Thank you for joining us for Happy Employees Lead to Happy Patients, create a work culture that makes employees want to stay a webinar. A few housekeeping notes to get us started. All attendees are in listen only mode, we will be using the Q&A function today to gather questions for our speaker. We will not be using the raise hand function. Please submit questions through the Q&A and interact with other attendees by posting comments to the chat. When using the chat function, just be sure to select all panelists and attendees from the drop down above the message box before submitting your chat so everyone can see it. This webinar is being recorded. Please know we will be sending all registrants the webinar recorded via email in the next couple of days. Our speakers for today are Kelly Francis, Director of Talent for RaiderAid, Andrea Vidalich, Executive Director at Proline Surgeons, Jason Wilfong, CEO at Monetary Spine and Joint, Lindsey Sullivan, Senior Business Development Manager at Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee, and Ron Orszewski, CEO at Midlands Orthopedic and Neurosurgery. Now I'll turn it over to Kelly to get us started. Kelly, you're on mute. Kelly. Thank you. Sorry about that. Thank you, Juyoung, for getting us started and thank you everyone for joining us today. Healthcare has been negatively impacted by COVID in many ways, especially when it comes to hiring and retaining talent. Many medical professionals have started trading in their scrubs for new careers as a result of feeling unappreciated, underpaid, and because they're getting lured into the potential of working from home. They are certainly no exception to the great resignation or the great reshuffle. Today, we've brought together this group of panelists to talk to you because they have taken great measures to attract, engage, and retain talent, even amidst these challenging times. And they've graciously agreed to share some of their tips with you today so you too can stand apart from the crowd and overcome the healthcare worker shortage. As employers and hiring managers, we often focus on what's in it for us when it comes to finding people with certain skills, knowledge, experience, but we're here to share with you today that it often pays to get creative and think outside the box. My first question is going to be for you, Lindsay. At Bone & Joint, I know your marketing team plays a role in attracting talent. So it would be great if you could kick things off for us and tell us about your approach to generating excitement about work opportunities through your job posts. Well, thank you, Kelly. I appreciate it. Thank you to AAOE and Rater8 for having me on the panel today. But as far as attracting new talent, we do use our marketing department. We have a fabulous team in place. Social media is one of the biggest players for us in that. We do some, about monthly, we do a hiring post, just attracting, trying to attract new talent to come to us. And then we also put some spend dollars, some add dollars on that so we can really target out the area in which we're looking, kind of around our clinic, but then also kind of put a mile radius on it so it shows up, hopefully, in your social media feed. So that's a big piece. And one thing that our current employees have done with that are they've shared it. So then it gets not only people that are following Bone & Joint Institute on social media, they're then sharing it. So then people keep sharing it. And they're actually some of our most popular posts yearly. So we track it. We track it when we report to our marketing committee. And we find often that those are the biggest ones, which is great. And that kind of goes into the word of mouth piece with our employees. We have a great team in place. So people want to work here. So they tell their friends who tell their friends. So it's kind of twofold with that, which is excellent. And then another thing we do, we've established our brand look. And all of our team members at Bone & Joint Institute are branded. So we all have, I don't know if you can see it, we all have branded gear that we wear daily. So not only does that kind of set the look when a patient comes in for the first time, but it gives our staff kind of this community feel like we're all on the same team. We're all wearing this logo. We're all in this together. So, but that's great too, because if you go to the grocery store after work and somebody sees that you work at Bone & Joint Institute, or I can never get through the Costco line without somebody saying something there. So that's great. Number one, is it build brand awareness from the marketing side? Absolutely. But it also helps kind of just, it gets attention from people. And then the last thing we do is we try to participate in as many community events as possible when we're branded, but also any recruiting or talent recruitment fairs, career fairs, things like that. We are affiliated with a hospital, Williamson Medical Center here in Franklin, Tennessee. And so we work collaboratively, we share an HR department. So we're able to work with them to hopefully attract that talent and get great team members in place. I love that. Thank you for sharing. I love, you used the words brand awareness, and we at Raider 8 do something similar. Every time people start, we have new hire announcements on LinkedIn and across our social panels. We have employee spotlights for our existing employees, and we're even starting something new with pet spotlights. So pets are a big part of our culture at Raider 8, and we love to feature our employees pets because they're part of our Raider 8 family. So I think that does really create the brand awareness. It gives people a little peek behind the curtain as to what it's like to work here, and they can start to see themselves on the other side, right? So thank you so much for sharing that. Ron, my next question is for you. I know your practice gets pretty creative with attracting candidates as well. Can you tell us more about how you're making Midlands a better place to recruit people into? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things that we're doing internal, and there's some things that we're doing external. It's just like we maintain the, oh God, I'm just drawing a blank, I'm sorry, I'll just start over. So we're doing two, I'm going to say two things. We're doing employee testimonials, and we're doing videos of our employees, and we're putting them onto our website. So the page on our website that has our job listings, you can go there and you can visit. And our goal is to get four testimonial videos. We've recorded two, and we're in the process of getting them posted. But we feel like it's going to be a nice way for potential employees to kind of make a connection and see like, okay, this person seems happy in their job. Maybe this is a place that I want to work. So we feel like we might be able to make a nice connection with prospective employees by having employee testimonials on the website as well. And then, so the word I was looking for before was reputation. So just like we manage the reputation of our providers, you know, through the internet, we want to do the same thing for our practice. So we've tried to manage our Indeed reputation. So when people, we do a lot of our postings on Indeed. So when people are going to Indeed to look for a position, you know, they're going to be able to do some research about your organization. And we want them to see a good score. You want them to see good reviews. And there's a lot of information in the Indeed profile for your company that you can manage. You know, when I started here about a year ago, we had a 2.8 score, and we've been able to push it up to a 3.8. But there's also a graph below that that shows kind of the graph over time. So in 2018, we were at 2.4. And then in 2022, we're at 4.47. So it kind of shows kind of the recent history of the organization as well. So I would encourage you to, you know, it's hard to go to an employee and say, hey, why don't you go to Indeed? You know, because we don't want our employees to go to Indeed. But you can target specific employees. And that's, I think, why it's taken us so long to go from a 2.8 to a 3.8 is, you know, you target the right employee to go and leave a review for the organization. And a couple of just small things, one, I would just recommend that you have a LinkedIn page for your organization. And then you get a free listing with LinkedIn. So you can take advantage of that free listing. And I concur with what Lindsay had said about social media being a powerful tool. So that's about it. Yes. And I love that you're doing videos. Video is king right now, not just for hiring people, but it's just across the board, a really strong marketing strategy. So it's exciting to hear that you're incorporating video into your, you know, hiring strategy. And then also, I just wanted to add with the deed reviews, you know, at Raider 8, we're all about reputation, but we have been focusing on that as well. And something that Indeed and Glassdoor allow you to do, we focus more on Glassdoor, but you can actually request, you can send out emails to your employees from the platform and ask them to leave reviews. It's anonymous, so whether they do or not, you won't really know who it is that chooses to go and do it. But, you know, every few weeks, I'll just send an email out and ask people, hey, if you're comfortable, go ahead and leave an anonymous review. So there are ways to leverage that tool and solicit that feedback from your employees to start building up that presence and those readings on Indeed and Glassdoor. So thank you so much for sharing that. Andrea, I have a question for you. I know you have been really creative, especially when it comes to being flexible, when it comes to hiring folks and broadening your talent pool. And Proliance, you know, takes a unique approach to this, so I would love for you to tell us more about what you're doing. Yeah, thanks for that question. So first of all, my hiring motto is, I can teach skill, I cannot teach will. So everything that, especially for entry level positions, I really focus on a person's attitude and fit, and whether that's a good fit in our culture. Because if you have a good attitude, I can teach you anything. So for example, for our medical assistants, we hire anything, everyone from EMTs, CNAs, ATCs, anybody for the front, if it's a front desk, if they don't have, you know, reception experience, I will hire people who have barista experience, bartending experience, waitressing. Those are all really highly customer focused positions or experience. So I look for different kinds of experience to see, and those people tend to be really good fits, even if they don't have experience. What I have found is that a lot of times when I hire people who have like the perfect experience and tons of it, they also tend to sometimes be the hardest people to work with, because they tend to be really set in their ways, they know how to do things. And so we try and get really flexible in the type of people that we bring into the position. And again, our interview questions are really heavily focused on attitude, culture and fit. And we coach accordingly. We also have a policy of cross training our staff, especially the clinical staff. So any clinical and front, if the front office person is, it'd be appropriate for them to let's say, learn how to room patients, we'll do that, but especially for our medical assistants coming in, we cross train them both in the front and back office. And that has really helped with getting each group to understand what the other group is doing. So that has all but eliminated any back fighting between our front and back office, because each group understands what the other group is doing. And then we pretty much have coverage, if everybody's kind of cross trained, if somebody calls in sick, we have somebody else maybe in the other department who can cross train and work in that position. This was very helpful during the COVID pandemic, because almost at that time, I had started cross training a lot of people. And so by the time that we had to shut down for the COVID pandemic, I had a team who literally the people that we kept on working could literally work any role in the office. And so essentially, as soon as we had to let some people go home, then the people that stayed on literally could either answer phones or room patients, and it was no problem. So job security for them, and it kept our business going as well. So you hire people for will, and then you teach the skill, not just for the role they were hired, but across the board so that you have that backup plan in place. I love that. Yeah, that's it. And I saw everybody kind of nodding along with you. So especially when you said, when you hire people who already have experience, it's a little bit harder to get them to do things the ProLiance way, right? And everyone here was shaking their heads. So I think we all share that same pain point, it seems. So that's some great insight. Can't teach skill, but can teach will. No, can teach skill, can teach will. Jason, at Monterey Spine and Joint, you found ways to streamline the candidate experience. And I'm a huge advocate for candidate experience, so this is a topic close to my heart. It would just be great if you could share more about what you're doing in your practice. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Well, we're running into kind of two different issues when we're posting for jobs. Either one, we weren't getting enough applicants, or two, we were getting a ton of applicants and trying to weed through all those and set up interviews and schedule phone screenings and those sort of things. So we've got pretty much one person that handles that for our organization, so we started looking at different technologies to kind of help with that. We looked at several different vendors, and there's a bunch out there that all kind of do the same thing. And essentially, what this platform has allowed us to do is we're able to post just through them, and then they send it out to all the different job boards. And they're really helpful as well as they help with keywords, you know, with all these search engines on the different job boards on how do you make sure that when somebody types in medical assistant that you're one of the first ones that does show up. So it really helps with the job description and the keywords on there. But then from there, we're able to actually start texting our candidates, which we have found been really helpful, you know, just like when our schedulers are trying to schedule patients and they're playing phone tag back and forth. We found ourselves doing that a lot, you know, with our candidates trying to set up the interviews and things like that. So we're able to send out a text message to the candidates with a calendar link, and they're able to kind of pick a date and time that works for them. That's linked to our HR Outlook calendar, which allows them to pick whatever time is convenient for them for their schedule. So that's been really helpful on getting candidates in quicker and making it easy to set up the interviews. And then even from the hiring process, once we hire them, being able to do all that through that same platform as well. I love that and it probably keeps you really organized, too, because you can keep people's statuses updated and know who's at what stage in the process at any given time. Yeah, absolutely. It's been great for that. It's also been fantastic for our employee referral program, where all the staff, they have their own kind of links that they can put out on their social medias and things like that. And if somebody clicks on that link and applies, they will automatically get their employee referral bonus through that as well. So it's been really helpful on promoting that as well. The fact that that can be automated is great. I think employee referrals go a long way. It saves you a lot of money from having to pay an agency fee because great people know other great people, right? So when you incent your own people to bring folks into the organization, it's a win win for everyone. And the fact that you've managed to automate that process is really cool. Furthermore, you, similar to Andrea, you have a flexible approach to ensuring people can thrive once you hire them, even if their skills aren't necessarily a perfect fit. Can you share more about that? Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of back to what Andrea was talking about, is we're just trying to hire the people who will fit within the organization, you know, and sometimes you'll get somebody who's on the right bus, but on the wrong seat. So, you know, I have this kind of motto of, you know, the things I look for an employee is show up to work, but stay home when you're sick, help our patients, but take care of yourself, be willing to assist others, but carry your own weight. And pretty much if you can do those things, we'll find a seat for you here within the organization from what we found. So, you know, when we've had people in certain roles who maybe didn't excel, you know, we looked at, OK, well, they're generally good people and they're doing, you know, they're trying. So what are they excelling at or what are the areas that are strong suits? And then we just have kind of open conversations as we coach and counsel them saying, you know what, we know you're trying, just looks like this isn't the right position. So we want to try you over here. And we've had, you know, really good success with taking people and changing their positions and watching them succeed, which has really helped retain some good employees. And they're usually very grateful because they know when they're not succeeding at their job and you get them in another position that they are exceeding and you can just see how much happier they are as well. Yes, leveraging people's strengths, it it helps them to feel fulfilled and valued, and then you still gain from having them there. Right. We do. We try to do that at rate or eight whenever possible as well. And it has worked out for us on more than one occasion as we have been scaling rapidly. Sometimes we leverage people across apartments or move them. So I love that you're doing that and it seems to be a common theme. So thank you so much for shedding some light on that for us. So we see clearly that attracting talent is really crucial, but onboarding people once they have accepted the job offer is equally important. So I would love to talk more about best practices that have been successful for some of you when it comes to actually setting up new hires for success once they've accepted an offer. So, Andrea, if you could tell us a little bit more about the protocols, that you've put in place with your onboarding process. Yes, I have another model for this one, and it's called if it's not documented, it doesn't exist. And so for my team tonight, we've developed a checklist or some sort of documentation protocol for almost everything onboarding, training, retraining, coaching, recoaching, termination, off boarding, every step of the way and every step of the way the employee is involved in that process. So it's not done in a vacuum behind a door. It's out in full transparency with the employee of where they are in the onboarding process, where they are in the training process. So they can see exactly where they've come and then where they're going to. We also have policies, protocols and work instructions for almost every single process. And my secret is, is that I tricked, in a good way, I tricked my employees into writing almost all of them. So they are the ones actually doing the work. So it would be kind of silly for me to come in at a 30,000 foot level and try to pretend I know every single step of each process. So what I'll do is I'll figure out a way to get them to write it. And then what I will do is I'll be the guinea pig. So once they write a protocol, then if I'm the one who can follow the process and fully, completely check in a patient without making mistakes or scheduled patient, then we know the protocol is good because I'm also not doing that process every day so that if I can do it, then we know somebody who's brand new coming in could also do that. Let's see, we also for an example, our MA rooming protocol was probably my most famous one where I literally gathered a bunch of my medical assistants in a room at Pacific Rim. And I said, how do you room a patient? You talk, I'll type. So they told me all the steps and I'm a really good typer. so I just sat there and typed and then if we have any sort of issues in the future, you know, or somebody says, Well, I didn't know I was supposed to do that part of the process, I can say, Well, that's interesting, because you wrote the protocol. So it really helps with coaching to a most, the most recent one that I did was, we are having some issues with our physician assistant scheduling. And you know, not every doc uses their physician in the same way. And so I gathered all of my physicians and my physician assistants in a room together. And I said, Okay, what are the expectations for how we schedule our PAs to do for what work? And so we got all the docs and all the PAs, again, you talk, I'll type, we got all of them to agree, this is when they should be scheduled, this is who they should be scheduled with. So then when the doctor or PA says, you know, I didn't know x, I can say flag on the field, you wrote it. Oh, and by the way, that one was actually your idea. So it has really helped me with accountability in getting them to do the, you know, them to do the thinking, me to do the typing, and I'm a really good typist. So so the documentation is definitely the key. I love that it creates the accountability, it gets people's buy in both the existing employees and the folks coming in. So the buy in is also really important to us, since they're writing it, then they're the ones buying into it for sure. Yes. And actually, speaking of buy in, Lindsay, I know you love focusing on getting people's buy in from day one. And you do something kind of fun, at least I think it's fun, because you have a phrase that you use for your onboarding process, but I won't steal your thunder. I'll let you tell us all about it. Well, one thing that we do as much as I mean, we're all in the same boat that once once you get a new team member, and you want them to kind of be good to go from day one and but we really had to kind of take a step back and not throw those new team members in like into the fire the first day. We kind of protect that first day and we have what's called an around the world tour. Our building is rather large, which is which is fortunate but also on the flip side, people were spread out and we have here in our main office about 200 employees. So there's there may not be a time if we throw somebody onto the front desk, their very first day, they may not meet anybody in the rest of the in the rest of the office. So our around the world tour takes the new team members and whether it's one or four that start that day, it's Tuesdays for us, our new hire days. And we really just show them what each department does, we give them a voting tour. And it's kind of has a multi multi level to it as far as the benefits. Number one, they can learn the building and learn where if they don't even if they don't know a person that sits in that chair, they know, hey, if I need work comp, I go here. Hey, if I need medical records, I go here. Oh, you know what our physiatry suite is upstairs. That's what I need. So it kind of gives them a little bit around the building. But then we have them sit with not only members of of our leadership team that are over each department, we have them sit in the chair beside our, our work comp team, and our medical records team, our tests and surgery scheduling team. So they can number one, get to know get to know people see that familiar face in the hallway. But also, because everyone in this office has a from the CEO, all the way down the line, everyone is a particular puzzle piece. And we can't do, we can't have the main the puzzle be complete without each individual piece. And so you learn how how your piece fits within the organization. And you can also see that a new ma that we bring in, if you don't do your documentation, that affects downstream that affects the billing department, it affect it could affect the physician visit if documentation isn't there. But also on the flip side, it shows, well, you know what the call center, you may not see them, but all the information that you need to do that visit is, excuse me, complete and in the line when they check in at the front desk, everything is complete and in line. So like I said, it's not only how your job affects downstream, but it's how everybody else in the office affects your role there. It's not, we're all against break, we break silos down everyone is, everyone is a part of the family. We call it our BJIT family. And like I said, we like to get that buy in and talk about the practice and our culture. And then the roles of everyone along the way, like I said, and how you kind of fit into fit into that piece, or excuse me, fit into that puzzle. Another thing we do is we send out a daily clinic update with kind of everything who's off who's covering for who, but we start on day one to be like, welcome, Lindsey Sullivan, a new team member so that somebody can see if we know on Tuesday, they're coming through, you can you can wave and have a name to face when you meet them for the first time. So we just want our new team members to feel as welcome as possible. They may not know everyone's name by the end of day one, they may not even know their name by the end of day one. But we really just want we want them to feel like they're part of the family and they have a purpose here from that first day. It's so great that everyone takes the time to get to know the new person and you know, across departments, there's so many times people start and they only meet and interact with the people in their department on their team. But all the departments do work together to make the whole practice go around, right. And it's important that people feel like they're part of the greater company and that they're aware of who everyone is. So it's exciting to know that you do that. And Jason, I know you are big on meeting people and making sure that the new folks get to meet everyone as well. But you take a unique approach to onboarding folks that I would love for you to touch on. And particularly when it comes to their first week in month, you do something that not a lot of people in this space do that I think is going to be exciting for you to share with us. So I'll let you take that. Absolutely. The first thing that we've kind of started doing recently is, you know, we have a lot of paperwork that needs to get filled out. We have a lot of online training that's required, especially being in California. And so we found that, you know, as we were hiring people that they were spending, you know, multiple days kind of filling out paperwork during online trainings where they're just kind of sitting in a in a closet essentially somewhere trying to do all that. So what we've started at least from the very beginning is kind of leveraging our technology in and allowing new hires to do this from home. We know, you know, how many hours of training that they have to do. And so kind of what we do is just tell them, all right, here's your training, here's your all your paperwork. We send it to them electronically and allow them to do all that ahead of time. That's actually been really helpful, especially as we've hired people that are putting in their notice at other places that they're able to complete everything ahead of time so that, you know, that first day when they walk into the door, they're ready to start their, you know, actual real world training, which has been great. And then kind of, you know, we have a pretty lengthy training program, which, you know, usually two to four weeks depending on the position. And then at the end of that 30 day period, myself and our chief of human resources sit down with all of our new hires. You know, we like to touch base with them at that point and really kind of find out what's really gone well during their first 30 days and what hasn't gone so well in their first 30 days. You know, while it's still fresh in their mind, you know, we've revamped our onboarding process multiple times based off of kind of some of the feedback that we get from different departments and different processes, which has really kind of helped as new people have come on for them to really feel comfortable and kind of talking about earlier, it's not throwing people into the fire and making sure that they're getting through. We found the areas where staff have said, you know what, I spent a whole lot of time learning this, but not enough time doing that. So we've been able to kind of shift our, our workbooks and our training protocols to match the employee feedback. Wow, it's, it's wonderful. Kudos to you for a finding opportunities to allow people to work from home, you know, to do their training. That's something that, you know, it's a lot of the reasons why people are leaving this industry, right? Because they want to work from home. So finding ways where, Hey, if this part of your job can be done from home a few hours a week, or in the initial training period, the fact that you're carving out that opportunity is wonderful. And then for you and the chief HR officer to actually sit directly with the person, I'm sure makes them feel super valued and connected. So thank you for sharing that. Ron, you also like to meet with the employees in your office, very similar to what Jason was sharing. So if you can share more about your employee meetings, you take a little bit of a different approach. And so I would love to have you share with us more about that. Okay. So we basically acknowledge that we have communication and staff appreciation problems throughout the organization. I think if any of us asked our staff, do we communicate well, no matter how well we do, they're going to say, well, they want us to do better. And we can probably do better. Same thing with appreciation. So Raider 8 was able to do a pulse survey for our organization. I can tell you a little bit more about that maybe later. But we learned that communication and staff appreciation were two significant issues. So soon after I started here, we had started to do these kind of town hall meetings. So I would go to each of our, we have four locations and I would go to three of the four locations and meet with the staff on a monthly basis. And, you know, there was some trepidation from some folks who were worried about just being a complaint session. You know, if you get the staff together, everybody's just going to complain. So I would think, I would say the exact opposite actually happened with these town hall meetings. You know, it provided me the opportunity to have one-on-one conversations with folks and just tell them, you know, this is what's happening in the practice. You know, we're going to be getting a new MRI and this is how we're, this is the plan. And, you know, it was a great means of communicating directly to the staff, but also the staff came not with complaints, but with solutions and ideas. So I left, I've left probably 90, 95% of our town hall meetings inspired by the staff. So it's been a, it's been a great gift to, to participate in those. And I think the staff has felt better communicated with. The other thing that we've done, and this was in response to the pulse survey that we did with Raterate for our, for our staff, is, was that we, we started these call to action committee meetings. So they happen for, initially they happen every two weeks and they've started to spread out a little bit as we've kind of gained some momentum. And basically everybody's invited to the meeting and very often they're, you can attend them remotely. And what we've learned through this, the process of surveying our staff and the process of meeting with them and in the call to action is that sometimes people did, it wasn't, the problem wasn't that they didn't feel appreciated by their managers. Sometimes that was the case, but they didn't necessarily feel appreciated along the lateral part of the organization. So different parts of the organization, there were barriers between them and people weren't working together as good as they could have. And that impacted how much they like their job and their job satisfaction. So, you know, we've developed a job shadowing program. So you go, you basically take an hour or two and you go and you sit with somebody else and you observe them doing their job. And it breaks that barrier down a little bit. You can understand some of the barriers they're facing when they're, they're trying to get everything done the best they can. But the job shadowing I think has been helpful and it's still in process. You know, it's still something we've only had probably a handful of people shadowing and then we ask them to share the experience in our kind of company newsletter and or, or at the call to action committee to say, hey, this, I, I, I job shadowed and this is what I learned about the people that I work with. So those barriers are starting to come down a little bit and it's making people more comfortable to call other areas of the organization to ask for help or to report, report things. And then in terms of appreciation, you know, we've, we've, we've tried to be creative, you know, we've, we've started to give anniversary notes to folks that the senior leadership team all sign with little notes, congratulating people on their work anniversary, anniversary and like tomorrow morning at 7am the senior leadership team and myself, we're going to meet at one of our offices and we're just going to cook them pancakes. So it's kind of like a breakfast cook, a cookout. So we've got this flat grill that we've invested in and we're just, you know, we just go and flip burgers, burgers for lunch or pancakes for breakfast at, at, at the different locations. So that's been helpful. And our, our CFO has actually got into the mix as well. So our CFO is doing a CFO corner. So, you know, he's very well-versed in financials and sometimes our staff aren't. So he does a, it's probably about a quarterly, we call it a CFO corner where the staff is invited to come at lunch or at the end of the day, and they could just learn about how to manage their personal finances. So we're, you know, we're just trying to build skill levels and make people feel. Oh, I think we're on each other. Oh, there it is. Okay. And it's really helpful. And just one other thing, it's a committee, actually community, community cares committee, and they coordinate food drives, school supply drives, pet supply drives. And we have had really incredible success just getting people together, doing things for other people, which is in a way a distraction from work, but it, it it's building a team environment that we're, that is really fun. Yeah. Collaboration is critical right from the start. And also people want to be heard. And it sounds like you're accomplishing that with your CTA call to action meetings and your town halls. Thank you for sharing that. I want to stay with you, Ron, for another minute real quick, because when it comes to hiring, we're talking about different things we can do to attract talent, but there's an elephant in the room, right? Which is compensation. It plays a big factor as well. And I know some of you have done market rate adjustments. I want to be mindful of time because we still have some other things to get through here, but if you could tell us quickly, Ron, what you did when it comes to salaries, because I think you did some type of adjustment, if you could just tell us more about that. Sure. We're in a very competitive environment. You know, there's a lot of hospital systems around us and hospitals, frankly, can afford to lose money sometimes, you know, so they can pay people more and then maybe do a big layoff later down the road. But, you know, we found ourselves in a position of not being sure how we matched up to everybody else in terms of compensation. So we paid a little extra to ADP to get their ADP analytics. And we were members with the ortho form. You get some benchmark data with regards to salary and compensation. So what we did is we took each individual staff member in the organization and we went through and compared their individual salary to the benchmark based on their tenure in the organization. And then we had these group meetings where myself, our CFO, our HR director, and then the senior leader that oversees that individual employee, we would go over each person and compare them to the benchmarks and make a decision on where they needed to be moved. So I think we adjusted about 85% of the people in the organization so that we felt like they were where they should be. And then we actually did a mailing to each of the employees and basically said, here's your new compensation, your base compensation, but then here are all the other bullets that we contribute to you in terms of benefits. So it gave a bottom line to their full and complete compensation package so that they could understand that what they get paid is more than their hourly salary. That's wonderful that you were able to do that type of market rate adjustment. Lindsay, I know you've done something similar. And Andrea, you reminded us that it goes way beyond pay, right? It's about having a check-in process, getting people to buy into what you're doing and into the culture. So having subject matter experts help you to write those documents, right? And even here at Raider 8, we've learned there's attracting and hiring folks. It's only half of the battle. Keeping them is equally crucial. So in this competitive landscape, what can you do once you get them in the door and then you train them to get them to stay? So I want to transition a little bit and talk about retention and engagement. And I know all of you are doing a wonderful job creating work environments that make people want to stay. So, Ron, I know you have a saying on this that I love that I'll let you share quickly before we jump into our next question. But if you can talk about your saying about happy people and the meaning behind it. Without stealing your thunder, sorry. I think that we take the, I call it a three pillar approach, right? So there's, we put a lot of attention on patient satisfaction, but there's two other pillars that I think are really important. And it's, you know, you've got to have employee satisfaction. You also have to have provider satisfaction. So if you're paying attention, you've got your eye on the ball of all three of those things, then you're going to have happy employees and you're going to have happy employees and you're going to have happy providers. And what happens when you have happy employees and happy providers is that you have happy patients. So I think that, you know, you really have to focus on all three to be successful. Yes. Happy people, happy patients. That's great. That's great. And then, you know, you mentioned earlier the engagement or pulse survey that Rater8 did for you. And we also did an engagement survey recently and we were really fortunate. We got certified as a great place to work. So congratulations to us. But there was some tough stuff that we had to digest from that too, right? That we have, you know, you have to be open to the feedback and it takes a lot of courage and you were courageous enough, Ron, in your practice to do that. Were there any key findings that led you to focus on engagement from doing that survey? I would say absolutely. So the pulse survey with Rater8 was really interesting. So it was, I think, six questions. It was kind of like, do you feel appreciated? Do your staff members help each other? Are coworkers friendly? Does communication meet your expectation? Means management team cares about their employees. What would you change about the organization? So they're all kind of five star scores and we're able to narrow it down by the look, like the department that the employee worked in. So we're able to get a snapshot and say, okay, we're doing really well in this area, right? But we're not doing so well. And where we weren't doing well was with our clinical staff. Our clinical staff was, you know, hitting the ground running and they just didn't get a break and they weren't getting their lunch breaks all the time. So there's still work for us to do on that, but it helped us focus on the needs of the different employees in the organization. And so it was an anonymous survey, other than us knowing and it being able to group by department, it was anonymous and it was really helpful. And it's a survey that we intend to do every six months is kind of the plan. Like every six months we'll send out the same survey and we'll, the call to action committee will come together and we'll address issues and just try to resolve them. Do a pulse check. That's right. Checking the pulse. Great idea. Jason, you believe in investing in your staff and there's some neat things that you do to accomplish this. So I'm going to turn it over to you to tell us a little bit more about some of your strategy. Yeah, absolutely. We've tried to do a lot of different things. You know, one thing that we started kind of early on, you know, there wasn't a lot of buy-in at that time from physicians to throw a lot of money at these types of programs. So we kind of had to start pretty small and we started with just kind of our Bravo cards here where it's a little card that they take and the managers will fill out any time that we hear or see somebody doing a good thing, and I'll kind of sign and give it to the employee. And then what we also wanted to do was, you know, let staff recognize each other, because, you know, as much as they may like hearing a thank you from me, you know, this means, you know, potentially more, you know, if the person sitting to the left or right of them can formally thank them. So, we created our peer-to-peer Bravo cards as well, and they're kind of on a little ticket that tears off. So, once a staff gives one to another staff, that member cares to take it off, they drop it into a bucket, and then when we do our quarterly staff meetings, those all go into drawings for prizes that we give away. So, staff have really liked that, and it's been really great to kind of see, you know, the cross departments, too, of some, you know, somebody from physical therapy thanking somebody from x-ray. And to that, and saying, well, how did those two even cross paths? They're not even in the same building, and then you find out, you know, that they kind of went out of their way to help, you know, move a patient or something like that. So, you know, I think that's been really great. And then, you know, we've done, we bring on new team members, have kind of a first-day lunch with their team, so that they get to know each other a little bit. And then, you know, some of the bigger things that we've invested in was, you know, bringing in food trucks on days for appreciation lunches, doing summer barbecues where all the staff can bring their families and kids, and we have games and music and bounce houses and things like that. And then, we also kind of do our winter company event, where it's usually a more formal place, where everybody kind of gets to get dressed up and go out for a nice, you know, drinks and dinner. So, you know, we looked at a bunch of different ways to really get staff interacting, not just day-to-day on patient care, on how can we get them to interact more in a social setting. You know, as you get to know each other more on a personal level, you're going to be much more likely to be willing to help those around you. Yeah, there are some common themes here, fostering inter-department relationships, you know, with colleagues from different departments. I'm hearing food, we know people love food, it brings people together. And going beyond the office, that seems to be, you know, I love that your practice is doing that, Jason. And Andrea, speaking of engaging outside of the office, you're big on that, too. So, I would love you to tell us about your approach to parties beyond the four walls. Yes, I'm an extrovert, so this is my favorite topic. So, we do a lot of the same stuff that Jason was talking about. You know, we call ours the Catch Someone Doing Something Good campaign, so where they can kind of call out their employees. Lots of food, snacks, my docs are pretty young, so they'd also say beer. So, all those things help. A couple of things, one thing I do want to say inside the office that has really helped is having a jeans day. You'd be shocked at how many people just want to wear jeans to work. And as soon as we implemented that, and our requirement is that you, A, during football season, you can wear your favorite sports jersey with your jeans. Or you wear your Pacific Rim, we've got a bunch of gear. And so, if you wear jeans, you have to wear a top, one of our tops. So, whether it's a t-shirt or a jacket that has our logo on it. And I have to say, sometimes we actually look better on a casual day than we do on our non-casual days when everybody's all dressed up in the same colors, and they all look good. But yeah, in terms of party planning, so one of my undergraduate degrees was in public or in communication, so we did a whole lot of public speaking. And the number one tenet of public speaking is know your audience. So, you know, making sure that when you're organizing events outside, that you actually know what your employees want to do. I heard about this one administrator who, she was a boomer, and she arranged this, like, fancy sit-down dinner for all of her Gen X and millennial employees, and everyone was ticked. So, you know, having, like, making sure you know your audience and what your people want, and the key there is to ask them. So, the things that we have done that have been really popular is parties that have an organizing activity. So, whether it's, we went bowling, we've gone, we've done a murder mystery party, we've done miniature golf, so we have an organizing, or if we go to a brewery, we monopolize the bocce ball court. You know, just having something for people to do so they're not having to sit around and be awkward and try and make conversations with people that they don't maybe quite know yet. But if you have an organizing activity, then they get engaged, and then they start getting talking, and then they start getting to know each other. So, those have, having an organizing activity in the outside events have really helped increase the engagement and the friendships too. Yes, and I love that you're mindful of the multi-generational workforce because we are in a unique time in that we have four generations working right now, right? That's never really happened in history, and it's going to be like this for a while as there are still boomers working, and now you have Gen Z coming in, and then X and Millennials are sandwiched in the middle. So, finding things that, you know, satisfy everybody and kind of go across the generational gap. So, I'm glad that you pointed that out. Lindsey, your practice loves hosting gatherings outside of the office as well. So, sticking with that theme, I would love if you could share more about some of your best practices because you really like to build a sense of community with your employees. Yeah, so we call ourselves the BJIT family. So, BJIT is just Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee. It's much, much smaller to say there. So, we say that we are a BJIT family, and I will kind of echo what Andrea was saying with, before I kind of go into the outings, is Jeans Day is amazing, and during our, I meant to say during our kind of around the world tour, one thing that we do is we give every new team member a Bone and Joint t-shirt. So, it's with the amount that we buy them in, we get for five or six bucks, you have somebody that kind of has ownership or kind of that stake for that Bone and Joint. So, football season sometimes we kind of veer off and do that, but every Friday, if you wear your jeans, you can wear your Bone and Joint t-shirt or some type of gear along the way. So, that kind of really kind of brings that community in. But as far as kind of our BJIT family, like we spend sometimes more time with each other here in the office than we get to do our own families. So, it's really important for us to have that sense of family and sense of together. So, when we came, we did have to furlough during COVID, and when we came back, one of my colleagues said, you know what, I want to have a parking lot party. And we really didn't have an idea of kind of what that looked like, but we knew we couldn't gather in the building together because we couldn't all be 200 strong in the building. So, in our parking lot, we had a parking lot party, which then turned into a quarterly, what we call a BJIT bash. And some people may say, well, it's going to cost a ton of money. We can't do it. We don't have the budget for that. So, we've been all over the map with our BJIT bashes. We've been on campus and have brought in a food truck, but we also had a chili cook-off one day. So, the members of our leadership team all made a big pot of chili. And so, the clinic just supplied like the tortilla chips or Fritos and sour cream and kind of whatever, depending on what part of the country you're from, what you put on your chili. So, that, like I said, for about $100, we were able to have a BJIT bash, and we brought in our cornhole boards and kind of all the yard games and just kind of had a great time. And we've also done scavenger hunts in the office. So, it's been a great time, especially for some of our newer team members to learn different parts of the building, because we had them everywhere, like down in materials management, up in physiatry. Kind of, we had to find a, you had to find a doctor that had these kind of socks on. So, I mean, selfies all over the building, inside and out. So, and that cost us zero, except if you count the paper and the ink for that. And we did give out some kind of small gift cards along the way, but it was really just a great time to get everyone in. And then we've gone off campus as well. We've gone to a minor league baseball team, baseball game with our families, because that's important to not only have our BJIT family, but have our actual families kind of interacting with one another. And then we've gone to a winery. So, again, you can bring your kids. It's kind of a very family-friendly winery. So, just things like that to really kind of build that bond with everyone. And to kind of echo, again, what Andrea and Jason said about kind of the comment cards, we started a private Facebook group where you don't have to be friends with everyone on Facebook, but you can be part of our group, and it's called We Greater Than Me. So, it's basically the team and the we sometimes has to overpower the me and what was comfortable and what's good for me. So, we were able to, with this private Facebook group, to have our staff and have our team give shout-outs to one another, our satellite clinics included, our rehab, everyone kind of together where we can see, as a team, kind of those small moments, those, hey, someone changed a tire in the parking lot for me, or someone helped me. They could have gone home, but they helped me room patients to some of the bigger stuff, like, hey, this person really, really stepped in when I was having a hard time, both in the office and out of the office. So, it's really just kind of a feed, like, you see it on your feed and can really just pick it up. Again, it's all online. It's all on social media. And then at the end of every month, we take the nominator and the nominee, and so, we really kind of encourage people to lift up your peers, but each of those team members get Rockstar parking spaces right outside the employee entrance. And our parking lot is huge. I feel like I park, like, a mile away every morning. So, it's great to get in one of those two spots, and it's all peer-driven. We don't, our leadership team, we don't say, you know what? Nope, this one's best. It's all, hey, who has the most comments and likes and reactions to it? So, it's really a fun thing that I get to send out the first of every month for the previous month, and it kind of just, again, brings that sense of community together. That's really fun. It sounds like you're all proof that it is possible to create an engaging environment where people will want to stay and work, even though they have to be in person in a time where most employers are starting to offer remote work. And I'm really grateful to hear all of these suggestions. I'm sure everyone watching and listening is excited as well. And it's inspiring to see that, as medical practice experts and professionals, you're stepping up to the plate, you're thinking outside of the box. And when it comes to hiring talent and making people feel valued, you're making places where people want to stay instead of joining the great resignation, right? Because we don't want them doing that. We want to feed them and make them excited and let them wear jeans on Friday or work from home to do their training. So, I'm just so grateful to each of you for giving us a peek behind the curtain, so to speak, today, right, and letting us into your practice a little bit so that hopefully we can go and deploy some of those same strategies or at least be inspired to think of some things that, you know, we can do to also alleviate some of these pain points with the talent market. Before we jump into Q&A, I know we're coming to the top of the hour here, but I just want to mention that Raider 8 will be sending a follow-up email tomorrow for everyone that was registered for this webinar on how you can do a Pulse survey in your practice for free if you're interested. So, similar to what Ron was mentioning, just to kind of get a feel of what folks are feeling and how engaged they are or if they're not engaged and where you might have opportunities. So, keep an eye on your email. More details to come tomorrow to your inbox. And thank you for registering to be here today. And at this time, I would like to open up the stage for any questions that our attendees might have for this wonderful group of panelists. And I do see one question that was coming in quite a bit, which I'll just jump in and address that because it came in earlier when Jason was talking about the applicant tracking system that he uses in his practice and that he automates employee referrals through there so that people can refer and then get paid for referring other folks. The best thing to do, there are so many applicant tracking systems, so I really encourage you to go to either Capterra or G2 and do some searching because you can compare and contrast. There are so many systems, and for us to just name one would do you an injustice because depending on what your specific needs are, the size of your practice and things like that, there's different options for different needs. And so you can go and type in applicant tracking system in either of those platforms and be able to do some side-by-side comparisons and determine which applicant tracking system would be the best for your budget and your size and your needs in your practice. Jooyoung, do you see any other questions coming in for our panelists? Yeah, there's a few that's coming in right now. So one of the questions besides Jason's was, who is a part of the Call to Action team? I think that's to me. Our Call to Action committee is open to anybody who wants to attend. So we've actually had, the last time we had two physicians actually attended, so I was very excited about that. So it's open to anybody. Okay, and then our next question that came in was, when new hires are asked to do their paperwork and or online training at home, are they paid for that time? I think it depends on what it is. If they're filling out their W-4s and whatnot, that's generally not paid time. But if they're training, then that generally is paid time because at that point, they've generally started. So then that would be, you know, you want to make sure that you're in, you're not in violation of labor laws there. So I think it just depends on what it is that they're doing. And what we do is we just kind of pay set hours. So, you know, if we know that we're assigning somebody, you know, online trainings that are going to take 10 hours, we just kind of add a little bit to that. And we just send it all to them at one time and just kind of pay them part of that way. So essentially, yes, that they are getting trained or getting paid for the training and filling out the paperwork. But we know that filling out the paperwork is going to take a very short amount of time. And the majority of that's all going to be doing their online training. The next question is someone's asking for recommendations for Xero applicants. Probably need to edit your job posting or re-evaluate the role. I mean, if it's something that nobody's interested, then you might need to re-evaluate what you're looking for. And maybe what you're looking for is reasonable, but you actually might need to do some self-evaluation of what it is that you're looking for and say, you know, are we looking for something that's reasonable right now? Is there some way that we can sweeten this deal? Is there some way that we can sweeten this deal? And I think that's probably and I've been in that situation where that's happened. And so we've we've just had to we just ended up tweaking things. And then sometimes you just need it and sometimes you just have to wait. Another thing is to make sure that you're marketing it. It's what your marketing department should be concentrating on your hiring process. And whether that is social media or in person, making sure you're doing kind of the all the online, so the Indeeds and Glassdoor and things like that. But just making sure that you're just not throwing it one way and on one platform. You have to be very diversified with how you do it. And then also urge your employees to do that. If you don't already have like a referral program in place, that even if you don't have a software for that, even if you have it on the application, put my name is referring you. That gives your employees a little bit of a little bit of encouragement to spread that as well. So making sure the job description is correct is very important, but also making sure it's going out to reaching reaching the right people is very important to. I think looking at the job title and job description, where is it too specific? So we've talked a little bit about hire the right person and train them. So kind of put it in there. What are the minimum requirements that you really need this person to be able to do? It's different if it's a licensed position. They have to have certain certifications. But, you know, for, you know, a lot of our positions, we've changed job titles because we didn't weren't necessarily getting the candidates or something more general kind of loosened up from the requirements and experience just to get candidates in the door and figure out, OK, is this person trainable? And I just want to add, think like a candidate. So think if you were looking for that job, what keywords would you put in the search? You know, to find that and then use those words in your job description. Great question. So our next one is if it's based on a number of likes, comments or recognition, do you find that giving a employee of the month style perk to your employees while encouraging can also discourage people who are less popular or favorable in the workplace? I don't think so. We and that's one thing with with building your culture, you kind of build up the entire the entire team. We haven't run into that. We've we've had people from all team members from all different departments do that. So it doesn't really turn into a popularity contest because the way we've kind of structured things with within our organization is to to have everyone knowing that they have that important they're that important piece of the puzzle. So haven't we haven't really found found that to be. And I mean, hopefully, hopefully we don't. But I feel like we've gotten some great we've gotten some great recognition in the most of unexpected places as well. Even even new team members have been have been recognized. And so that's kind of goes back to that importance from starting that culture on on day one. And I would add one transparency helps with that. So our catch someone doing good campaign. We literally post all those in. So we almost have like an entire wall wallpapered in our break room for all those things. So seeing having everybody see that everybody else is doing it kind of that everybody drinks the Kool-Aid. And then, too, if I were to ever get a complaint about somebody saying, like, I don't ever get recognized. I think the thing I would say is gratitude begets gratitude. So why don't you give a shout out? And then maybe, you know, that will help encourage you to start reaching out and also wanting to participate in it yourself. So it's not just about receiving, but it's also about giving. And that's one thing, too. That's why we have the nominator get get the recognition as well, because to your point, Andrea, it's it's also you want to lift your teammates up. So it's not just the same person getting nominated every month. It's it's it's twofold there. So you want to want to build it from both sides. Can I just throw out one shout out to the Pulse survey. If other people do it, then I can benchmark my organization to other people. So that would be really powerful. Yeah, you stand alone right now, right? I'm alone. We're the top. I'm sure we'll get more people to join the ranks soon. Well, I don't see any more questions popping up. OK. I think we'll just conclude, right? Unless anyone else has any more questions. No, thank you all again. It was really great and very insightful. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. I'll go ahead. Thank you so much to our panelists for hosting this presentation today. And thank you all to our attendees for joining us. Thank you again. And have a great rest of your day. Bye.

positive work culture

healthcare industry

employee retention

COVID-19 challenges

recruiting strategies

employee testimonials

onboarding

employee engagement

staff appreciation

retention rates