Investing in the development of your talent is essential to your organization’s success and can be a distinguishing factor in both getting and keeping talent. With employee retention being such a challenge, especially in communities where hospital systems are aggressively poaching talent, anything you can do to affirm your commitment to staff development can only help.
When you’re challenged with recruiting the right talent, look within and consider tapping into the potential of your current staff by “growing” their capabilities. There are many ways to do this through experiential learning. But to make it happen and happen right, you need everyone on the same page. Your managers up and down the line need to be open to the idea, they need to be committed to it, and they need to give it the space to flourish otherwise this won’t work.
Experiential learning (EL) is the process of learning through experience – or in the flow of work. It’s more narrowly defined as “learning through reflection on doing.” By focusing on concrete issues, those experiences “stick out” in the mind and assist with retaining information.
In community health, people are often drawn to the industry because of its mission-oriented culture. Losing talent because they may not be the right fit for a specific role doesn’t mean they should seek employment elsewhere. This is where EL can help. Think of it as putting the right pieces in the right place, instead of throwing away the pieces.
EL has many benefits. Here are a few:
- Creates employee awareness of other aspects of health center work
- Allows for an accurate assessment of current skills and potential skills
- Creates management insight into capabilities of staff they might have not known existed
- Builds relationships between employees that may otherwise have never developed
- Develops employee’s capacity to adapt to new situations
- Bridges the gap between theory and practice
- Provides employees and teams with a safe space to fail
- Potentially saves many thousands of dollars for the organization as a whole
Here are a few practical examples of EL you can adopt:
- Mentor/buddy/job shadow – pair employees with experienced mentors or coaches who are highly skilled and knowledgeable in the same capabilities in which another employee needs development. For example, consider sending an accountant to shadow your revenue cycle director.
- Job rotations – allow employees to experience different roles and departments and cross-train staff to increase skills across departments and provide back-up plans. Perhaps your medical assistants can take a rotation at the call center, followed by a short stint at the front desk.
- Special projects/stretch assignments – give employees a project in an area where they have no experience in order to build their skillset. Maybe they can contribute to a plan to expand a service or to perform research on a new software tool.
- Structured Management/Leadership Development programs – set aside a percentage of time for a structured, experiential program to allow employees to learn and connect faster, upskill, innovate and grow exponentially.
The Structured Development Program, just one very powerful example of experiential learning, is one I highly recommend, where every new employee is given a roadmap of planned development. Set the expectation upon hiring that the health center expects all employees to adopt a culture of continuous learning.
Imagine a few years out where all employees have been exposed to numerous areas of the health center work process. Think about how valuable that could be to your health center. You can build a reward system around a structured development program that includes monetary as well as other incentives.
Interested in starting an Experiential Learning Program? We can help. Contact us for a conversation and proposal. We love doing this kind of work!
Interested in learning more about investing in your talent and experiential learning? Check out the links below:
- https://www.330talent.com/why-a-healthy-work-culture-requires-a-healthy-investment-in-career- development/
- https://www.edgepointlearning.com/blog/benefits-of-experiential-learning/
- https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2022/06/10/14-great-examples-of-experiential-learning-in-the-workplace/