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6 Tips for Evaluating and Choosing a Survey Partner for Caregiver Engagement

September 20, 2019

As the ones interacting, evaluating, and supporting the patient and their families along the continuum of care, caregivers embody a large part of the patient experience. Traditionally, healthcare leaders have focused on improving the patient experience by developing initiatives that center around the patient; however, it’s becoming apparent that those initiatives alone are not enough to change the perspectives of the patient—not without first building a supportive infrastructure for the caregiver.

Employee Innovation

When given interpersonal and workplace support, caregivers have the tools they need to provide excellent patient care. By helping the caregiver succeed in their workplace, they become more engaged and loyal to their workplace. While this type of engagement research is not required, it is nonetheless helpful to understand the caregiver perspective to ensure you have loyal and dedicated staff for patient care. Having fully engaged caregivers who are willing to invest more of themselves and put forth more effort into their performance positively impacts the overall patient experience.

Who should you turn to in order to obtain this feedback? There are many vendors to choose from to administer and manage the process. What are the critical factors to evaluate when choosing a vendor? Consider these six factors when choosing a survey company to measure engagement.

How To Increase Employee Engagement

Focus and Scale. What scale does the vender use to measure caregiver satisfaction and engagement? It’s important to understand what you are measuring, as well as the focus of the survey. A top box focus on excellence and striving to be the best is key to understanding how your caregivers rate their workplace.

Flexibility. Ensure that you have a vendor who will work with you on areas that are important and specific to your organization. Whether that’s addressing specific items of focus in terms of custom questions, doing periodic pulse assessments, exit interview studies, or the ability to trend data to showcase movement over time, a vendor offering more than out-of-the-box measurement is critical.

Ensure that you have a vendor who is willing and excited to look at your data in new and innovative ways. For example, comparing nursing data to patient data, and factoring in physician engagement can provide another perspective that may provide new insight to your research. A vendor specializing in your industry often offers the best look at meaningful insights into your data, as they are ingrained in the specific needs and concerns within your industry.

Customer Service. You’ll want to make sure those managing your account are able to provide you with the level of service and attention you deserve. If client load is too high, delays may occur. Make sure guaranteed response times are reasonable and expectations will be met for routine elements of the study, as well as providing quick attention to unexpected items that could potentially arise.

Consultation and Education. Before signing on, find out what types of consultation are offered as a standard service, as well as how the vendor applies data for improvement and engagement growth. Does the vendor provide cultural assessments to take a deeper look at what is going on with the organization? Are white papers and best practices shared? What is the process for sharing webcasts, podcasts, and networking opportunities with your staff?

Ease of Reporting Platform. What is provided in terms of reporting, and how easy is it to utilize? Is a list of priority items provided in terms of what the organization should focus on? Make sure the range of reporting options works for your organization, and that reports can be scheduled and sent to others that may not be on the vendor’s reporting platform. It is also important to note that how to measure employee engagement is key too.

Focusing on these six tips can help you find a partner that matches your needs and goals when it comes to improving caregiver engagement. Hospitals should be getting the biggest bang for their buck and knowing how the vendor measures up in these six key areas can help your organization choose the best vendor for your efforts in engaging your workforce.