Employee engagement is crucial to the success of healthcare practices. Engaged clinical staff will work toward patient care goals because they know their role in patient care is vital to improving health outcomes. They will also be more satisfied in their careers; and when your clinical staff is happy, they’ll be better able to keep patients happy too.
Organizations have traditionally sent out email newsletters to engage employees. However, many doctors don’t have time to read emails, and they are more likely to open emails from reps than they are from corporate, according to research. With advances in technology that have shifted how employees engage with patients, coworkers and employers, it’s time to rethink how you’re communicating with employees.
Digital healthcare signage placed in break rooms or clinical areas that feature glance-and-go content your employees can view between appointments is the evolution of employee engagement—and because it’s a digital sign, it doesn’t require your team to take additional actions to get necessary information. Practice communication through signage simply becomes part of the fabric of their day-to-day.
In this article, we’ll dive into the ins and outs of practice engagement digital signage—what it does, how it can help your practice and what to look for when shopping for one.
How does a practice engagement device work?
A practice engagement device is a multimedia communication hub for your team. Think of it as your new monthly newsletter combined with a healthcare news channel. It will keep providers up to date on the latest peer-reviewed research for your specialty, advice from industry experts and relevant news. This information appears alongside your custom messages, where you can reinforce patient care goals or let them know about an upcoming event or office hour change.
All of this content plays on a loop during work hours, increasing the likelihood that everyone will get important updates. We also recommend placing this device in high-traffic areas like the break room or a clinical area so that your team will see messaging multiple times a day.
To best engage your team and improve their satisfaction on the job, it’s a good idea to include wellness content. Relaxing and inspiring videos create moments for decompression and stress reduction; and your team will appreciate having more information about benefit and care resources, free CME opportunities and provider shoutouts.
What are the benefits of a practice engagement device?
A practice engagement device will increase employee engagement through reinforced messaging. This means your clinical staff will be more involved with your care goals and other practice initiatives, and they’ll feel more motivated to follow these.
The healthcare signage will also increase employee satisfaction when used to amplify your appreciation and rewards programs. If an employee receives recognition, they are three times more likely to have a sense of loyalty to their organization and four times more likely to be engaged, according to a study by Gallup and Workhuman.
What should you look for in an internal healthcare sign?
Once you decide that a practice engagement device is a good fit for you, a quick online search will reveal just how many variations there are on the market. So how do you find the right one?
First off, define your goals. Do you want internal signage to support employee engagement, employee retention, internal training and/or team communication? This will help you identify which features are most important to you.
For instance, practices we partner with wanted to provide their team with information and resources that help them grow both professionally and personally, which is why they looked for a solution that includes industry news, peer-reviewed research and the ability to add their own content.
If engaging providers with your own practice messages and goals is important to you, consider how easy it is to add, create or request new messages to your playlist—will the creation and scheduling of the messages fall completely on your shoulders, or will there be help available?
You’ll also want to consider if installation, onboarding and training processes are part of the package or if there are separate costs associated with hardware or services.
Adding internal digital signage to enhance your employee communication strategy is an effective and efficient means of giving your entire team important updates you know they’ll see and engage with.
Ready to add a practice engagement device into your practice? Our no-cost solution checks off all the boxes. Learn about it in a quick demo.