Onboarding as a solution for turnover
The Zaans Medisch Centrum (ZMC) is the hospital for the residents of the Zaan region and surrounding area. In addition to the ZMC's daily efforts to provide appropriate care, they are also constantly looking for ways to improve their organization.
For instance, one of the challenges was the outdated way of onboarding new employees. ZMC, like other hospitals, suffers from the tight labor market. Nationwide, there is a 40% turnover of hospital staff within the first year of employment. But what if it is possible to make employees feel at home right away? Effective onboarding is the key to retaining talent and creating a flying start for new employees.
How do you tackle something like this? ZMC found the answer with Plek, formulating an innovative approach that fits seamlessly with the dynamics of medical professionals. Thanks to this innovative onboarding recipe, new team members are integrated into the corporate culture at lightning speed.
Challenges and objectives
The challenges ZMC faced were clear:
- People > technology: They want the doctors and nurses to be able to be primarily concerned with the patient, not with technology. The workload is already extremely high, and it doesn't help if it is made even higher by slow or antagonistic technology: so the internal processes must be supportive of the employees.
- The high turnover among healthcare staff also weighs on employee engagement. Healthcare is people work for patients, but as an organization, how do you also "take good care" of your employees, and create engagement among them?
- Onboarding was too manual: As a result, it took up a lot of employees' time, and in the end, it did not produce the desired results because it was too general. The desire was for a more customized program per employee.
ZMC formulated the following goals for collaboration with Plek:
- How do you reach and engage everyone, across domains and roles? How can employees feel engaged in the organization and work?
- How do we measure employee engagement better than we do now? How can we do that in a more efficient, easier way without using a long-winded traditional questionnaire? The ZMC was also looking for a way to make it easier to use the results.
- What way of onboarding best suits new employees at ZMC?
Solution
Inspired and skilled employees are crucial to providing innovative and good care. Of course, these inspired employees must also be well supported by ZMC in terms of internal processes. ZMC and Plek were the first to work on a new intranet and a renewal of the onboarding of new employees.
With the InZide intranet that ZMC developed with Plek, they wanted the technology to truly support and serve the doctors and nurses. InZide provides an integrated environment for:
-
Internal coordination and arrangements
-
Meeting existing and new colleagues
-
Onboarding of new employees
-
Retrieving feedback in the form of a fully integrated employee satisfaction survey
Onboarding
ZMC uses Plek to onboard new employees, both into the organization and within their field of work. In doing so, ZMC made a conscious decision not to use a stand-alone onboarding app and to fully integrate it within the intranet. Onboarding programs are automatically launched and contain references to information elsewhere on the intranet.
Pauline explains: "Now we can develop a customized program for everyone, and also turn it on permanently before the first working day starts. By linking to the general intranet, new colleagues immediately know where they can find information from now on and become members of groups. In those groups, as well as in 1-on-1 chats, they get to know other employees in the organization."
Conclusion
The ZMC shows that employee engagement consists of multiple topics, and therefore deserves an integrated approach. A good intranet, a strong onboarding process and effective employee satisfaction measurements go hand in hand. With Plek, they are taking new steps towards a connected, satisfied and efficient work environment.
P.S. Did you see our free product tours?
