – He is not alone.
I, too, feel the collective “tiredness” of the whole world.
We are in a sustained trauma.
We can’t see our friends. We have to reserve spots online to go to church.
Our “Social framework” is broken.
For the Owner. He is tired.
I shared with him some productivity hacks to gain some of his time back. So that he can have room to think. Think about the future – winter is just a month away for him.
Everyone will be “back inside,” and that means even less socialization for him and his staff.
We have all heard the estimates on the costs of employee turnover:
- 6 to 9 months of salary. (That’s well over half what you pay an employee in a year. For an employee making $100,000 a year, the turnover cost could be as high as roughly $75,000. Ouch.)
- 16% of annual salary for jobs with traditionally high turnover, such as entry-level jobs.
- 20% of annual salary for jobs requiring mid-level experience
- 213% (not a typo!) of the annual wage for top-level executive positions, including C.E.O.s *
(Statistics according to https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/employee-retention-the-real-cost-of-losing-an-employee
)
We can all agree employee turnover is expensive.
(Add on top of that all the “COVID-exposure quarantines AKA COVID exposure “vacations” as one owner calls it)
His marketing team is delivering more referrals then he can serve! He is TURNING DOWN REFERRALS! — YIKES!
He needs current staff to stay and “do more” even when they are already tired! (He also is hiring as fast as he can)
Employee centric management will shape pandemic recovery success.
For this owner, we are creating a plan. A step by step Employee Engagement plan for him to help him honor his staff, increase morale, and connect to the human first.
The Framework is C.E.F.T.
C- Compassion. Offering comfort, and empathy to staff during this challenging work/life/kids a homeschooling balance
E- Experience. Your staff needs to “DO” Something! The activity needs to be engaging, and your team will become involved in the reward system. E is also for EASY – Yes, the activity needs to be engaging, but it needs to be EASY too- the staff has enough “work” to do.
F- F.U.N. We ALL NEED MORE FUN!!!
T – Timely. This cannot be a 1 and done. This is an ongoing plan of engagement and honoring of staff. We have all tried gift cards – for them only to become an expectation. This plan has “surprise” and “chance” worked in so that his staff doesn’t “expect” the reward (much like a slot machine – you keep coming back because you don’t know when it will pay out!)
The result of this plan will be that he can give it to his administrators to roll out each month and engage his staff. Engage and delight his team that his agency cares. Cares enough to create the social framework they lost during the pandemic.
This agency will create deeper relationships with its staff, which will allow them to serve more patients and increase their revenue.
We are all in this together.
Giving the owner the Freedom to Grow.
During this time of Overwhelm, we are here to help.
Melanie
P.S. Overwhelm is real. You can move out of it with structure. With structure comes FREEDOM! You got this – We can help!
