Analyzing quality of life at work to retain healthcare staff

The medical profession has only recently begun to express its views on working conditions, and the deterioration of the working environment in the wake of health crises has only served to exacerbate staff-related difficulties.

Indeed, the findings are unprecedented. The increase in absenteeism noted by the FHF has risen from an average of 8.5% to 10% in 2019, to a range of 9.5% to 11.5% in 2020. This has repercussions on the desire to pursue a career in the healthcare sector, which is already experiencing recruitment difficulties.

According to the French National Order of Nurses (October 2020), 43% of salaried professionals don't know if they'll still be practicing their profession in 5 years' time. At the same time, 93% of hospitals surveyed by the FHF report recruitment difficulties.

It is therefore necessary to take action to improve the quality of life at work (QWL) in order to retain staff and attract new recruits.

The steps in place

Quality of life in the workplace is part of an approach to improving the quality of care. Managers in health care and medico-social establishments face a dilemma: how can they manage their governance functions, patient demands and the demands of their teams? Health care managers are mobilized by an administrative activity that is out of sync with their actual activities. The need to monitor activity is out of sync with the need to be absent from the field.

It is therefore necessary to use activity monitoring methods to listen to the teams in contact with patients.

With this in mind, since 2016, with the support of the Direction Générale de l'Offre de Soins (DGOS), HAS and Anact have launched a scheme to roll out quality of working life approaches within public and private sector health and medico-social establishments, known as "quality of working life social clusters", as mentioned in this document ⁽¹⁾.

There are many examples, to name but a few: the use of better tools to manage staff, discussions on work organization to understand employee expectations, and internal communication training.

Benefits for healthcare facilities

These numerous full-scale studies demonstrate the success of the QWL improvement experiment. The expected effects are threefold. The first is economic, with improved quality of care and greater patient satisfaction. At the technical level, activity flows more smoothly, and at the social level, team cohesion is strengthened and skills are more highly valued.

Taking the pulse of the workforce

‍Implementingsuch measures involves engaging in a rich dialogue. However, if it involves several hundred or thousands of employees, the process is too time-consuming.

Today, digital applications not only provide employees with a 24-hour means of carrying out certain procedures on all mobile terminals (timekeeping, vacation requests, etc.), consulting internal mobility offers, but also provide a channel for direct expression and, for the HR department, information on the working environment.

Better World tool to improve patient experience

Better World offers various solutions for collecting andanalyzing professionalverbatim for your facility. Since 2017, we've been working in more than 600 healthcare and medico-social establishments, to improve communication between caregivers and administration in order to enhance the quality of working life as well as the patient experience.

So you too can take the time to listen to professionals with Better World, the leader in listening to patient feedback.

⁽¹⁾ HAS report, 2017, La qualité de vie au travail au service de la qualité des soins Retours d'expérience d'établissements engagés dans des clusters sociaux sur la qualité de vie au travail.