Why patient satisfaction must become a people strategy outcome
Experience is broad, created through every interaction an employee has with a leader, a team, a patient, a process and the organization itself.
While serving as the chief people and culture officer at a major health system, our team made what seemed at the time like an unusual decision. Patient satisfaction would be the one shared goal for the entire human resources team.
Not time to fill. Not training completion rates. Not even employee engagement, although all those measures mattered and were tracked. The one shared outcome metric was patient satisfaction. The reaction was immediate and predictable: “What does HR have to do with patient satisfaction?”
My answer almost a decade ago is still my answer now – everything.
The patient environment
I believed it because I had seen the connection up close. Patient experience does not only occur at the bedside. It is inclusive of the environment that surrounds the bedside.
And that environment, culture, experience is shaped through thousands of daily leadership choices – who gets hired, how people are welcomed, what leaders tolerate, what they recognize and whether employees believe their manager sees them as human beings, not just labor inputs.
Employee engagement matters, but the engagement and experience are not the same thing, although we often use the terms interchangeably. Engagement is felt by the individual. It reflects whether a person feels committed, motivated and connected. Experience is broader. It is created through every interaction an employee has with a leader, a team, a patient, a process and the organization itself.
In healthcare, the experiences of the patient and the employee are not separate realities. They happen in the same room, the same unit, at the same nurses’ station and in the same hallway. The caregiver who feels supported, recognized, informed and equipped stands in the same space where the patient decides whether the organization feels safe, responsive, compassionate and coordinated. This shared reality is often, also a shared experience with the same manager.
HR must take the lead
That is why the next era of healthcare HR cannot be defined only by programs, transactions or process improvement. Those still matter. But the larger work now is this – HR must lead a new era of relational leadership.
Every HR decision either strengthens or weakens the environment, the experience, in which care is delivered. How we hire, onboard, develop, coach, support, communicate, measure performance and reward our staff are not simply back-office activities. In healthcare, these HR processes are catalysts or roadblocks to superior care delivery.
The recently published ASHHRA and Laudio Insights report, Reconnecting HR to the Frontline: How Leader Standard Work Translates People Strategy into Results, reinforces that frontline managers are among the most powerful amplifiers of people strategy. They translate organizational priorities into the daily, shared experience of the people working closest to the patient.
When frontline leadership is inconsistent, the employee experience is inconsistent. When the employee experience is inconsistent, the patient experience is at risk.
Practical priorities
The report covers four practical priorities for HR leaders and executive teams.
Align the C-suite and HR around leader standard work as a relational engine. This is not just an HR initiative. It is an operating discipline that connects workforce strategy to the daily realities of care delivery.
Save managers and HR time so they can focus on people, not just processes. Technology, automation, shared services and analytics should enable the work, not distract from it. If the HR processes give a manager time to focus on the employee and patient experience, it is serving the mission. If it simply moves work from one overwhelmed person to another, it is just adding to the problem.
Reduce variation in frontline leadership. Employees experience the organization through their manager. When leadership practices vary widely, the shared experience varies widely. Leader standard work helps create greater consistency in the routines that matter most.
Prioritize workforce and career development to stabilize the talent pipeline. In a constrained labor market, retention cannot be treated separately from development. People are more likely to stay when they can see a future, build skills, feel known by their leader and understand how their work connects to something larger than the task in front of them.
And all of that brings it all back to patient satisfaction.
The power of culture
Patients experience the culture of the organization. They feel whether caregivers are supported or depleted. They feel whether teams are stable or constantly turning over. They feel whether communication is clear, whether leaders are present and whether employees have what they need to do their best work.
Healthcare's next phase of transformation will require better data, better technology and better operating discipline. But health systems already have a lot of data. They know where turnover is rising. They know where patient satisfaction is slipping. What they often lack is the operating system for consistent frontline leadership actions.
That is where HR must step forward. HR is not accountable for patient experience because HR “owns” the patient experience function, but because HR architects the leadership systems that shape the employee experience patients feel every day.
When HR gets that right, the patient feels it, too.
Jill Ragsdale is chief human resources advisor for Laudio.