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In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, health plans face increasing challenges to provide quality care while identifying new efficiencies. As a result, more health plans are turning to technology and modern payer solutions software to help automate manual tasks, improve payment accuracy, and empower team members with more real-time data.

Six things health plan leaders should expect from their modern payer solutions software:

Streamline administrative operations:

Payer solutions software should automate labor-intensive processes such as claims processing, enrollment management, and provider network management. Health plans should be able to consolidate and manage data from various sources, which enables payers to reallocate resources to more critical areas, ultimately leading to increased operational efficiency.

Improve payment accuracy:

Payer solutions software must be able to help health plans increase efficiencies within their claims payment operations to not only streamline processes, but also increase payment accuracy. This, in turn, helps reduce the downstream work staff members have to perform to reconcile inaccurate payments.

Enhance member engagement:

By using modern payer solutions software, health plans can more efficiently identify at-risk member populations and deploy more targeted member outreach, health plans are able to not only streamline care management workflows, but also increase the productivity and scale of care management teams. Plus, with more personalized engagement, members are more likely to adhere to their care plans and improve outcomes.

Optimize claims and configuration management:

Payer solutions software should support automated claims processing and contract configuration. As the industry evolves at a rapid pace, the system should enable business agility and speed to market. Additionally, the solution should provide advanced analytics help health plans identify cost-saving opportunities, such as identifying and preventing fraudulent claims, negotiating more favorable contracts with providers, and optimizing risk adjustment models.

Facilitate value-based care:

As the healthcare industry shifts towards value-based care models (paying for value and outcomes vs. paying for volume), modern payer solutions software must be able to accommodate for multiple, complex payment models. Strong data analytics and reporting capabilities are also important capabilities that help health plans assess provider performance, identify high-risk members, and implement targeted interventions, which in turn enables health plans to drive better health outcomes and cost savings.

Promote interoperability and integration:

Modern payer solutions software must be able to support interoperability and integration with third-party systems to not only comply with emerging regulatory requirements, but also to meet rapidly evolving market dynamics. A robust set of APIs should be available to support the exchange and use of third-party data, and in some cases, pre-packaged integrations should be available to help minimize the IT burden and accelerate time to market.

Health plans achieve extreme efficiencies with HealthEdge payer solutions software

In the face of an ever-changing healthcare landscape, health plans need modern payer solutions software like HealthEdge’s comprehensive suite of software solutions that can enable business agility and create extreme efficiencies.

• HealthEdge’s core administrative processing system (CAPS), HealthRules^® Payer, revolutionizes the way health plans handle administrative tasks, leading to significant time and cost savings.
• HealthEdge’s prospective payment integrity platform, Source, enables health plans to transform their operations at the reimbursement, payment integrity, and enterprise levels.
• HealthEdge’s complete Care Management workflow platform, GuidingCare®, offers both health plans and providers easy-to-use, next-generation data integration and workflow management tools that streamline workflows, facilitate coordination and collaboration, accelerate quality improvement, and promote provider and patient engagement.
• HealthEdge’s digital health management and engagement platform, Wellframe, helps organizations extend their reach across more critical touchpoints and deliver modern member services more efficiently. Members can access their health information, review claims, and even schedule appointments.

HealthEdge’s comprehensive suite of payer solutions software applications meet the above-mentioned requirements for modern payer solutions software, and more. To learn more about how HealthEdge can help your health plan drive extreme efficiencies, visit www.healthedge.com.

Earlier this year, a select group of clinical leaders from across the country gathered with HealthEdge and Wellframe at the Clinical Leadership Forum, an event that provided a unique opportunity for thought leadership, in-person connection, and learning. Through the lens of leveraging care management as a catalyst for digital transformation, sessions focused on strategy, regulatory compliance, innovative technology, value-based care, member engagement, and more.

Of particular interest to attendees was the growing connection between regulatory compliance and the member experience – a topic that spurred thought-provoking conversation and discussion. Today, this topic continues to hold relevance for health plans as an increasing number of regulations emphasize the member experience.

Here, we summarize key learnings and takeaways from the session, “Quality Insights & Regulatory Update,” which covered evolving regulatory changes and the increasing influence of health equity and member experience as factors for achieving compliance. The session presenters, clinical experts from HealthEdge, also discussed how health plans can prepare and support compliance in the rapidly changing landscape.

Let’s dive into the key learnings and takeaways from this informative session.

The Importance of Member Engagement Reaches New Heights

While member engagement has long been recognized as crucial, it has now reached unprecedented importance. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted existing health disparities and underscored the need for enhanced member engagement to address the challenge. Health disparities are preventable and new regulations aim to put better measures in place to improve engagement of priority populations and advance health outcomes where disparities exist today.

Changes in Regulatory Measures

The presenters discussed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) proposed changes set for December 2024 that target improvements in member engagement and health equity, which ties member satisfaction closely with outcomes. Proposed changes include:

• Reducing the weight of patient experience to better align with outcomes.
• Identifying and offering health education to improve digital health literacy.
• Improving language accessibility by delivering materials in all languages spoken by members.
• Delivering culturally competent care to better support diverse populations.
• Changing and enhancing calculations to better align with other programs.

The presenters also covered updates to HEDIS measures to better support diverse and underserved populations and improve their engagement.

A New Trend in Regulatory Changes: Member Engagement

The presenters pointed to an underlying theme across many new regulatory changes: increased focus on member engagement. As a result, optimizing the member experience and engagement is becoming even more of a top priority for health plans. To deliver on this priority, health plans should evaluate how they are supporting members needs in five key areas:

1. Multiple channels of communication: Health plans should work to understand how their members want to communicate and strive to offer those methods. Offering the right methods of communication is the first step to ensuring members receive the information they need to better manage their care.
2. Strategic outreach & follow-up: Intentional follow-up to build relationships or outreach after appointments and procedures can improve engagement.
3. Streamlined member service experience: Health plan leaders should know customer service call stats and hold times, listen to calls to understand if issues are truly being resolved, and find out how customer service teams are engaging with members. Deeper knowledge of the real customer experience allows health plan leaders to assess and make improvements as needed.
4. Identify unengaged members and activate campaigns to re-engage: Gather data to holistically understand the member experience and identify unengaged members. Using claims data, encounter data, failed outreach attempts, and more gives health plans the opportunity to assess whether members are taking steps needed to effectively manage their health.
5. Understand the impact of member experience on outcomes: Health plans should consider conducting surveys to understand the member experience and make improvements. Also, consider the value of annual wellness visits and regular appointments, as members who are getting next level care through mammograms, lab testing, colonoscopies, and more can take steps to manage their health concerns as needed – and have a significant impact on outcomes.

Partner Expectations: Using Technology to Advance Member Engagement

The right technology partner can support health plans in their journey toward improving member engagement and outcomes tied to regulatory compliance. Seek care management partners that deliver the following capabilities:

Robust reporting: Ensure reporting capabilities can facilitate quality improvement projects and demonstrate that the plan is improving member health. Effective reporting should allow health plans to identify unengaged members, get them engaged, and keep them engaged.

Member demographics: Ensure the system can capture key data points, report out, and stratify that data. Key demographics include geographic location, gender identify, race, ethnicity, and more.

Detailed HRAs that drive Plan of Care & Service Plan: Use technology with capabilities to enter surveys, get members responses, and capture data. The technology should allow care managers to use the data to ensure the care plan is specifically targeted based on information collected.

Real time referrals to Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) providers: Implement full integration with social care providers to enable care managers to better manage all individualized member needs.

Care gap monitoring and closure: Use technology that identifies care gaps and supports methods to intervene and drive closure.

Programs identification and management: Seek partners with capabilities that automatically identify members for complex and disease management programs through self-reported or automated data collection. Ensure the technology uses the data to assign members to the right care coordinator to ease the process of improving engagement for high-risk populations.

Integrated educational content: Implement technology with the ability to deliver clinically sound, evidence-based data through effective communication channels. This capability is critical to combat misinformation and improve care outcomes.

Interdisciplinary team management: Deliver tools, such a provider portal, to allow the full team to understand member needs, see their goals, talk to members about those goals and help work towards achieving them.

Take the Next Steps Toward Supporting Regulatory Compliance and Member Engagement

By promoting health literacy, addressing disparities, and prioritizing member engagement, health plans can navigate the shifting regulatory landscape. Collaborating with the right partners and leveraging modern technological capabilities allows health plans to deliver high-quality, equitable care and achieve positive health outcomes.

Learn how GuidingCare and Wellframe from HealthEdge can help health plans achieve these goals by visiting www.healthedge.com.

 

In an era where healthcare costs continue to rise, the concept of value-based care has emerged as a game-changer in the health insurance industry. Value-based care focuses on achieving better patient outcomes while reducing costs and improving the member experience.

To effectively implement and manage value-based care contracts, modern software solutions have become essential. In this blog post, we will explore how value-based care software is transforming the health insurance landscape and optimizing outcomes for patients, providers, and payers.

Understanding Value-Based Care

Value-based care is a departure from the traditional fee-for-service model, where providers are reimbursed based on the volume of services rendered. Instead, value-based care focuses on aligning incentives between payers and providers to promote quality care, patient satisfaction, and cost-effectiveness. Contracts are structured around outcomes, quality metrics, and patient satisfaction.

The Challenges of Implementing Value-Based Care Contracts

While the concept of value-based care is promising, its implementation poses significant challenges for health plans. Tracking and analyzing vast amounts of data from multiple sources, calculating reimbursements based on outcomes, and ensuring accurate reporting require sophisticated software solutions that can handle complex computations and streamline processes.

Value-based care software solutions, like those from HealthEdge, play a pivotal role in successfully implementing and managing value-based care contracts. These modern solutions offer a range of features and functionalities that optimize the healthcare ecosystem:

Data Aggregation and Analysis

Value-based care software solutions facilitate the aggregation of data from various sources, such as electronic health records, claims data, and social service providers. Advanced analytics capabilities allow for the extraction of valuable insights, identifying patterns, and predicting member outcomes. These insights drive informed decision-making, enabling health plans to determine which members may be at risk for developing costly complications and need more personal, proactive care.

Care Coordination and Communication

Value-based care software can enable more seamless collaboration and communication among care teams, members, and payers. Real-time updates, shared care plans, and secure messaging platforms ensure effective coordination and enhanced member engagement. By fostering continuity of care and reducing duplication of services, value-based care software optimizes patient outcomes while minimizing costs.

Performance Monitoring and Reporting

To ensure accountability and adherence to quality standards, modern value-based care software solutions enable continuous performance monitoring and reporting. Payers can monitor network performance, measure the effectiveness of interventions, and drive network optimization strategies. Providers can track their performance against established quality metrics, identify areas for improvement, and proactively address gaps in care.

Benefits of Value-Based Care Software

Implementing value-based care software offers numerous benefits to all stakeholders involved:

1. Improved Member Outcomes: By leveraging real-time data and analytics, value-based care software empowers health plans to deliver personalized care plans, preventive interventions, and evidence-based treatments. Members receive more comprehensive, proactive, and coordinated care, resulting in improved health outcomes and enhanced member satisfaction.
2. Cost Savings and Efficiency: Value-based care software streamlines administrative processes, reduces paperwork, and automates tasks, enabling care managers to allocate more time and resources to at-risk and rising-risk members. By promoting preventive care and early intervention, costly complications can be minimized, leading to significant cost savings for payers and patients alike.
3. Enhanced Provider-Payer Collaboration: Value-based care software promotes collaboration between providers and payers, fostering a shared commitment to delivering quality care. Through transparent data sharing, real-time performance feedback, and aligned incentives, providers and payers can work together to optimize care delivery, drive population health management, and negotiate mutually beneficial contracts.

Driving Value Through Value-Based Care Software

As the health insurance industry continues to evolve, so will the ways in which health plans create and manage their value-based care contracts. Value-based care software empowers stakeholders to harness the power of data, streamline processes, and foster collaboration, ultimately revolutionizing the healthcare ecosystem. By embracing value-based care software, the health insurance industry can unlock the full potential of value-based care, leading to better patient outcomes, increased cost savings, and better member experiences in the future.

At HealthEdge, our full suite of software solutions supports our customers’ efforts to embrace value-based care contracts in many ways, including:

• GuidingCare^® care management solutions that help health plans coordinate and manage care for members more effectively. These solutions include care coordination tools, population health management tools, and analytics to identify high-risk members and deliver more personalized care plans for better health outcomes.
• HealthRules^® Payer, an advanced Core Administrative Processing System (CAPS), supports health plans’ ability to manage multiple, complex payment models with the efficiency, flexibility, insights, and agility necessary to control costs, embrace change, and move quickly to take advantage of new opportunities value-based care models afford.
• Source, HealthEdge’s prospective payment integrity platform, includes rich editing libraries with history-based capabilities and enables easy development of customized edits, improved transparency, and reduced downstream work from inaccurate payments, which leads to better provider and member relations.
• Member Engagement: HealthEdge’s Wellframe solution enhances member engagement and empowerment. This may involve mobile apps or member portals that enable patients to access their health information, schedule appointments, receive reminders, and communicate with their care team.
• Data Analytics: All HealthEdge solutions incorporate advanced data analytics’ capabilities that help health plans gain actionable insights from virtually any data source, identify cost-effective treatment options, assess provider performance, and optimize care delivery.
• Integration and Interoperability: Seamless data exchange and interoperability are critical in value-based care. HealthEdge solutions aim to integrate with various electronic health record (EHR) systems, health information exchanges (HIEs), and other healthcare applications to ensure smooth data flow and better care coordination.

To learn more about how HealthEdge value-based care software solutions can help your organization thrive in a value-based care world, visit www.healthedge.com.

Star ratings have long been a cornerstone of assessing the quality and performance of health insurance plans from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). These ratings play a crucial role in helping beneficiaries make informed decisions about their healthcare options. For payers, Star ratings bring incentives to improve their services and member outcomes to achieve higher ratings.

However, recent developments in the Star ratings program are set to bring about significant challenges for many payers.

One of the most notable changes is the introduction of a health equity index in 2027. Social risk factors, such as income, education, housing, and access to transportation, can significantly impact individuals’ health outcomes. The health equity index aims to evaluate how well health plans are addressing these factors and working towards reducing health disparities among their beneficiaries. However, this presents signification challenges for payers:

• Data Collection and Standardization: Assessing social risk factors requires reliable and comprehensive data. Payers will need to collect and analyze data from various sources to accurately evaluate their performance. Standardizing the data collection process across different plans and regions may also prove to be a complex task.
• Resource Allocation: Addressing social risk factors often involves implementing community-based programs, outreach initiatives, and partnerships with social service organizations. Payers will need to allocate resources effectively to support these efforts while balancing their financial viability and sustainability.
• Collaborative Approach: Tackling social determinants of health (SDoH) requires collaboration among multiple stakeholders, including healthcare providers, community organizations, and government agencies. Payers must foster partnerships and cooperation to drive meaningful change in social risk factors, which may require navigating complex networks and overcoming potential resistance.
• Long-Term Impact Measurement: Evaluating the impact of interventions targeting social risk factors requires a long-term perspective. Changes in health outcomes may not be immediately evident, requiring payers to invest in ongoing monitoring and assessment to accurately gauge the effectiveness of their efforts.
• Addressing Inequities: The health equity index aims to reduce disparities in health outcomes among beneficiaries. However, payers may encounter challenges in identifying and addressing specific inequities within their member populations, as these disparities are influenced by a range of complex and interconnected factors.

Other proposed changes to Star ratings:

• Limited Application of the “Better of” Methodology: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, CMS allowed all contracts to use the existing disaster provision in 2022. This provision enabled contracts to choose the “better of” current or historical performance for most measures. However, in 2023, this methodology will no longer apply universally.
• Implementation of Upper and Lower Limits (Guardrails): Starting in 2023, CMS will implement annual guardrails on changes in cut points for non-CAHPS measures. Cut points define the ranges within which a contract’s score on a specific measure needs to fall to achieve each Star value. These guardrails will introduce more challenging cut points, potentially impacting the ratings of MA plans.
• Removal of Performance Outliers: In 2024, CMS will use the Tukey outlier deletion method to remove performance outliers from the calculation of non-CAHPS measure rating cut points. This change aims to enhance the accuracy of the ratings but may pose additional challenges for MA plans.

To mitigate negative impacts, Medicare Advantage plans must turn to modern care management systems that support the growing complexities of performance measurement programs. Payers should embrace these challenges and use them as opportunities for growth and improvement. The journey towards achieving higher Star ratings and ensuring equitable healthcare requires dedication, innovation, and a deep understanding of the diverse needs of the communities they serve.

To learn more about how HealthEdge’s GuidingCare care management solution suite can help your organization address the growing challenges associated with Star ratings, visit www.healthedge.com.

Good privacy practices have become a valuable business asset that produces a myriad of benefits.

Processing data and protecting data are fundamental components of today’s digital economy, generating extraordinary value and catastrophic risk across the globe. Fueled by the increasing number of large-scale and well-publicized data breaches and a growing privacy awareness, individuals and businesses are becoming more discerning about the parties with whom they choose to do business. In addition to the quality of a business’s products or services, individuals want to know how companies incorporate privacy into their operations and want assurances that their personal information will be treated with the utmost care and respect. Individuals are more likely to share their information with companies they know will keep their data safe, making trust an essential component of the information exchange between individuals and the companies with whom they choose to do business.

The risk of harm to an individual from the loss or exposure of personal information is particularly apparent in healthcare due to the sensitive nature of the information involved. Medical records, test results, and other types of protected health information (PHI) hold an incredible amount of private data that could cause extraordinary harm or embarrassment if exposed or stolen. Protecting the privacy of high-risk information requires a proactive and multi-faceted approach and companies must implement strong privacy and security measures to safeguard PHI from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.  The sprawl of digital data compounds the innate challenges that come with the responsibility of safeguarding personal information. Privacy regulations, like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), have requirements that can be time-consuming and complex. Administrative safeguards, such as access controls, can hinder operational ease due to limitations on employees who can access PHI. However, in the digitized healthcare industry, the preservation of privacy is paramount.

At HealthEdge, we value privacy and utilize an integrated approach to ensure that the information entrusted to us remains protected and secure.

Privacy + Security

While privacy focuses on the appropriate and permissible handling of data, security is responsible for implementing technological measures and safeguards that actively protect data from unauthorized access, loss, or exposure. At HealthEdge, the Privacy and Security teams work together in a dynamic and collaborative partnership to instill good privacy practices and security safeguards throughout the enterprise.  Implementing robust security measures that align with broader privacy principles like data integrity provides a layered data protection approach that effectively mitigates areas of increased risk.

Comprehensive Risk Assessments

Comprehensive risk management should incorporate privacy assessments to properly identify and mitigate risks to an enterprise. Risk assessments are a commonly used risk management process for identifying and evaluating the likelihood, vulnerability, threat, and impact of identified risks throughout a company’s operations. Enterprise-wide privacy risk assessments can help businesses identify overlooked vulnerabilities, encourage opportunities for collaborative decision-making, spur creative innovation in the development of new data protection solutions, and increase employees’ privacy awareness.

Minimum Necessary Standard

Companies with strong privacy programs recognize the heightened risks that sensitive data carries and implement a variety of safeguards to ensure their data is adequately protected. By prioritizing privacy, businesses can demonstrate their commitment to protecting personal information while also mitigating the risk of security incidents and data breaches.  At HealthEdge, we enforce the minimum necessary standard for our data processing activities. The minimum necessary standard is a data minimization requirement under HIPAA and a fundamental privacy principle meaning only the minimum necessary data should be used to accomplish the intended business purpose. By minimizing the collection and use of personal information, companies can demonstrate their commitment to protecting personal information and reduce the risk of processing a surplus of information.

The Value of Good Privacy

Companies should have a firm understanding of these fundamental privacy practices, a cross-functional approach to data protection efforts, and the ability to recognize and adapt to the evolving (and expanding) privacy preferences of customers who are looking for businesses they can trust. The successful evolution of a company’s privacy program into a full Privacy by Design (PbD) framework is largely dependent on receiving intradepartmental and leadership support, but support for driving privacy initiatives forward can be a challenge. Stakeholders should know the necessity of privacy in today’s environment and understand how it can be leveraged as a competitive differentiator that builds trust. Aligning privacy goals with core business objectives can influence business decisions and help ensure that privacy is prioritized and supported. A trustworthy reputation is an asset that can generate economic value, attract new customers, and fortify a company’s ability to withstand challenging incidents.

At HealthEdge, we understand the vital role that privacy plays in securing customer trust and embodying good data stewardship. By prioritizing privacy, the data that is shared with us is kept confidential and secure.

 

A robust and thriving employee experience boasts happy and loyal customers, high performing teams, and a work environment that exudes flexibility and purpose. A well curated employee experience captivates great talent and makes them want to stay. Powerful dividends like these cannot be ignored and employers must pay attention to ensure they maintain the competitive positioning of having the best talent serve their customers.

At HealthEdge, we have been committed to our employees for years. Years before the pandemic, we focused on employee engagement. Through annual surveys, we would tap into the employee voice and digest the results collectively focusing on how we can learn and grow and ultimately improve together. This has become the foundation of our approach to employee experience.   Since the pandemic, many forces have changed our approach to achieving the same end state. Internally, HealthEdge has grown organically and inorganically, we have acquired and welcomed new products into our product suite and constantly seek ways to fulfill our vision of innovating a world where healthcare can focus on people. Externally, we lived through drastic shifts that have left many lasting effects on the way we live and work. To continue to approach employee engagement the same way we had through all that change felt shortsighted and I am proud of how we stayed curious and flexible. This work is never done but with employee experience as our north star, creating something intentional with our company culture has renewed vigor.

If you are interested in doing this too, we recommend building your employee experience model around the following:

1. Purpose

Employees want to know about your purpose. They want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves. A powerful, compelling purpose and why is critical to employee engagement in their work and connection to those around them. We want our employees to be excited about how we’re shaping the future of healthcare. Therefore, it is our responsibility to tell that story, over and over.  You know the story and principles have sunk in when they begin telling others.  Find your company’s purpose and make sure it is persuasive and inspiring, then tell everyone, and then tell them again.

2. Enablement

Enablement is a reflection of whether an employee has what they believe they need to do their job well. Fundamentally, this is highly subjective territory. I am not advising you to please everyone, but asking staff about their perspectives equips you with insights into their expectations.  This is about recognizing themes and solving for the collective. More than anything it is about listening to your staff and ensuring they feel heard.  Enablement goes beyond tools and resources used to do the mechanics of the job. It encompasses collaboration, community, and camaraderie as well. At HealthEdge, among other things, this dialogue and feedback has led us to streamline our digital collaboration tools as well as how we collaborate in person within our hybrid work environment.  We are always working to improve how we purposely gather during our monthly collaboration weeks. Talk to your employees about enablement, community, and collaboration topics because these are unspoken pillars that are critical to keeping employees engaged.

3. Autonomy

Autonomy means setting the vision and empowering your employees to make it happen. It means trusting your employees and enabling them to make decisions. For years, we have been inspired by the work of Daniel Pink who coined “autonomy, mastery, and purpose” as the fundamental factors that DRIVE employees. Granting autonomy can manifest in many ways. It can be finding ways to support remote or hybrid work based on the asynchronous workflows. It can be evaluating how much oversight managers and leaders provide vs allowing your teams space to exercise new skills. With autonomy, employees can harness the power of maximizing their personal productivity, creativity, and flow. Autonomy is highly reflective work and leads to greater ownership over the work. As you get started, talk to your teams about small ways that would have big impacts.

4. Rewards & Recognition

Rewarding and recognizing talent are paramount to employee experience. Rewards are tangible and transactional in nature: salary, benefits, PTO, holidays, etc. Regardless of the offerings you have available, it is paramount that your process for rewarding is consistent, fair, and equitable. Our approach to rewards at HealthEdge is merit based, meaning they are intrinsically connected to recognition of a job well done. In 2022, we added 4 extra company holidays in the summer – this created four 4-day weekends in the US, putting our values of encouraging our employees to take time to relax and recharge into action. Where rewards are transactional, recognition is motivational. Recognition is what drives behavior, builds connection, and breeds a self-sustaining culture.  Non-monetary recognition can take the form of saying thank you, publicly shouting out your appreciation of a job well done, providing new opportunities, mentoring/coaching, etc. People want to be seen and heard and recognized for the contributions they make. At HealthEdge we have an organic culture of appreciation best exhibited by our public and global “rockstars channel”. On this channel anyone can thank or give a shoutout to a person or team that made a difference, while the initial shoutout is amazing the best part is watching the shared celebration happen in supportive comments. Celebrate and recognize big and small efforts and be fair, consistent and equitable in rewards.

5. Leadership

Finally, the last element critical to strong employee experiences is strong leadership. Leaders and managers are the lynchpin – from the behaviors they model, the vision they set, and the experiences they create with their teams. Leaders/managers bring the above elements to life and into everyday actions. Employees work for managers first, companies second. At HealthEdge we have focused on supporting, empowering, and equipping our manager and leader population to be brilliant at the basics: from how to host great 1:1s, to engaging in feedback, navigating potentially difficult situations, and strengthening their emotional intelligence (EQ). Assess how you are supporting the employee experience from this lens? Don’t lose site that manager relationships are the grassroots level of this work. 

The Dividends of Employee Experience

Employee experiences are an amalgamation of everything the employee interacts with beyond their day to day job tasks: people, process, tools, physical or virtual workspaces, etc. Most experiences are not under management’s control because true culture is what happens when no one is looking. The trick is focusing on what you can influence, facilitate, and improve. Remember to keep the end in mind as you embark on this work. Remember the interconnectedness of how employee experience, engagement, and satisfaction lead to improved business outcomes.  Happy, satisfied, engaged, empowered, connected employees expend discretionary effort. It is that effort of going the extra mile to; deliver better products and services, provide enhanced customer service, become brand ambassadors who speak highly about the company, that builds connection and loyalty resulting in people who are more likely to stay and refer others. You will know it is working when the virtuous cycle begins – when without intervention you notice these efforts in action organically.  There is so much you can start doing today to yield better employee experiences- let’s make work better!

Learn more about working at HealthEdge here.