It’s no mystery that a happy employee is a loyal employee. Keeping employees happy, however, can be tricky. Ruth White, practice manager for Women’s Health Alliance, PA (Atrium OBGYN), has been with the physician group since 1980. She recognized early on that she was working for a unique group of leaders, physicians who valued employee input. Her employers maintained an upbeat work environment and she was hooked. She knows firsthand that keeping employees engaged in the business is key to staff morale and productivity.
Armed with a degree in medical secretary science (read: shorthand and dictation), Ruth started with as a secretary and was soon promoted to assistant manager. She stepped aside for three years after the practice merged with another to create a significantly larger group. Although the culture remained pleasant, managing more than 25 staff seemed daunting at that time. When that merger dissolved three years later, and she was asked to return to her former role, she immediately said, “Yes!”
So what has kept her with Atrium OBGYN for nearly 30 years? Ruth says it’s the doctors. “They care about the staff, they’re very generous, attentive, and want to reward employees,” she says. She feels very fortunate to work for highly competent physicians who are “people people,” a combination she says that makes for happy staff and happy patients.
Atrium OBGYN has historically had very low employee turnover. In fact Ruth’s last hire was over three years ago. She credits staff loyalty to both careful selection of talent as well as the attitude of the physicians towards employees. She admits, “I like everybody during the interview,” but goes with her gut when she senses someone is not a good fit for their practice. During the current economic downtown, they have made a conscious to retain staff. Even though routine visit rates dropped (likely due to lost insurance coverage), and pregnancies were being delayed, they made no staffing cuts.
Ruth feels the physicians have set the standard for employee engagement. When planning the new office space, she ensured the entire team participated in the two-day offsite meeting where they utilized value stream mapping (VSM) to create the design that became the outline for their new clinic’s blueprint. Along with achieving very pragmatic goals, the collaboration produced the intangible benefit of team building. Because their buy-in helps ensure a functional and satisfying result, each employee had input on how their desks and work area would be designed. In keeping with being attentive to employee needs, Bikas Building of North Carolina, LLC (dba Clinic Builder), was selected as general contractor for the project. Pete Bikas, owner of Clinic Builder, is known for listening to client needs and ensuring everyone affected is a part of the decision-making process when modifications to a project are made along the way. (In 2000 Bikas Building built out Atrium OBGYN’s current facility.)
Today, employee engagement is apparent as Atrium OBGYN staff members voluntarily drop by the new space being built at 2615 Lake Drive (near Rex Hospital’s campus) to check its progress. When there’s a question about how a particular design element will work, Ruth will “role play” with affected employees to test it. This has resulted in last-minute design changes that, while they potentially could delay the project, have strengthened relationships with the staff.
Ruth feels that by routinely involving staff and giving them credit for their intelligence and input, she’s carrying out a tradition begun by the founding physicians over 30 years ago. And it’s for that tradition that she stays.
*for more information on VSM, see LEAN process, Blog Article #1
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