Training your new talent and bringing them onboard to your medical facility and its unique culture is a process that should start all the way back at recruitment for best results. If you lay the right groundwork from the beginning, integration is natural and easy, instead of a shock to overcome after hiring.
According to a statistic cited by the Association of Staff Physician Recruiters (ASPR), 90 percent of employees make the decision to stay at an organization within their first six months. Clearly, integration and transition are vital to employee retention.
8 Tips for Helping Staff Integrate into a New Workplace Culture
1. Start Off With the Right Fit
In “Recruit to Retain” by Richard N. Tate, Tate explains:
“How any physician is recruited and integrated in the practice will play a huge factor in whether he or she can be successfully recruited and retained. Being successful in all aspects of the process could very well land a new lead physician the medical team can get excited about.”
When you start planning to recruit, be sure that everyone involved in hiring and recruitment is very clear on what skills, experience, and personality traits you are looking for in a physician. Ensuring that you find someone who is truly the right fit for the job means you should have fewer issues with integration. Your selected candidate will be someone who can join your existing culture, and perhaps better it, instead of feeling like he or she does not fit in.
2. Begin Integration Early
Your onboarding/integration person or team needs to be involved with your new hire as early as possible. He or she will be a point person for any questions or needs that may arise. Knowing that there is someone dedicated to making the integration process go smoothly can be a big help.
It can be helpful to have your onboarding team or person in communication with recruiters, to reach out to strong candidate contenders in the pre-employment stage.
3. Make Relocation Positive
If your new hire is relocating, that is one of the first big potential stumbling blocks to integration. A bad experience with relocation can spill over to the workplace and leave new talent feeling like they made a poor choice.
“Making sure that your new hires have a positive relocation experience is of the highest priority, no matter what happens … Providing a positive experience for your new hires can make or break everything,” says Laura Screeney, Director of Physician Recruitment for New York-Presbyterian and President of ASPR.
4. Create a Strong Orientation Process
A new physician needs to be oriented to the practice. That should involve processes that work with your workplace culture, be it shadowing other physicians for a certain time frame, site visits prior to relocation, local cultural sensitivity training, or assigning a mentor. Ensure your new hire knows all they need to know before starting work.
5. Involve the Community
Making a physician and his or her family welcome within the entire community is key in retention. Introduce your new hire to important figures — local politicians, religious leaders if applicable, service club heads, etc. If your new hire has kids, ensure that they are in touch with educators, and know what activities are family-friendly in your town.
Many medical facilities ask local businesses and public figures to reach out to new hires in a welcoming way, whether with an introduction, an invitation to join a club or event, or a welcome basket with local goods and resources.
6. Review Your Integration Process and Seek Feedback
Regularly review what is and is not working in integration. You can get a lot of valuable information by seeking feedback from new hires at certain points post-hire. This will help you to understand what has helped them, and what needs adjustment.
Address any program weaknesses quickly and efficiently. It will pay off when your next hire has an easier time integrating.
7. Be Honest
If things aren’t going well with any part of the integration or training process — a timeline is delayed, relocation hits a snag, or a preferred mentor moves on, for example — be honest with your new hire about what is happening. Find out from them how you can help get things back on track.
8. Get Every Department Involved
Training and integrating new talent is not something that happens within one department. Every department should be included for a holistic approach that helps your new hire fit in and feel comfortable everywhere, not just within human resources and their specific practice area.
From the finance department to recruitment, everyone has a role to play in welcoming new talent and showing him or her the ins and outs of your medical facility.
When you start out on the right foot, and keep going with strong integration and onboarding tactics, you should see a clear improvement in retention and staff morale.
