The results of the team member engagement survey revealed Baptist team members are more engaged than ever. We talked with Nancy Averwater, senior vice president and chief human resources officer, and Kristy Gay, chief experience officer, to learn more about this year’s engagement survey results.
What was Baptist’s engagement score?
Nancy Averwater:
We were so excited to learn Baptist was in the 81st percentile on the engagement survey. This is the highest percentile rank we have ever achieved and speaks to the level of commitment that both our leaders and teams have to the Baptist culture and the work we do here. To put this in perspective, Press Ganey compared our responses to that of 1.5 million health care workers across the United States. Press Ganey is the most competitive database in the health care sector, so we are very proud of these results.
Another important point to mention is that while we have increased in engagement outcomes over the last four years, the national database has decreased. That says there’s something special about working at Baptist. We believe in our vision statement, and we get to see God do the impossible every day through the work of our awesome team. With these foundations, we’ve experienced extremely low turnover, resulting in fewer changes to teams and stronger relationships with leaders.
Kristy Gay:
We are proud of our amazing engagement results across all of Baptist. There are a few locations that deserve special recognition. Baptist Medical Alternatives and Baptist Memorial Hospital-Union County achieved the highest engagement for all Baptist locations at the 99th and 97th percentiles, respectively.
We also had several locations with significant improvement from last year, including Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women, the Spence and Becky Wilson Baptist Children’s Hospital, Baptist Memorial Hospital-Crittenden and NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital, along with several Baptist Medical Group clinics. These locations made meaningful improvements with the feedback and findings from last year’s survey, and that shows in their results this year.
What did the survey reveal about the relationship team members have with their leaders?
Kristy Gay:
Press Ganey uses a leader index with high, moderate or low ratings. At Baptist, more than 600 leaders received a high leader index rating, and no leaders had a low leader index rating.
Leader index measures the relationship leaders have with direct reports. It’s a test of the strength of the connection between the team and leader and how confident the team is with the leader. Feedback, communication, teamwork and respect are key components of connection with a leader. Having a high leader index demonstrates strength in those areas.
Nancy Averwater:
Our leaders have really leaned into developing their skillsets around those areas Kristy mentioned. They are taking ownership in the engagement process and setting the example of being responsible for our culture. Our team members recognize that.
How was the participation rate?
Kristy Gay:
Baptist has always had strong participation, and we continued that trend this year with 83% of our team members participating in the engagement survey. The national average participation is around 70%. The fact that we maintain a high response rate tells us our team members are confident their voices are being heard and we take their feedback seriously and respond to it.
What would you like to highlight that we haven’t talked about?
Nancy Averwater:
It was great to see the high results around the culture of safety. We outperformed the nation by a significant amount, and we improved over last year. Our focus on Baptist CARES with continuous improvement and ensuring we’re providing the very best experience for our patients when it comes to safe care and quality really resonated on the survey.
Kristy Gay:
We saw improvement in our overall safety culture index in all three domains — prevention and reporting, pride and reputation, and resources and teamwork. Our overall safety culture was in the 79th percentile. These results mean team members feel free to voice safety concerns and believe the care they’re providing is safe. We know having a strong safety culture influences engagement, and these results are incredible.
What’s next?
Nancy Averwater:
The work is never done. While we’re pleased with these results, we want to sustain the results and do even better because, again, it speaks to the significance of culture. We’ll be listening more intently, reviewing responses and results, and responding to them.
Kristy Gay:
Engagement and culture work is about being intentional. While we’re proud of our great culture, we know it takes intentional work year-round to maintain it. Our people are the foundation of every single thing we do. This survey is a test to make sure we have a strong foundation. When we see areas to strengthen, we do that. Maintaining a powerful foundation is crucial to everything we do at Baptist and our mission.
