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Anatomy of Engagement: Support and Professional Staff

Anatomy of Engagement: Support and Professional Staff

by Rick Blizzard

This is the sixth and final article in a multipart series on healthcare job categories. Previously discussed categories include licensed technicians, registered nurses, and administrative/clerical workers (see Related Items).

Who are the most satisfied and engaged workers in the healthcare industry? According to Gallup's aggregated employee engagement database for healthcare organizations, the two most engaged categories couldn't be more different from one another: support staff, a group that includes housekeeping and dietary workers; and professional staff, which includes pharmacists and physical therapists. What can hospitals learn from these two diverse groups that will help them improve the engagement of all their healthcare workers?

Despite their high overall scores, neither professional staff nor support staff members give scores that average above the healthcare database's 50th percentile on all 12 questions in Gallup's employee engagement survey. Workers in each category give ratings below the 50th percentile on three questions, indicating significant room for improvement in both groups. However, the lowest-scoring items among professionals are completely different from the lowest-scoring items among support staff members.

Support workers score lowest (-.12 below the 50th percentile) on the item, "My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work." This is also one of the lowest-scored items among the administrative/clerical group, suggesting that quality is a serious concern for non-clinical staff members. Conversely, professional workers score highest on this item (.21 above the 50th percentile).

Professionals give the lowest scores, relative to the other job categories, on the item, "I have a best friend at work" (-.12 below the 50th percentile). Again, the reverse is true among support personnel -- at .14 above the 50th percentile, support workers highly rate the "best friend" item. This item is an indicator of trust and cooperation between coworkers, and these results suggest that support personnel tend to have more cohesive workgroups, while professional personnel may feel more isolated.

The strongest item for the support category is, "I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right," at .20 above the 50th percentile. Once again, support workers and administrative/clerical workers rate this item similarly.

What Can We Learn From Support and Professional Workers?

The "engagement profiles" of support and professional workers are extremely different, despite their similarly high levels of overall fulfillment. They have met success by traveling two different paths.

These data suggest one simple but important truth: There is no strategy for maintaining engagement that applies equally well to all groups of healthcare workers. Each workgroup, no matter how successful, will have its own unique strengths and areas needing improvement. That said, there are some similarities between job categories (such as support and administrative/clerical personnel), and these similarities can be useful in searching for best practices that can be shared among all categories.

The Q12 items are protected by copyright of The Gallup Organization, Princeton, N.J., 1992-1999. All rights reserved.

 


Gallup https://news.gallup.com/poll/10135/Anatomy-Engagement-Support-Professional-Staff.aspx
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