A Phase 2 Consulting White Paper

Now a part of the Premier healthcare alliance

A Rigorous Employee Selection Process

As a Component of Quality Customer Service in Healthcare
summary: There is a strong connection between profitable healthcare organizations and patients perceptions regarding quality of care. To become the market leader in patient satisfaction, healthcare organizations must ensure that highly skilled, customer friendly employees are recruited, developed and retained. The underlying premise of this report is that a simple job title is not enough to match people to jobs. The basic concept holds that if an individuals particular strengths and motivations are matched to the functional requirements of a job, and there are no untrainable hindrances to success, the individual is likely to succeed if given the training and opportunity. Ultimately, organizations will not succeed in identifying, attracting, developing and retaining the right people without profiling emotional and social skill sets necessary for the particular job. Vol 77, No. 9 pp 34-40). An individual service provider is often the key factor in determining customer satisfaction in healthcare organizations. An individual service provider who listens to the customer, responds to his or her needs and makes the customer feel important, even special, can go a long way toward creating a satisfied customer. Thus, the selection of new employees, particularly in those positions that directly interface with others, is critically important. Unfortunately, organizations frequently opt to hire a body rather than wait for the right person for the job. How often, after hiring someone who does not work out, have employers thought, But they looked so good in the interview?

I. general baCkground Hospital Corporation of America has found that there is a strong connection between profitable healthcare organizations and patients perceptions regarding quality of care. Even though satisfied customers alone may not guarantee profitability, hospital financial performance studies have shown that greater market share is one of the characteristics of benchmark hospitals. Both Press Ganey and a survey done by Nelson (et al. 1989) have shown that improving customer satisfaction can result in a significant return on investment. This same finding was indicated in studies reported by Davidson in Workforce Measuring What You Bring to the Bottom Line (September 1999,

Healthcare organizations must identify, attract, develop and retain the right people in order to be successful. When it comes to hiring, a mistake can turn into a costly experience in terms of turnover and diminished customer satisfaction. Likewise, retaining the highly skilled, customer friendly employees that currently dominate most healthcare organizations will ensure that the organization will remain customer focused. Organizations that achieve high levels of customer satisfaction recognize that their employees are counted among their most important customers. In an article in Fortune (October 27, 1997) concerning The Worlds Most Admired Companies, a survey conducted by Fortune and the Hay Group evaluated the hiring and career development properties held in common by some of the most admired companies. Companies surveyed included Coca-Cola, Daimler-Benz, General Electric, Microsoft, Toyota and Walt Disney. Survey results indicated that the key to their success was people, people, people. Fortune surmised that these companies valued seven common traits: 1. Top managers at the most admired companies take their mission statements seriously and expect everyone else to do likewise. 2. Success attracts the best peopleand the best people sustain success. 3. The top companies know precisely what they are looking for. 4. They see career development as an investment not a chore. 5. Whenever possible, they promote from within. 6. They reward performance. 7. They measure workforce satisfaction. The bottom line is simple: many companies claim that people are their most important assets. The most admired companies show they really mean it. (Handley 1999) II. Human CapItal audIt Many corporations are developing profiles of the emotional and social skill sets necessary for employees to possess or develop in order to successfully perform particular jobs. Profiling emotional and social skill sets aids in the recruitment, selection, and retention of employees; it is also helpful in career development and training, team building, and in organizational restructuring.

Dr. Rich Handley has stated that the soft stuff (people skills, empathy, selfawareness, problem-solving, etc.) must be defined in measurable terms or made hard in order to manage assets from a human capital value-added construct. It is important that managers are able to determine which skill sets provide the highest rate of return in relation to the investment of organizational resources (e.g. time, money) that are required (ROI). Managers must be able to realize a positive return on such things as recruitment costs, orientation and related training costs as well as wage and benefits in order to provide a basis for determining competitive advantage. These identified skill sets become hard and true corporate assets that can be quantified and developed to the benefit of the organization as well as that of the individual. Human capital profiling operationalizes (defines and makes measurable) this soft stuff those intangibles which have traditionally been more difficult for managers to superintend than fiscal assets. Conducting an emotional and social intelligence audit, more specifically, an emotional intelligence (EQ) audit, allows the company to profile the emotional and social skill sets that are associated with high performance. Profiling clearly helps in at least two areas: 1. During recruitment or selection, knowledge of the EQ skills that are associated with high performance in crucial positions (e.g. sales and customer service) enables the company to be more effective in finding and hiring others with the right stuff. 2. Profiling empowers the company to identify, assess, develop and enhance those skill sets that truly constitute corporate assets and underlie competitive advantage. Identifying and targeting these skill sets are vital to investing in human capital development. This two-fold approach of hiring people with the identified necessary EI skill sets and training new and existing people to further develop these beneficial traits/skills will result in increased individual and organizational performance. Moreover, proper fit and job success will increase overall individual and organizational satisfaction and, ultimately, retention. III. tHe emotIonal IntellIgenCe audIt Many organizations are relying on psychological-based surveys to help identify those who have a propensity to serve, placing only those individuals with high service affinity on the front lines with the customers. Other

organizations are using behaviorally based interviews to help them better screen applicants. Duncan Regional Hospital relies on establishing rigorous expectations of its team members and clearly communicates these prerequisites to all job applicants. Those who are unable or unwilling to accept these prerequisites have an opportunity to remove themselves from the applicant pool before they are ever interviewed. According to a survey of 1,846 small and midsize U.S. and Canadian businesses by George S. May International, the most significant management challenge was finding and training new employees. Twenty-two percent of respondents had difficulty in this area (Inc. Magazine, March, 1997). A July 1996 study of 838 company owners by the same organization noted that 56% felt it is now harder than it was 5 years ago to find the right employees. The difficulties in successful employee screening have resulted in yet another current trend the modern job interview and selection method. Therefore, a wide range of techniques that are being used in the job interview and selection method including think-fast brainteasers, being creative with a paper bag and behavioral simulation. These techniques are all aimed at finding the right people with the right stuff. However, questions persist. What is the right stuff? Whose right stuff is it? How do you know its the right stuff? How do you measure it? In his 1996 book Successful Intelligence, Robert Sternberg concludes that common sense or tacit knowledge is a better predictor of job performance than IQ alone. One must wonder how successful current interview practices are in addressing these right stuff questions. A far better way to target the right stuff would involve identifying and differentiating emotional intelligence skill sets and matching them with job seekers. Are there really any differences between the high performers and the less than high performers? If so, what are they? Once these differences are identified, they allow the prospective employer to more completely evaluate potential applicants. The right stuff, once defined, can be scientifically determined to be either present or absent. The traditional but less reliable screening factors (IQ or degrees held) take a backseat to more relevant factors and scientific methodology. Further, when differences and similarities are examined in light of what distinguishes the star performers from the others, a plan of selection may be put into place through which managers can improve overall team or corporate

emotional intelligence. For example, by reviewing the characteristics of potential and existing employees against the desired set of EQ traits, an organization may evaluate fit to a specific job as well as to the overall corporate culture. In a fast-paced healthcare organization, individuals exhibiting low flexibility and stress tolerance may not be best suited for the healthcare environment and, in turn, may be unsuccessful. Moreover, this type of EQ profiling allows the organization to target the specific skill sets that workers need to move along career paths and to make the transition from their current knowledge base to what they will need to know in order to make career advancements. Therefore, it is evident that EQ profiling can provide vital information which enables the organization to target and invest in employee development. EQ profiling is a powerful tool that not only contributes to an organizations bottom line by helping to prevent costly hiring errors, but also promotes job satisfaction and employee retention. It also ensures that employees have the job-specific requisite EQ skills which helps to ensure the chance for success of new and existing employees. Finally, for those employees in leadership or customer service positions, personal coaching and mentoring around the continued development of emotional intelligence skills can be a powerful method to improve the organizations culture and employee satisfaction. Many organizations are now requiring that all individuals go through an interview in which existing employees participate. The purpose of these peer interviews is to involve employees in the selection process because they are the ones who know best what is needed to succeed in a given position and are the ones who will work side by side with the selected individual. When emotional skill sets are profiled or mapped, it can result in a useful perspective on which skills the workforce will likely need to perform certain tasks, based upon the traits associated with those who are currently successful in those roles. Profiling also helps identify and enhance skill sets that truly constitute corporate assets and competitive advantage. Organizations must invest money where they will make money and in the era of the knowledge worker, they must strategically strive to outpace, not just keep up with, the competition. A shift in focus must take place from paying people just to show up to that of investing in people and their development. This shift will involve moving from broad scale spending on training that may or may not have its desired effect to one that focuses on a targeted approach

that involves emotional skill profiling that helps strategically select the appropriate candidate. Profiling emotional skill sets can: 4 Provide a useful perspective of which skills the workforce needs to be successful 4 Help identify those skill sets that constitute corporate assets 4 Help identify those skill sets that can be enhanced to improve the organizations competitive advantage Once a human capital audit of emotional skill sets has been accomplished, one can begin to strategically differentiate commodity skills from true assets. Corporations will then have the information necessary to focus on a strategy of hiring individuals who have those skill sets and training existing employees with those skill sets so that the organization can amass and concentrate the right talent where its needed. It is often surprising to learn who in a company possesses skills that are vital corporate assets. For example, in consultation with a health services organization, it was recently learned during EQ profiling that one of the employee groups thought to have the lowest status had the highest interpersonal skills in the entire organization. Interestingly, those employees were also the ones who most interacted with customers. Therefore, arguably, they were perhaps vital to the organization, even though they were among the least valued within the organizational hierarchy. This observation illustrates the fallacy of basing restructuring decisions on position or roles alone. Fortunately, this organization quickly realized the true value of these employees and initiated a job enrichment program that enabled the organization to take greater advantage of the skills these employees possessed. (Handley, 1999) IV. emotIonal IntellIgenCe In tHe WorkplaCe Emotional Intelligence, a phrase first coined by Yale psychologist Peter Salovey and John Mayer from the University of New Hampshire, refers to an array of competencies, capabilities, and skills, which influence ones ability to succeed at work and life. Stated concisely, EQ is the ability to appropriately guide ones emotional response to events and to act upon those emotions in a suitable manner. How important is this set of skills? It is critical to successful health, relationships, and work. Indeed, it may be vital to ones actual happiness.

This type of interpersonal intelligence implies the ability to perform successfully in person-to-person relationships and to communicate effectively in those relationships. Emotional intelligence has real application in the business sector, particularly with respect to customer service, group and coworker relationships, leadership or management role performance, and high achievement teamwork. Customer service, a key to organizational performance, is truly about person-to-person interaction. Therefore, it is critical for individuals to have good emotional intelligence skills, especially in the areas of empathy and interpersonal relationships, to be successful in this type of work. However, it is common knowledge that individuals who do not possess these initial skills are often placed in customer service positions. This misplacement is not good for the individual or the organization. V. emotIonal IntellIgenCe and emotIonal QuotIent (eQ) Emotional intelligence has lead to the development of a new term, emotional quotient or EQ. Originally coined by Dr. Reuven Bar-On, EQ has become a shorthand term for referring to emotional intelligence in general. There seems to be particular interest in a sample of the EQ profiles for successful individuals in various occupations and settings. It is important to stress that these profiles were scientifically developed and were based on research findings from a number of studies that were conducted on thousands of people. According to the findings, individuals having good customer service abilities show more empathy and concern for others, relate better with people, can withstand stress better,and are more able to adjust to different situations and solve problems better than other individuals. (Bar-On, Handley, 1999) An individuals EQ can currently be measured by the BarOn EQ-i. The BarOn EQ-i consists of 133 items and takes approximately 30 minutes to complete. It is based on the most comprehensive theory of emotional intelligence to date and it renders an overall EQ score as well as scores for 5 composite scales and 15 subscales. The following areas of emotional intelligence are measured accurately with the aid of 4 validity indices and a sophisticated correction factor.

Intrapersonal sCales Self-Regard Assertiveness Self-Actualization Interpersonal sCales Empathy Interpersonal Relationship adaptabIlIty sCales Reality Testing Problem Solving stress management sCales Stress Tolerance general mood sCales Optimism Happiness Impulse Control Flexibility Social Responsibility Emotional Self Awareness Independence

organizations must ensure that highly skilled, customer friendly employees are recruited, developed and retained. This paper has shown that a simple job title and interview may not be enough to match people to jobs. However, if an individuals particular strengths and motivations are matched to the functional requirements of a job and the organizations culture, the likelihood of success for that individual significantly increases. Ultimately, organizations who develop profiles of emotional and social skill sets necessary for a particular job and corporate culture will better succeed in identifying, attracting, developing and retaining the right people. Targeted employee selection and development enables companies to, as Tom Stewart says, mean it when they say employees are their most important asset. In light of the research, the ready availability of assessment instruments such as the BarOn EQ-I and effective intervention and coaching products, healthcare organizations can aggressively begin to create an environment of enhanced customer services through a rigorous and targeted employee selection and development process. With regard to EQ in the workplace, as Tom Stewart stated about intellectual capital, learn about it as if the future of your company and your career depend on it. They do.

Because there is such a strong connection between profitable healthcare organizations and patients perceptions regarding the quality of care they receive, healthcare

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