Resource:

Staying Competitive and Cultivating a High Performance Workforce in Today's Healthcare Environment

Challenge: Cultural Transformation  

Content provided by AHA Endorsement partner: Halogen Software

King's Daughters Medical Center is using Halogen eAppraisal to successfully compete with other area medical centers for skilled talent, and reduce time spent on manual HR tasks allowing more focus on strategy.

King's Daughters Medical Center (KDMC), a Mississippi-based acute care general hospital, is using Halogen Performance™ Healthcare to:

  • Successfully compete with other area medical centers for skilled talent,
  • Reduce the time spent on manual HR tasks, allowing more focus on strategy; and,
  • Shave significant time off Joint Commission compliance schedules.

Background
King's Daughters Medical Center (KDMC) is a 122 bed acute care general hospital. The organization employs 600 specialists and is growing consistently. It is located in Brookhaven, Mississippi, a city of about 11000, located approximately 50 miles south of Jackson. The hospital's medical specialists provide a full range of services, including anesthesiology, family practice, internal medicine, nephrology, general surgery, vascular surgery, ophthalmology, orthopedics, otolaryngology (ENT), OB-GYN, pathology, pediatrics, pediatric cardiology, radiology, urology, and emergency medicine.

Challenge
KDMC was competing with other area medical centers for skilled talent — making employee retention and employee engagement key priorities. The HR team recognized that individual goals needed to be aligned with corporate goals to help the organization drive ongoing quality improvements. They also realized the need to strategically prepare the hospital for the future with succession planning — not just to determine the next leaders, but to identify those staff who they may wish to put into specialty areas.

"We had a paper-based performance appraisal process that not surprisingly produced excessive piles of paper and created an administrative problem," said Celine Craig, Director of Human Resources. "Though there was a lot of data generated, there was no way to realistically aggregate it. We had to manually track documents, resulting in a struggle to meet Joint Commission compliance. Also, there was no way for employees to provide input on their own performance — something we felt was important in justifying high and low scores, and tracking development plans."

Solution
In selecting an automated employee performance and talent management solution, Craig's team developed a list of business requirements. Flexibility and simplicity topped the list, as did finding a solution that had health care-specific language and competencies. "We needed to find a vendor that knows this market, and understands the specific needs of health care," said Craig. "We didn't want to be forced to use off-the-shelf competencies, but that's all most of the other vendors offered. We were thrilled when we found Halogen since Halogen Performance Healthcare is endorsed by the AHA and we're in good company with over 400 health care organizations using the technology."

Upon purchasing Halogen Performance Healthcare, KDMC began with a pilot to a small group and then quickly rolled it out to the entire organization. Craig uses it for anniversary as well as 90-day reviews and transfers within the organization.

Results
"We have immediately seen results. Days of manual data entry have been reduced to a few clicks, allowing us to focus more on strategic HR programs," said Craig. "An increase in information gathered during the employee appraisal process can now be turned into valuable, useable information. It also improves the overall quality and consistency of our appraisal content and creates accountability in the process."

KDMC employees have been pleased with the Halogen system. "Everyone involved saves time and gets more value from the appraisal process," said Craig. "Employees really like having the input into the outcome of their reviews, managers are able to provide employees with better feedback, and the executive dashboard allows easy review of historical and organization-wide data."

Since implementing Halogen, KDMC estimates that it has shaved 30 to 45 days off Joint Commission requirements. Says Craig, "We've been able to change our compliance dates from dating them as getting to the HR office on anniversary date versus getting them really done with all required signatures, etc."

The future
Craig's HR team is now using Halogen to plan for the future, keeping a keen eye on the competitive talent environment. "We are working on succession planning now, thinking about how every employee contributes to the organization's long-term success," said Craig. "We're working to tie employee and departmental goals to the overall organizational goals. Halogen is helping us show our employees that we're invested in them, and that in turn is creating a culture of performance for the entire organization."