How to Improve Employee Engagement with SmartLinx Go

September 6, 2022 Kimberly Anderson-Mutch

How to Improve Employee Engagement

Mobile technology continues to change our lives.

Our smartphones connect us to an infinite amount of information, as well as each other. Every day, they help us get directions, pay bills, arrange childcare, and so much more. Your staff can benefit from this convenience, too.

Instead of assuming what healthcare staff needed most, we asked them when we made SmartLinx Go. Nurses, administrators, CNAs, directors, and managers weighed in on what their ideal mobile app would do and how it would look. We adopted an iterative approach to design, test, and revise each feature based on customer feedback.

By connecting them to what's important, you can empower them to work smarter, balance work and personal lives, and enjoy the experience even when they're on the go. Learn more about boosting employee engagement.

Why Focus on Engagement?

Engagement is a foundational part of creating happy, productive, and empowered staff members. Research proves strengthening employee engagement increases productivity and retention.

According to Gallup, engaged staff strive to “show up to work and do more work.” Businesses with high engagement reduce absenteeism by 41% and boost productivity by 17%. The workers are more likely to stick with the employer, too. For companies with high turnover, engaged business units enjoy 24% less turnover. In organizations with low turnover, the gains are more pronounced—they get 59% less turnover!

With an engaged workforce, you can expect benefits across the business while improving your staff's personal lives. It's a win-win for everyone.

Give Employees More Control of Their Lives

When your staff can quickly find and respond to new schedules weeks or months in advance, they can more easily balance work and family responsibilities and feel better about their job and employer. You can boost engagement by helping your staff develop a strong work-life balance, where they feel connected to their work but not at the expense of their loved ones, hobbies, and health.

If you make it hard for your staff to manage their work, such as accessing their schedules, picking up shifts, or communicating with bosses, addressing the details of their work can feel like another job itself. It adds friction to the process and can cause more miscommunications that lead to unhappy workers. 

Instead, simplify this process with remote access to these tasks. One strong employee engagement initiative is to implement a mobile app that allows your staff to adjust their schedules and talk to their bosses from anywhere they have an internet connection.

Give Providers Better and Faster Scheduling Options

To ensure quality care and avoid compliance violations, providers must have the right workers in the right places three shifts a day, every day. But unexpected absences, tardiness, and changing patient populations require constant adjustments. Meeting these demands calls for immediate communication options from anywhere.

By making real-time scheduling information available to your staff, you can advance business objectives by enabling schedulers to quickly fill open shifts without running up overtime costs.

Respond to Requests Quickly

Your staff wants to feel heard and know that management takes them seriously. You can boost engagement by facilitating that process. Make it easy for them to communicate with administrators, and ensure that supervisors know how to respond appropriately to comments and concerns. 

This concern for being heard also applies to logistical tasks like solving problems with pay or scheduling. If your staff doesn't receive quick responses here, they're likely to feel ignored. You can avoid this employee disengagement by bypassing the need for responses entirely with self-service options.

How SmartLinx Go Can Help Improve Employee Engagement

To help you meet these demands and cultivate an engaged workforce, we created SmartLinx Go. SmartLinx Go is an easy-to-use mobile app that allows your staff to take control of their work through self-service tools. When you deliver an intuitive app that requires little or no learning curve, you engage employees right away. When you include the most desirable features, you keep them engaged. 

Some of the features they'll get include:

  • Schedule access: SmartLinx Go provides real-time access to schedules, pertinent work information, and self-scheduling capabilities. When new schedules are posted, SmartLinx Go notifies your staff in their preferred method—through text, email, or in-app alert—and lets them see how open shifts would fit into their work schedule. They can sign up for their preferred shifts right on the app and receive immediate notifications when schedulers confirm or deny shift requests.
  • Time-off requests: Your staff can also use SmartLinx Go to help them plan their vacations. They can quickly access their paid time off (PTO) balance to check if they have enough accrued time and submit new PTO requests. They can also edit pending PTO requests prior to management review and approval. A lot of healthcare providers rely on manual processes to manage PTO. SmartLinx Go enables providers to streamline this time-consuming process and helps employees more effectively plan their life.
  • Shift coverage: Using SmartLinx’s unified workforce management suite, schedulers are automatically notified of new open shifts and the staff eligible to fill them without incurring overtime. They can quickly notify qualified staff members, who can use SmartLinx Go to access and sign up for an available shift. If an employee can’t work a scheduled shift, they can use SmartLinx Go to submit a Time Off request and find a replacement shift as needed.
  • Pay management: SmartLinx Go makes up-to-date pay and personal data accessible anytime, anywhere. Features, like real-time punch history, maximize staff productivity by enabling them to quickly find and respond to the most pertinent information.

With a range of employee engagement ideas geared toward giving your staff control over their work lives, SmartLinx Go supports both staff and employer goals. Learn how SmartLinx Go can engage employees in your facility, or reach out to schedule a demo today!

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