"We will know how many nurses we need for the coming year and bake that into our budget," Gage told Modern Healthcare after his panel on employee retention.
Instead of receiving an unwieldy amount of engagement information, managers will have an actionable dataset that includes a green, yellow or red light to reflect an employee's future turnover risk. Then they can drill down on what perceptions of the organization are material and tweak accordingly, Gage said.
The tool also forecasts how many graduates will be coming out of certain markets and what Bon Secours Mercy Health's capture rate is.
"Then we know the key partnerships to invest in to secure a pipeline," Gage said
Mercy Health and Bon Secours recently finalized their merger to create a 43-hospital system with around $8 billion in operating revenue and more than 57,000 employees.
While the software is not unique to Bon Secours Mercy Health, the predictive analytics tool will help add some certainty to its workforce and financial planning, Gage said. Predictive analytics combined with machine learning is a differentiator, he said.
But importantly, healthcare organizations have to use technology that allows them to humanize rather than separate, Gage said.
"Machine learning is about to reinvent analytics holistically," he said.
Giving employees a place to growEmployees — especially millennials — want to work at healthcare organizations where they feel connected to the mission and values of the organization.
One way organizations can convey their mission is by focusing on how employees work together, said Susan Wasmund, head of Americas occupancy planning at JLL, a real estate investment management company.
As healthcare becomes increasingly more collaborative and team-based, it's important for organizations to have designated spaces for staff to get together and work on projects. Millennials in particular also want more options to do their work away from their desk.
"The healthcare administration space is very office intensive — it doesn't have the type of collaborative spaces that could help bring new innovations," she said.
A clearer message from healthcare organizations about what their unique values are can be a recruiting tactic in competitive healthcare markets, said Vicki Eickelberger, managing director of Big Red Rooster at JLL.
A nurse who has the option to choose between two hospitals in town may be more attracted to the hospital that clearly expresses his or her own personal connection.
"Healthcare has the ability … to tap into their sense of purpose and that is so powerful," Eickelberger said.
This plays out at Lafayette General Health where employees are asked to evaluate their own performance including professional goals and values.
The exercise becomes a way for the employees to make long-term professional goals at the organization, said David Callecod, president of Lafayette.
"When you give employees the opportunity to evaluate themselves on standards they are harder on themselves than the leaders are," he said.
