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Building a Learning Culture that Drives Organizational Performance

December 21, 2021
December 21, 2021

HealthStream’s recent webinar, “Transform Your Approach to Training: Building A Learning Culture That Drives Organizational Performance” helped participants to re-focus on organizational culture-building activities after an 18-month period where it was difficult to focus on anything other than the pandemic.

Panel participants included:

  • Trisha Coady, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Workforce Development Solutions at HealthStream
  • Jamie Lamphear, Senior Product Manager for Quality Solutions at HealthStream
  • Jennifer Stoop, Compliance Solutions, HealthStream
  • Joanne Tate, Regulatory and Compliance Specialist, HealthStream

Coady kicked off the discussion by acknowledging that the last 18 months have caused many organizations to put their culture-building and educational activities on hold and that a “new kind of workforce will likely emerge from the chaos of the previous 18 months.”

Transforming Training to Build High-Reliability Organizations

Tate set the foundation by describing the characteristics of high-reliability organizations and acknowledging that it is a very high bar. “High-reliability organizations start with leadership that is focused on compliance and safety. They encourage transparency and empower staff to quickly identify failures as well as high-risk and problem-prone situations. In these organizations all staff, not just leadership, have a safety-focused mindset,” said Tate. She also went on to describe these organizations as nimble while describing how training is incorporated into the development of new processes. “New processes are quickly tested and implemented with training to support those new processes with information that is readily accessible to staff.” Tate went on to emphasize that patient and family engagement is at the core of the framework of a high-reliability organization.

Transforming Training to Ensure Safety

Stoop pointed out that there was nothing routine about safety procedures and went on to say that high-reliability organizations “start with policies and procedures that are in-line and up-to-date with federal regulations which then point to the essential elements of training.” Stoop went on to point out another characteristic of high-reliability organizations – they learn from their own mistakes. “They look to use their own failures and near-misses as learning experiences that will inform improvements in their systems and processes.” Stoop went on to say that “They need to know why this training is important, but they also need to be able to see themselves in it. They need to know that these kinds of errors can also happen on their watch.”

Transforming Training and Generational Differences

Generational differences impact the way that we learn and our learning preferences, but what are those differences and what strategies should we use to insure that learning is happening for employees at every age and stage of life?

Lamphear pointed to the vast amount of data about the different groups and how that data should really inform communication strategies. “Really analyzing and understanding these generational differences can help you develop educational programs. We need to ask, how do you do that? How can this meaningfully impact healthcare?” said Lamphear.

Tate encouraged organizations to use this data to insure that they have selected the right tools for their organizations. “What organizations can do is use this knowledge of the millennial characteristics to their advantage when they select tools to help their staff learn. Learning has to be clear, to the point, easy to understand and have mechanisms for built-in feedback. We need to keep millennials engaged in their work and glad that they are in healthcare”, said Tate.

Transforming Training and Efficiency

Lamphear went on to emphasize the importance of making training more efficient in order to optimize the amount of time that staff spent with patients. Lamphear pointed to data that suggested many organizations were spending in excess of seven hours on mandatory training that when mapped to the actual federal mandates should have been closer to one hour.

Coady also addressed the importance of accelerating the onboarding process while still addressing those mandated safety procedures. With HealthStream’s Safety Education and Compliance Education, Lamphear shared that “the courses have already been mapped to compliance requirements as well as best practices which results in removing extraneous topics and time from the equation.”