Onboarding in Healthcare...That works! | Educe (2024)

Educerecently partnered with LHC Group to discuss the challenges of onboarding in Healthcare. As one of the country’s largest home health, hospice, and community bases companies, it is critical for LHC to provide clear onboarding pathways for both hiring managers and their ~250 new hires per week. As part of that initiative, Regina Owens, LHC Group’s Manager of Instructional Design and Technology, led the successful implementation of Saba, a cloud-based LMS.

During an ATD Healthcare webinar with Educe, Regina described her team’s development of the strategic learning roadmap alongside a content and procedural overhaul to their T&D practices. Don’t have time to watch the full webinar? We’ve captured a few of Regina’s lessons learned for other organizations looking to improve their onboarding (or even general talent development) experience:

Step 1 – Gather user feedback
LHC’s T&D team decided to address employee issues and complaints, most of which will probably look familiar to many organizations:

• “There are too many different systems! How do we know which one to use for which task and for which resources?”
• “What am I supposed to be doing during orientation? I have no specific direction.”
• “As a manager, I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to onboard new team members.”

It was clear that the weak onboarding and training structures were costing the company dearly in terms of valuable talent, employee turnover and time. LHC knew that they had to act quickly.

Step 2 – Collaborate across departments
The L&D team partnered with employees from HR, IT, Help Desk, Leadership Development, Recruitment, and anyone else involved in onboarding to join forces on the new initiative.

Step 3 – Select a system:
While assessing system requirements, the teams looked beyond their current state to consider future system capabilities to support longer term goals and potential growth. With this criteria in mind, LHC selected Saba Cloud as their new learning management system (LMS).

Step 4 – Bring in system experts
LHC Group recognized the importance of working with an organization that knew the Saba system inside and out. They chose Educe Group, who has worked with some of the nation’s most prestigious Healthcare organizations, as their Saba implementation partner.

Step 5 – Identify barriers to success
LHC is faced with meeting the onboarding needs of a diverse user base containing a wide range of roles, disciplines and work schedules across several facilities. Plus, that list of facilities is always growing through acquisitions, which presents challenges in the form of new and inconsistent onboarding tools and processes.

Step 6 – Plan and execute solutions
LHC worked together with Educe tounderstand the LMS functionality and build a foundation that allowed them to strategize and execute their solution.

Below are some of the key measures:

• Streamlined requirements:Worked with various departments and governing bodies (eg. Joint Commision) to reexamine the necessity of each course, ultimately cutting out about one-third of assignments.
• Role-specific curricula: Created an individual orientation curriculum for every clinical role (eg. RNs, aids, managers) within each business line…not to mention a separate acquisition path for each role.
• Microlearning: Cut out unnecessary ‘fluff’ to create bite-sized content, digestible (< 2 min) video tutorials, quick-reference job aids and manager guides.
• Virtual classes & recordings: Constructed a comprehensive learning experience via a blend of web-based, in-person and virtual classes.
• Mobile learning: Provided on-the-go access to formal training, guides and policy documents from the field.
• Resource-sharing and discussion: Created collaborative pages for groups with automated membership enrollment.

The Results:

Overall, the initiative has successfully eliminated LHC’s pain points and improved their onboarding program. Since the system went live, they have seen an almost 100% elimination of new hire system access issues and help desk tickets. They have also seen a marked increase in learners’ use of the LMS resources and in orientation completion rates.

LHC now sends advance teams onsite to train new facilities on the system and onboarding procedures. They continue to actively improve and streamline those processes in keeping up with regulation changes, system enhancements, and acquisitions who bring new requirements. Since go live, they have successfully rolled out several new system features, including the Saba mobile app, and are planning to implement Saba Meeting by the end of this year.