High employee turnover at reception level in a clinical analysis lab in a developing country
High employee turnover at reception level is a major problem in a clinical analysis lab in a developing country
One of the major problems at our institution that constantly consumes a great amount of time and energy of the management team is high employee turnover at the reception level, those that deal directly with the public that access the services at our private clinical analysis lab. Some reasons for this problem, although very difficult to solve, are obvious and inherent with the region of the country where we are located (Northeast Region of Brazil), one of the poorest states of the federation, where access to good quality of education of great part of the population is a big problem. Moreover, and also very much related to local economic and educational levels, salaries of the employees at this level are considerably low. A high level of mistakes in the tasks from some of these employees, such as registration errors, is also reasonably common. Definitely, continuous employee education and training should play a major role in solving this problem, but engagement of the whole team is frequently a major challenge. Maybe also implementing a well-designed incentives plan and talent retention program could help.
This is a well under appreciated problem and one that many organizations simply take the approach of either just raising salaries or accepting high rates of turnover. Neither of these strategies work long term and fails to recognize the economic costs of mistakes, poor morale and training costs. Another opportunity to is to create engagement through several mechanisms. One is to develop common goals and share them daily huddles that are lead by front line leaders and actively seek input from the workers. Group incentives for meeting these goals helps further this engagement. Another approach is to develop a clear clinical ladder for people in these role.
As an employer you have to accept that this reception work is not something people would like to do for the rest of their lives. Then there is nothing so demotivating as working in a unpleasant situation without any perspective of improvement. So a program in which you can grow to a better position could give a solution. Motivation for attending courses and deliver high quality work automatically enhances your chances of getting an better job. You start at the bottom of the ladder and gradually work your way up. Every year you will have an evaluation of your performance and when positive it keeps people motivated to keep up this flow. The challenge will be to provision of a system in which small steps up the ladder can be made.
This is a quite common problem. The key is usually to make the reception level understand that they are an important part of the hospital just like nurses and physicians. This should be openly stated by the leadership. Reception level should have access to most of same general education in hospital (for example IT, person-to-person interaction, languages) than others, and the groups should be mixed. This way their status would increase and they would not be willing to move to antoher employer so much