According to Gallup research, more than 35% of employees cannot say yes to the question "I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day."* That's almost four in 10 people nationwide who have jobs that do not fit who they are -- a recipe for low productivity, employee retention, customer engagement, safety and profitability. Stemming this epidemic of job dissatisfaction is especially important for our nation's hospitals, where job dissatisfaction and low productivity can have life-or-death consequences for patients.
A hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla., has revolutionized its organization by adopting an approach focused on assessing and positioning individuals based on their natural talents. This hospital began selecting employees based on talent in 1998, when their employee engagement results placed them in 19th percentile of Gallup's worldwide database. Today, this new approach and other related initiatives have rocketed the hospital to the 90th percentile of the database.
The true story below, written by Diane Pagano, a nurse manager at the hospital, illustrates how selecting employees for their talents can help an organization succeed. This individual was placed in a position based on her natural talents, and was able to maximize her potential and become a tremendous asset to the hospital where she works.
Jennifer had been working as a secretary in our busy ER for 10 years when we hired her as an office coordinator for the education office. She did not have a college degree and had limited computer skills, but she was recruited into the position for her social and organizational talents.
During Jennifer's first week in our department, we watched as her office walls were freshly painted, her desk locks changed, her phone upgraded, and her chair replaced. Under normal circumstances, getting these tasks completed would take several weeks or months in a department like ours. During her second week, hardware that we had requested six months earlier was applied to our office door. We had originally been told that installing the new hardware wasn't possible due to fire regulations. The hardware cost several hundred dollars and was a special order item. I'm not sure where it came from, or if we were ever charged for it, but it was rapidly installed.
Jennifer placed a large bowl of candy on the corner of her desk, and as employees walked by she offered them treats and invited them into the department. Until that time, we had limited visitors, but soon we had many regulars who stopped by to have candy and say hello. Jennifer treated the housekeepers and cafeteria workers the same as the CEO, learning Spanish from the cafeteria staff and remembering the names of their children. The reason Jennifer could get others to do favors for her was becoming apparent -- she connected with people.
Our staff soon learned to use Jennifer's talents to obtain what we needed from other departments. Once we needed a check printed from our finance department. This was normally a two-week process but we needed the check that day. Jennifer went to the finance department and walked into the office of the head of finance on her knees. He was a very serious gentleman. He sat behind his large desk as Jennifer pleaded her case for a full five minutes, on her knees the whole time. There was no change in his face. She told him her knees hurt, and she was going to be left with bloody stumps for legs if she didn't get the check. Without smiling, he slowly grabbed the request and signed it, and she walked out of the department (still on her knees).
Jennifer's talent for connecting with others is not a learned behavior. You can't teach someone to do this, and certainly not to this extent. As more people came in contact with Jennifer, she was offered jobs at every level of the organization. She is now recruiting for the human resource department, utilizing her social skills to convince others to work for our facility. The job fits her perfectly.
-- Brad Black contributed to this story.
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