Hospice & Palliative Care Group Reduces Turnover By 4x In First Year
CASE STUDY
Crossroads Hospice & Palliative Care had to reassess their “Even More Care” business model due to Medicare revising their reimbursement system for hospices nationwide. This reassessment created an internal recruitment and retention challenge. They needed a talent partner to design an internal talent function to elevate the employee experience and reduce turnover.
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Work with Meaning
Looking back I thought I knew what this course was about, but I had no idea, I don’t think you can know. We think we know what meaning is, but I certainly didn’t.
Patient Support Service Director, Crossroads Hospice & Palliative Care
The challenge
“By the time Pathways was brought in, our HR department was calculating in excess of a 75% turnover rate.”
Employee attrition at Crossroads was a problem. The company was facing levels of turnover that were costly to the bottom line due to a revision of reimbursement rates and a competitive supply and demand market – they couldn’t compete. Leaders had lost hope in bringing the culture back alive. By the time Pathways was brought in, the internal HR department was calculating a 75%+ turnover rate. The recruitment fire had to be put out first, then the talent acquisition team had to be re-engineered by partners that could design, develop and deploy a unique approach to solve the problem.
The logic
Crossroads was not satisfied with the level of turnover, creating higher than acceptable onboarding costs as well as causing a shift in culture. Leadership efforts were less than optimal, so Crossroads decided they needed to improve the talent acquisition function and ramp up the leadership training to alleviate the attrition. This required a different level of execution, one that they did not have the time to anchor alone: outside recruitment efforts by way of the Essence Mining Method and leadership training for a robust action to increase morale and culture.
The solution
To balance the need for a quick recruitment turnaround and an internal leadership and culture change, Pathways approached the challenge with a comprehensive and holistic solution. We first focused on internal talent acquisition by performing a key interview technique – Essence Mining – for recruitment, and Essence Mining the organization as a whole to determine the organizational language. Once the recruitment fires began to lessen, Pathways implemented the leadership development program to strengthen the leadership team and augment the morale. In doing so, the organization found their common language and created continuity. Crossroads began to see significant results.
The results
4X reduction in turnover
Over $7M savings on bottom line
Significant increase in morale
To evaluate the success of the Essence Mining technique and leadership training, Crossroads Hospice turnover was assessed over three years and compared to the previous years prior to the Pathways partnership. The results were both positive and consistent. Turnover decreased by four times in the first year and continually showed improvement up to the present, saving Crossroads Hospice over $7 million on their bottom line.
Due to leaders graduating from the leadership program, Crossroads began to see an increase in morale. The continued recruitment success and internal change driven by the implementation of the leadership program has proved to be a requisite in a continued successful relationship between the two partners.
