EP 31: Transforming Healthcare Through Emotional Onboarding

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Intro/Outro:
Plants thrive and grow in a peaceful, nourished environment, right? Well, it's the same with human beings. But what if that environment is not so peaceful? What if it's toxic? Welcome to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. In this podcast, you'll get practical, evidence-based strategies to help you cultivate and sustain a healthy and respectful work culture by tackling an age-old problem in healthcare: bullying and incivility. I am your host, Doctor Renee Thompson.

Renee Thompson:
Hi everyone! Welcome back to the Coffee Break podcast. Wherever you're sitting right now, whether you're listening or you're watching, I hope you're having a great week. And today, I feel this pure joy in welcoming our guest, the Quint Studer. So Quint, welcome to our show.

Quint Studer:
Thank you so much, Renee. It's a thrill to be here. I've been looking forward to this ever since you invited me, so it's good to be taking place.

Renee Thompson:
Me, too. Many of you know Quint. Okay, he is very well-known in the healthcare industry. Before I share a few other details about Quint and what he is working on, I wanted to share how I first met Quint. So this was probably about 6 or 7 years ago. I was doing some consulting for a large health system, and our strategies were working. We were getting really great outcomes, and one of the executives and I were talking, and she said, you know what? Your strategies work. So you should really be looking at spreading this and scaling this not only through our organization but other organizations. And I thought, oh my, how do I do that? She said you need to talk to Quint Studer. And I said, Quint Studer, like the Quint Studer? She said, yeah, just reach out, email him. So I did, never expecting a reply. And sure enough, Quint, you replied, and I think within 24 hours, and you said I'd be happy to hop on a call with you. And we talked for about an hour, and you gave me some really solid advice. And it was in that conversation that I realized that not only were you in it, you were an authentic leader, but you walked the talk. And that's so critical, especially now in today's healthcare environment, that people see their leaders as people who actually walk the talk. So I don't know if you remember that, Quint.

Quint Studer:
No, I remember it very well. And I think the other thing when you look at it is the fact that I personally have used and brought you into our companies, I brought you in the community. So that just shows the great respect I have for you because I wouldn't bring you into my own companies, my own community, if I didn't think the way you were bringing it was tremendously worthwhile.

Renee Thompson:
Thank you for that. I so appreciate it. To tell you a little bit more about Quint. Quint is a lifelong student of leadership with a gift for translating complex strategies into doable behaviors that allow organizations to truly achieve long-term success. He is the co-founder of Healthcare Plus Solutions, whose mission is to have a positive impact on the people who receive care and those who provide that care. This company helps organizations to diagnose and treat their most urgent pain points, and there are many right now in order to achieve and sustain results. And his new book, Rewiring Excellence – Hardwired to Rewire, provides tools and techniques that are doable and that help people. I love how they feel joy in their work. And there are two other things about Quint that I love. His LinkedIn sort of tagline is helping individuals feel grateful about themselves, their job, and their organizations. And then one other thing. I'll never forget this, Quint, you had sent out some communication probably about two years ago, and it was, I believe, when I was doing some work for you, some virtual work, and you basically said we have to give people permission to love each other again, just to say, I love you. And that's what I think about, what I love about Quint is that you're reminding us to not only love each other and even say that, but to love ourselves for bringing that joy to your organization, but joy for yourself. So, I don't know. I'm just thrilled with the opportunity to have you share some of your expertise, your stories, and your wisdom with our listeners today. So, thank you so much for being here.

Quint Studer:
Oh, I'm thrilled. I love you, Renee Thompson.

Renee Thompson:
I love you, too. Okay. There are so many things we can talk about. Quint and I, are both passionate about culture and not culture from a we need to fix our culture. And so we're going to bring somebody in and do a workshop because we both know that doesn't work. Your culture didn't get this way overnight. It's not going to change overnight. Right now, there's such a huge focus on recruitment and retention as there should be. However, there's a part of that recruitment and retention that is overlooked, and that's how we onboard people. And Quint, I know that you're relooking at new employees and really how we onboard them. So maybe we should start our conversation with that, right?

Quint Studer:
I'd like to thank you so much. And I think one of the things that, of course, we all know, one of the things when I go to an organization, I ask the CEO to look up certain metrics. One of the metrics I asked them to look up is how many leaders you have had that became a manager or a leader of some sort for the first time since March 2020. And I never want to be accused of embellishing, so I always go minimum, and I'll say we're fighting, it's 25%. And it's not unusual for an executive to say, I don't think we're that bad. And then he calls me later and says, oh my gosh, we're 52 or we're 50. Or we've even had some as high as 62. And then we asked, wow, how many new employees do you currently have working? Particularly when we look at nursing on the inpatient side, during COVID-19, people who were working inpatients tried to move outpatients as much as they could. So in the inside of the hospitals, we have 50% of our RNs that have less than three years of experience. So that newness really shocks so that we've got to completely look differently at how we develop people because we can't put a fire hose on them, or they leave feeling worse. I've got a lot of that in my new book, Rewiring. I'm going to talk about this. Just tell people where to find it because Rewiring is a $10 book, so it's not like trying to walk some fairly expensive piece of equipment here. We also have something in there called a personal retention plan. We're working with an organization right now that has 264 managers they've identified as relatively new, and what we're doing is putting them on a personal retention plan. Renee, just telling you, Renee, you're really important to us, and we want to make sure that you stay and have a good experience. So, let us walk through this personal retention plan. We talk about what the right place looks like for you and what type of skill-building we are going to provide for you. We talk about other resources, and we say as part of our monthly conversation, we're always going to keep this in front of it. There's a Hawthorne of that; just telling you I have that. So we're going to put that on the parking lot and now get into onboarding.

Renee Thompson:
Yes. But let me just tell all of you who are listening or watching. We will have a link to that book in our show notes and actually a link to some other books that Quint has written as well. So thank you, thank you.

Quint Studer:
So anyway, on onboarding, I did a video years ago that your listeners and viewers can have for free, and it basically walks them through the phases of normal development. And the reason I did this is because, of course, I go to conferences. When I speak, I always spend time hearing others, listening to others, and learning. And they talked about the phases and it's one of my books, but I've changed it for this. It's, you know, the what? You don't know what you don't know. Then, you learn what you do know. Then you're shocked, oh my God, I don't know. Then how do you know what you don't know? But I changed it because I think with new employees and new leaders, but we're going to talk about the general workforce. They would go through a period when you take a job, you're excited. I don't think anyone, when they get the job offer, goes, oh, crud, I was hoping I didn't.

Renee Thompson:
Yeah.

Quint Studer:
You're excited.

Renee Thompson:
Let's hope not.

Quint Studer:
Yes, and, you know, you go home, and you tell your family it's pretty cool. But in healthcare, because you're really a pretty good halo in the community. I'm working for this, no matter what. Yeah, it's an important job, one and significant job in healthcare. So there's excitement. Now, we do know that there's sometimes for the first time, people accept the job and don't show up on day one. I'm not going to talk about it again. I'm going to go in it when you do show up. So you show up in your really excited and then you hit phase two of normal development, which is doubt. Oh my gosh, this is different than I thought. I wonder if I'm going to fit in. I'm never going to be as good as that nurse who can do this. Will I be invited to lunch? How am I going to go to break with? How to work? I don't want to look stupid. And it's that period of doubt. And that's when the period comes off; I don't know if I belong here, and I don't know if I fit in. So if you look at when people leave, they actually know sometimes within 2 or 3 weeks they're already about this might not be the spot for me. And what we need to let them know is that it's normal. So in my video, I walk through, if you're feeling, we show it to all people, all new employees at orientation, and I encourage people to make the wrong just use my stuff, anything. We could care. We just want to be helpful. So I find if employees know what they're going through as normal, it's not as abnormal. They're more comfortable. I'm sure the phase now where I like this is through my phase. I feel like this now. At that time, it's vital they feel supported. That's where the teaching comes in. And that's where Nursing's always done a better job than most.

Renee Thompson:
You're right.

Quint Studer:
Here's your buddy, here's your preceptor, here's your friend, blah blah blah, and it's okay. I think it's better than most industries because I've looked at other industries. We might actually be a little bit better in this arena, but it might not be enough in today's environment. I'm going to give you some new onboarding techniques here before we finish. So, the second or third phases almost overlap. While I'm doubtful, you need to help me know that you're going to support me. So it's like the preceptor just can't say you need more experience. I need to say, Renee, you need more experience, but that's unusual for someone with your experience level. Most of us need more experience.

Renee Thompson:
That reinforcement.

Quint Studer:
And experience. And here's how we're going to get you that experience. But I want you to know you're completely normal like everyone else at the third week or the fourth week because you're comparing yourself to something that's been there for ten years or eight years. You're comparing your side to somebody else's outside. So if I can give you the support and let you know you got the support, I can hold you long enough to get experience. When you get experience, your anxiety starts going down, and you start feeling competent. And it might take three months, or it might take six months, so a while, and then you're going to eventually get where someday you can be the teacher. That was what we've always taught until recently. So I think that's good. I think it works. But we found out it wasn't enough because even with all of that, there were too much early departures. Even if you do what I just talked about, it might help it a little bit, but there are still too many people leaving. Anywhere between 27% of people leave within the first 90 days and 50% leave within the first year. So again, it's better than what was done, but it's not enough. So, some new learnings, and this the first time this has ever been on a podcast.

Renee Thompson:
Oh, I'm excited. I feel very honored.

Quint Studer:
Thank you. I was speaking in Naples at their healthcare system. When I walked in, there was an older gentleman up to that age, and everybody ten years older than me was older. My grandma, my Aunt Mel, was 90, had to be 100 … So anyway.

Renee Thompson:
Yes, I agree.

Quint Studer:
He's taking notes, and I know I was introduced to him, but I got to speak on notes. He was taking copious notes, and I finished, and he was very nice and very kind, but he started talking. He said he introduced himself as Ralph Stayer. He's the founder of Johnsonville Foods, which is sold in 40 states, a $1 billion company. It started with his parents in a little butcher shop in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which is the broad capital of the world. Anyway, he shared with me that at Johnsonville Foods, they really were fully staffed. And I'm thinking fully staffed, not that's not important, but healthcare seems pretty. And explain that, just like healthcare, they were noticing they hired people, but they were having too many early departures. So, they started meeting with the existing employees to talk about these early departures and how does they impacted them. And, of course, they started sharing. Sometimes we have to work more hours. All these new people in here, when you got new people, and things take longer. Now, as I know healthcare, they show spending $1 million during the Duke length of stay. And I said the best thing they could do is just retain their employees because retention reduces the length of stay because you have experience. I just loved learning from Rowe, and I went back, and I started looking at certain things again. And when you look at an employee engagement survey results, or when I do these exercises, we do it in .., and then Rowe will say, why did you pick healthcare? And they all talk. Then we talk about why you work in your department and because they like their department. They say, you know, when I was going through my divorce, they held me together. When my dad had cancer, they were there. We're like a family. So I thought the number one person likes about their job is their coworkers. How long does someone have to feel immersed in their coworkers? I started asking this question: how long does it take a new employee to truly feel like they fit in with their co-workers? Usually, three months, six months, and nine months, depending on the shifts, depending if you're floating, and depending if you're doing. So I started saying if the coworkers are what retains a person, how do we commit and connect that coworker to the new, much sooner? So, I started digging and pulling apart onboarding, and here's how we onboard today. We are physically onboard, which means you're already a part. Here's what you wear. These are your name badge. You know, here's where you go to work. Here's where you sit. Here's the computer. We physically tell them how to onboard physically. Then, we do what I call tactical onboarding. So here's your password. Here's how you sign in. Here's the equipment. Here's our electronic medical record. Here's how we handle falls and infections. Here's how you do shift reports. We do a really, I think, pretty good job with tactical learning. So, if we've always done a pretty good job with physical onboarding and tactical onboarding, why do we still have all these departures? So, I've come up with my hypothesis that we've got to get organizations doing it to see if it works. We're missing something, which I now call emotional onboarding. So, how does the person feel committed emotionally? So, I've also studied some other things that help people quickly feel they belong. Because that's where we're going for, is if this is the place I belong? Looking at different things, I looked at recovery, alcoholics, and drug addicts. If you go to a recovery meeting, which I've been to many with my 41 recoveries, you go to a meeting, and the new person comes in. Sometimes they're with someone, but a lot of times I don't care if they're with someone or alone. They're low and they're wondering, is this the right place for me? Do I fit in? Do I belong? And then immediately they start, everyone starts sharing how they felt their first day. About halfway through this meeting, which is normally an hour, you can see people start to look around and feel like I can get along with this person, along with this person. Then they get all these phone numbers, women and men, to know we want you to call us. Afterward, there's this rush to hold on, almost to hug the person emotionally, where they say something like, let's have coffee. Let's do this, let's do that. And I think that's what takes place in an organization.

Quint Studer:
So then with that, all of a sudden I started saying, I wonder if we could do that in healthcare. So in healthcare, what we look at when we're looking at it is what if when the brand new person started, everybody they're going to work with that shift took a little bit of time afterward. Women to women, men to men, they start saying, I'll have coffee with you. I'll call it, let's talk. So I started thinking about emotional onboarding, and it went from the videotape you send to the new employee from their future coworkers till they can't wait to meet them, can't wait to see them. They're glad they're going to be here. That cheers where you're going to be working. Here are these two; they start. And if you look at when I did this, when I was president of the hospital with new nurse orientation, we had new grads, we had existing nurses, and the existing nurses didn't look like they were excited to be in there. And the new grads look scared me. So I had the existing nurses just share what they felt like their first day as a new grad on the job, and we got halfway through. All of a sudden, the new grads looked more comfortable because, oh my gosh, you felt like this. Existing nurses had a little more a lot more empathy. They took them back to what it was like, and they were new, and they felt they were in a department. Any department, but I love nursing. I tend to go there a lot. The nurses get together with everybody in the unit could be the unit secretary, CNA everyone, and talk about what it was like their first days on the job, and all of a sudden, the person says, I get to know you better. It's expanding the preceptor beyond one person. Then actually start saying, you do this on purpose. Susie, will you take Renee to coffee this morning? Bob, will you talk about this piece of tool we have here? Susie, will you share with them about how we do this? So now it gets a piece of that, the orientation and the precepting. And then instead of saying, we as a team consider ourselves retention. So, we celebrate retention. We celebrate when the person's been there for 30 days. We celebrate when the person's been there for 60 days. Because if we get them through a year, we're pretty good. And then it becomes not the manager's job of retention, not the preceptor's job of retention, which they both have to own. It becomes the department as a retention department. And I just think we can work people through that emotional onboarding. It makes a huge difference because, as Gallup says, if I feel I have somebody at work that I trust, we're not putting this on one preceptor. So, we call it emotional onboarding. And I think, I'm very excited, when I talked to CEOs, I was talking to Mark Clement at Trihealth about this. He immediately had a meeting with his Chief Human Resource Officer and his Chief Operating Officer, and said, we've got to do this. We've got to.

Renee Thompson:
I love it when somebody takes action, they hear something, they learn something, and they take action on it. Quint, there's so much to unpack here. I'm not sure you even know this about me, but before I started my company to address workplace bullying and incivility, I was responsible for basically all things related to the student experience, the new grad experience, preceptors, and professional development. I know the new nurse population very well, and everything that you're talking about resonates with me. You're ticking all the boxes because people think that only one preceptor is responsible for onboarding and orienting a new employee, and that is so far from the truth because it's everyone. And I love how, okay, Susie, you take her for coffee today; and, Jim, why don't you show this? Because this is what you're really good at, the documentation piece. There is one strategy we have implemented that really speaks to what you're talking about, but you've taken it to a whole other level. One of the things that I know new grads are scared of when they start their first job is the number in our experience working with a lot of student nurses transitioning into professional practice, your number one fear was hurting a patient. Actually, they would say killing a patient because they didn't have the comfort and the security of their instructor with them.

Quint Studer:
For a friend of ours, my daughter became a nurse. And the first thing she said on her first day was, oh my gosh, I could kill someone.

Renee Thompson:
Yes. When I was a new grad, I worked at the Cardiac Step-Down Unit, and I remember I would hang, that was back in the day when we would hang lidocaine drips on cardiac patients, and I thought, one wrong press of a button, I could kill that patient. Okay. Luckily, they're on the monitor, and we have people there, but I was very aware that there was that risk. So, number one is patient harm, but number two was the people who they work with, especially their preceptor. So we came up with this strategy that we asked all the preceptors. So I always believe there needs to be a primary preceptor, but it's everyone that needs to be responsible for that person's orientation. But to have that preceptor call that new nurse a week before they're to start and say, hey Kim, I am so excited. My name is Renee. I'm going to be your preceptor. We're thrilled that you're going to be starting with us. Do you know where you're going? Do you know what to wear? Do you know what the parts are? Some of the physical orientation that you refer to, but more so, it was that emotional. If the number two reason or what scares them. The second reason that they're afraid is their preceptor and you have the preceptor call them a week ahead, you just alleviate it, their second fear.

Quint Studer:
We've also not done a nice job training our preceptors. Normally, we go up to somebody who's a good nurse, and we say, are you a preceptor? They might be a great nurse, but they might not be a great preceptor. Katie Boston Leary, we want mentors, not tormentors. And I don't do this, so when I was president of the hospital, a new nurse came up to me and said, I really like what you're doing, but I've quit. And I said, why did you quit? And she said, I always wanted to be a nurse. I got pregnant in high school. I'm a single mother. I had to wait till my daughter got to be a certain age to go back. And I always wanted to work here, and so she told me why she wanted to work here. Why do I be a nurse and why did you quit? She said because my preceptor told me I'm not going to make it. She never told her that. The preceptor just innocently said something that she took as you're not going to make it. And again, when the preceptor heard that, she was horrified. But we don't teach people development. The whole bit and the emotional aspect of development, the assuring someone that you're going to be okay and that we got your back. So I think also we put preceptors in a tough situation sometimes where you naturally know how to do this. I'm a big believer that it is cool to say we're certifying you as a preceptor, that you're this, and that you understand emotional development because, again, it's not tactical. It's not physical development. We lose them. It's emotional development. That's why it's emotional.

Renee Thompson:
I think it's so smart. I've said many times that the preceptor role is the most important role in an organization because they are responsible for it fully. It's not just onboarding, again, not the physical and the tactical onboarding. It's helping that new person fully immerse in your organization. I think about the values of your organization and how they show up every day, the culture of your department and how we support each other as a team, how everybody has each other's backs and not worrying about stabbing each other in the back. You can teach anyone almost any skill. But part of that preceptors's responsibility is not to just make sure that they're safe to practice, that they know how to use the medication machine and charts and documents, but it's how do they show up as a valuable member of that team, and how do they feel about the people that they're working with. So, if I'm a new grad, how do I feel that I'm in a safe place where if the people I'm working with, I can actually admit to them that I don't know something without fear of being made feel stupid or treated poorly because I've made a mistake, or that I don't know something because that's what's happening out there right now. We have a lot of new people who aren't admitting that they don't know something because they're afraid of how they're going to be treated. And preceptor has that, and I love how you said it's the emotional onboarding.

Quint Studer:
Well, let me throw out something that came from our study on nursing that's actually on our website, too. It's a care model for new nurses. What we asked nurses in general, but we can talk about it hits new markets more. And I know this wasn't our main topic, but put an adjunct discussion week in the day. Or when you ask nurses what are demotivators for them? Number one is to let the turnover of CNAs who are vital to them, but the second one is charge nurses and staffing. And because of the great push to reduce travel nurses, really not travel nurses travel dollars, so that's what we're trying to do.

Renee Thompson:
Right.

Quint Studer:
Again, early on, charge nurses who are great team players took a staff load, not knowing if they'd still be doing it four years out. The CNA, CNE, and CNO almost is recognized for hey, it took travel nurses down. But when you look at the data for new nurses, a charge nurse is a lifeline. So when they're staffing, we've lost a lifeline. So again, when I share this with CEOs, the normal thing is, wow, you're right. We're going to bring enough travelers back to get our charge nurses out of staffing because it's a retention tool for our newer nurses because they need that charge nurse desperately. And when do they need them the most? PMS and weekends when there is a lot?

Renee Thompson:
Yes, they do.

Quint Studer:
So that's just some caveats of data and research that when I tell it to CEOs, once it clicks, these are smart people. It clicks. I'm paying a price. I'm gaining here on travel dollars, but I'm losing over here on retention.

Renee Thompson:
And I think it's an issue right now that it's almost shortsighted where they're looking at their financial resources, as that's their responsibility to be fiscally mindful. However, you have to take a look at the cause. And you had said, okay, what's going to cause you to be so frustrated here that you're going to leave? And yes, if you have charge nurses without an assignment and then you make them staff so that you can save a few dollars by removing your travelers, you're going to end up losing more money because people are going to leave. Because I will tell you what, in a heartbeat, any day, I will pick up another patient to allow someone to be in charge without an assignment so that they can be that person who can help me with discharges or the flow or running interference for me, because I guess it was about eight years ago, I actually went back into the staffing. So, I've been a nurse for 32 years. I've had this company for 12 years, but I wanted to go back to the bedside to see what it was like because I thought that doing so, it would help me to do this work better. I got some good stories. When I went back to the bedside, I swiped in and swiped out like everybody else. I think the last time I had to swipe in was when we had the old time clocks, and it was a piece of paper, and you had the note but the paper in, and it would stamp the time. So, there was a lot of tactical learning that I had to do. But the only way that I got through, because remember, I'm not a new nurse, I'm an experienced nurse, but I hadn't been at the bedside in a while. What got me through those few years that I staffed again was having a charge nurse without an assignment. They were my lifeline. And again, this is me as an experienced nurse, and I will admit I have never done this before. Will somebody help me? You got new nurses who aren't going to admit that.

Quint Studer:
You got another win, Renee. Because in trust one of the big issues of trust is front-line people who are wondering, do the senior executives know what work is like. When the CEO gets up and says, wow, I've looked at this, and we're going to take charge. Nurses out of staff immediately pay. He or she knows what I'm doing here. They know what's going on here, And that's something that I always like to dig in, and that's why our company diagnosis works. We just don't run in and say, here's a book, here's a treatment plan. That's what your pain point is. So, I'm very excited about emotional onboarding. I really think we're on to something.

Renee Thompson:
Knowing that again, I've been doing some of this work, especially with the new grad population, for quite some time now. Everything you said really resonates with not only me but other people who were actually working with this new population of nurses, and it's a different environment right now. It's almost as though it's a part one of a part two plan, where part one is you have to give them all the technical skills that they need and where the locker is and where they park and their benefits and all of that. But what's been missing is part two and that's a human piece. It's the: do I feel a sense of belonging. And I love that on the first day, you have other people who have been there talking about what their first day was like and how scared they were. Is to give that reassurance that I'm not alone, that other people felt this way. And by doing that, especially with some of the experienced nurses, because let's be real here, sometimes you're not very nice to the new people, especially right now. What is happening is that the new graduate nurses coming out of nursing school are really the least prepared new graduate nurses we've seen, and it's because they've learned during a global pandemic how are they supposed to get those really rich clinical skills. They didn't. The experienced nurses are a little angry about the fact that they don't even possess some of the minimum skills that they think they should have. And I always say, you're right, they are the least prepared, but it's not their fault. Quit being so mean to them.

Quint Studer:
Be careful you don't think you can make it up. So recently, at an organization, in a one-year new nurse orientation, and said let's jam it down in six months because they need it so badly. In the book Rewiring, I talked about is it doable. You know, if you learn 1 or 2 new skills at a time, there's about a 100% chance you're going to acquire them. When you have the third one, it goes down to 50%. Again, part of that whole training and development is sequencing it correctly to build out strengths instead of creating frustration.

Renee Thompson:
So if we take a look at when you said phase one, they're excited; phase two, they're like, uh oh, what have I done? What have I gotten myself into?

Quint Studer:
You're doubting the right decision. Are they in the right place?

Renee Thompson:
Am I in the right place? Because right now, they have a lot of choices. New people can go anywhere right now.

Quint Studer:
You know, in the old days, and I'm saying old days when there were more jobs than people, somebody would get through this time, even though it was painful to get to the other side because they did have choices. Today, they're going to move real quick. If they don't think this is the right opportunity.

Renee Thompson:
They will. Yeah, they won't allow themselves the discomfort of working in a department where they don't feel, again, have a valued sense of belonging, all the things that we know. They'll be like, I'm out of here; I'm going to go down the street. I think your third phase was the learning phase.

Quint Studer:
Yeah, the support phase that we're going to support, we're going to hold your hand. We're going to have your back. We're not going to let you alone. We're in there with you, and that happens almost immediately. You have to go down both roads. The quicker you let them know that support, even though they still have doubt, they have less doubt. Because of their support, they start gaining experience, which is the fourth phase. Eventually, they'll become the mastery level where things will take as long as they can multitask, and they become your future teachers, your mentors, and preceptors.

Renee Thompson:
Yeah, or maybe your future leaders. I remember again, that I worked Cardiac Step-Down when I was a brand new nurse, and there was a nurse who was your role model, for what an experienced, competent nurse, not only how she performed but everything about her oozed support, trust, belonging, and all the things that you would want from a human being. Her name was Marianne Guido. And I remember thinking when I was brand new, I wanted to be just like Marianne because, again, she was that role model. There were some other people who I worked with that I didn't want to be like them because they were not really, you know, great people. But Marianne was everything. And I remember asking her how long she had been a nurse and she said, five years. So I thought, okay, I just have to get the five years and then I'll be as smart and as competent as Marianne. And then I got the five years and I realized I still have so much more to learn. And then I got the ten years, and oh my gosh, I still haven't mastered it. Obviously, I got to the point where I realized that one of the smartest things any of us can do is recognize that we don't know everything. But to get on that path of continuous learning and like you, Quint, lifelong student of leadership and of learning, and before we hopped on, we really talked about this, how we incorporate that as a personal strategy. So we're even looking at your personal or your retention strategy. Where's that development in there? Where's that learning? Because it's so critical to every role in healthcare today. So as we wrap up, if a chief nurse, a COO, a senior leader, even a frontline leader is listening to this, and they resonate with our conversation, and they want to focus on making sure that they incorporate some emotional onboarding with their new employees, what would you recommend they do? What would be the first step?

Quint Studer:
Well, I think, again, in the book Rewiring, we touched on Hardwared to Rewired because I'm so many people read my book Hardwiring that they don't realize they've got to be flexible, that some things don't work like they used to, for example, in Hardwiring, I say, meet somebody on the 30th and 90th day. Today, they're gone. You might want to meet with them on the first day, the third day, and seventh day. And also, I think, really follow me on LinkedIn as we produce, because we're really producing a lot of new material on this emotional onboarding right now because we're just finding, again, that it resonates with people. And so we don't wait till it's all done to roll it out, because if it can help somebody today, it can take and help them today. Follow me on LinkedIn as we develop this, then contact me, of course, at QuintStuder.com. We'll send them a six-minute video that they can utilize, that some are utilizing, and if they want they can just take it and make it their own and have it be Quint Studer. I think we're on to something with this emotional onboarding, just looking at how you react like everyone's reacted. Not that we haven't done pieces of it, but maybe we've done more on the tactical and the physical side than we have on the emotional side.

Renee Thompson:
Yes, and we are emotional creatures as human beings. And we need to recognize that because, again, there's been a lot of conversations out there right now on well-being, both from the employee and from the leader perspective, that this also plays a role in that emotional well-being of our people.

Quint Studer:
I think well-being is an interesting thing because when you talk to executives, and you ask them about well-being, I would have done the same thing. We offer an EAP, we help have wellness, which my healthcare does a great job of offering resources. Now, people don't use them, but we have done a great job offering them. We do have on our website we talk about how to increase that but we sometimes don't realize that the employee, being is staffing, being his resources. What I just talked about having the skill building 92% of managers today want more skill building and career development in 84% of frontline people. So if you're developing means investing in me. We call it investing. You're caring about my well-being. But I think we need to broaden the definition of well-being to be more encompassing than just you go to the EAP. And I think that we wrote the book Trust and started sharing it with CEOs. Always the number third, the first thing is we don't trust senior leaders. Second, we don't feel our organization supports us. The third one is I don't think they care about my well-being. The fourth one is I'm not being recognized as I should be, and the fifth one is I just don't feel I belong. So if we do everything I've talked about, we also increase the sense of well-being that they care about because. And that's why I said. We buy it, we want to support you, we want to invest, we want to make sure that you feel comfortable in this role.

Renee Thompson:
You just take everything, and you up-level it just a little bit, because one, it's like a ripple effect. You do one positive. We're investing in you. I'm going to meet with you on maybe day three and day seven. What are your goals? What were some of your aspirations? I'm thinking about the leader their retention plan. Hey, there's a great program. I'd love to get you involved in this, or here's an opportunity. These are all little ripple effects that one of those meaningful conversations and, like supportive conversations you have with one person, how that can spread across your organization. You have done such a great job your whole career, providing really valuable frameworks and strategies that people can just grab and then incorporate into their department, their organization, and their culture. Oh my gosh, we'll have all of these. Everything that Quint talked about. Don't worry, we'll have links in the show notes and include a link to our Quint LinkedIn page, his email if you want to, or even message him on LinkedIn to get that video. I want to get a copy of that video, too. I want to see it.

Quint Studer:
Well, I think it's something I did years ago for our own use. So we showed our own workforce because we're like anything else; we're a microcosm of what we're trying to do. And I always joke, I'm a plumber with leaky pipes, but I don't want them to be leaky. I'm trying to fix them all the time. But yeah, it resonates with what we're trying to do. And we also tell anybody, unlike people, somehow took my stuff and they made it so scripted, and they think I'm way more flexible than they are, that somebody will say, we don't know if we want to do that, we'll change it. Try.

Renee Thompson:
What? Make it work for you.

Quint Studer:
Look at your own tech retention. But I do think the group taking ownership of retention is also a key that they measure retention. This is our retention. This is where look at how many people are keeping well, that's what I learned from Ralph at Johnsonville Foods. He really did a good job getting the coworkers to see this as their job, not only their job but how they benefit from holding onto people because who pays the price? But the coworkers know they're the new person. They're gone to their next new job.

Renee Thompson:
Oh my gosh, so smart. Just so when you think about it, it's so simple, but yet it's not being done. You hear this all the time. What's easy to do is not always easy to commit to doing, but it's one of those things where if you can actually turn your entire team into a retention team so that it's not one person's responsibility, it could be a game changer for you. So Quint, oh my gosh, thank you so much for being here. It's always the best part of my day, my week, my month. When I get to spend a little bit of time with you, and I just know our audience will greatly benefit from your great work. It's been decades of amazing work in making healthcare truly a better place. So thank you.

Quint Studer:
So happy to be a friend of yours. Thank you.

Renee Thompson:
Yes.

Renee Thompson:
All right, everyone who's listening, thank you for being here. Keep up the great work that you're doing to cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture. And if you like this episode, make sure you rate it, review and share it with others. Thanks, everyone. Take care.

Intro/Outro:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. If you found these practical strategies helpful, we invite you to click the subscribe button and tune in every other week. For more information about our show and how we work with healthcare organizations to cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture free from bullying and incivility, visit HealthyWorkforceInstitute.com. Until our next cup of coffee, be kind, take care, and stay connected.

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