Talent Keepers

Chapter 7Creating an Engagement and Retention Culture

Think of an organization you know that understands the direct relationship between employee engagement and business success. We work with an employer that commits to town hall–like meetings that formalize company communications and makes them more personal and impactful for leaders and employees at all levels. They hold receptions or dinners where executives speak to a given group about what is happening with the parent organization. At these meetings, the attendees are given the opportunity to ask questions, raise concerns, and make suggestions on how to improve the organization. Now we have a situation in which the groups operating in the field can put names and faces with the people leading the organization and making decisions that impact all employees.

This goal is possible in any organization, and it’s only one of many effective components of the engagement strategy Patti McEwen has helped put in place at Sheridan. “All of this has led us to schedule more opportunities for our senior leadership to visit site locations on a regular basis. They used to go once a year, or even never. Now they visit frequently. From the physician side, we’ve developed our ‘Emerging Leaders Program,’ which identifies up-and-coming physicians that could be leaders at the local or state level. These potential leaders enter an eighteen-month management training program which has been successful at so many levels that we’ve recently implemented ...