The Right Technology Can Help You Retain & Energize Your Staff

Learn what to look for when searching for your team’s ideal software solutions.

Employee retention and engagement are more critical than ever. One of the best ways to support and empower your staff is with the right technology solutions. It might sound severe, but the software you select can mean the difference between a productive, committed team and frustrated people who are on their way out the door.

Recent Surveys Highlight Employee Needs

While it’s important to understand which tools employees need on a daily basis, many employers fail to do so. A number of recent surveys and reports reveal how common it is for employers to miss the mark in adopting software aimed at empowering their workforce, negatively impacting employee job satisfaction. In PwC’s 2018 Consumer Intelligence Series report, “Our Status with Tech at Work: It’s Complicated,” 90 percent of executives said they based decisions about what technology to purchase on the needs of their workforce. However, 47 percent of their workers disagreed.

In that same report, while a third of employees said digital skills are key to their career advancement, they questioned whether the technology they use on the job would actually help them reach their goals. What’s more, three-quarters of respondents said that disjointed technology complicates their collaboration with colleagues, impedes their productivity, and makes them unhappy at work.

The vast majority (92 percent) said that a seamless platform would enable them to connect and communicate easily and quickly with their coworkers and clients, considerably improving their job satisfaction.

The Nuanced Relationship Between Technology & Your Team

Your employees don’t just use technology – they have a relationship with it. They want to use it to maximize their productivity. They want it to help enhance their skills, improve their decision-making, enable effective communication, and minimize the potential for errors. Workplace technology, especially your EHR platform, must be chosen with these priorities in mind.

For these reasons, many long-term care teams that use GEHRIMED, Netsmart’s Geriatric EHR platform, have experienced both business success and solid staff retention. 

Designed by such clinicians and their team members, it naturally caters to their specific needs. Below are four specific components of GEHRIMED that help long-term care teams work better together.

GEHRIMED is Intuitive

Kenneth Kubitschek, MD, FACP, CMD, and CEO of Carolina Internal Medicine Associates, said, “I can take anyone, and within 30 minutes, they can complete a patient encounter with GEHRIMED because it follows the rules of how we learn medicine and how we organize information.” Your EHR and other technology needs to be intuitive enough that anyone can learn it quickly and use it immediately.

GEHRIMED Aligns With User Workflows

Long-term/post-acute care practitioners use different workflows than office physicians, so they need software that supports this distinction and avoids extra workarounds and data entry. Frank Newlands, MD, the president and CEO of Physician Services in North Carolina, said, “The EHR has to mimic the workflow of how you would chart on a daily basis.” GEHRIMED has customizable templates that users can adapt to the way they work.

GEHRIMED Integrates Voice and Touch.

Dr. Kubitschek said teams can be much more efficient if the technology they use integrates these two elements well. For instance, they can easily access previously entered information whenever necessary.

GEHRIMED  Enables Real-Time Data Sharing.

“This element is 100 percent essential for an EHR,” said Dr. Newlands. “Notes and other documentation are available to read in real time in GEHRIMED, enabling true continuity of care.”

Additionally, long-term software solutions used teamwide need to cater to users of all ages, and Dr. Newlands reported that GEHRIMED fits that bill, too. “Older practitioners like how user-friendly it is and how it enables us to keep them in the game longer,” he said. At the same time, younger team members love how intuitive and flexible it is, especially when it comes to its mobile capabilities.

Forging Ahead with the Right Technology

Beyond retaining current employees with help from the appropriate tools, Dr. Kubitschek reported that job prospects often ask about the technology the team uses during their interviews. These newcomers want to know that the company they might join is using cutting-edge technology that is intuitive, user-friendly, and reliable.

“If your technology forces people to spend their nights and weekends charting, this is going to take its toll,” said Dr. Kubitschek. “You’re going to lose good practitioners and other team members. But if you have a good EHR and other tech tools, you’re going to be way ahead in the hiring and retention game.”

The right technology can not only help you retain and engage staff, but also give your leaders the time and space they need to be innovative and grow your organization. According to Dr. Newlands, “The EHR is just one spoke of the wheel of running a business. I couldn’t grow my company if I had to worry about that one ‘spoke’ on a daily basis. GEHRIMED frees me to work on other aspects of the business. It’s a real value proposition.”