PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Innovative Program “OPENS” Doors for MI Health Care Workers, Employers
OPEN Program Provides Roadmap for Health Care Workers to Keep Jobs and Advance Their Careers
Lansing, MI, February 4, 2008 -Michigan’s innovative Kent County Health Field Collaborative (HFC), through its pilot Opportunity Partnership & Empowerment Network (OPEN) program, offers exciting potential to address the “care gap” – Michigan’s rapidly growing number of elders and people with disabilities and ever-shrinking pool of caregivers. The HFC consists of a group of employers working together – along with partners from government, educational institutions, and other not-for-profits – to solve recruitment and retention challenges in health care. Together they identified the challenges employers face now and in the future with growing the workforce. According to a new case study by PHI, a nonprofit organization that supports quality long-term care by improving the quality of direct-care jobs, the OPEN program has achieved impressive results with employee retention. The OPEN program, which the HFC based on a retention model developed by The Source (a coalition of Grand Rapids area manufacturers dedicated to collaborative approaches to employee retention and advancement), saw among its key results significant drops in the overall turnover rates of direct-care workers – those who provide services and supports to elders and people living with disabilities.
Two of the five participating health care employers reportedly cut their turnover rates in half during the two-year pilot while another company reported a drop from an average of 36 percent to 22 percent. Another noteworthy result is the retention of those employees who accessed OPEN services. During the pilot, over 80 percent of employees utilizing the program maintained their employment. All of these employees were at risk of losing their jobs due to an inability to successfully manage personal challenges along with work expectations.
“Unlike an employee assistance program, a benefit offered by many employers, the OPEN program is structured to be geared towards the employee population most at risk of losing their jobs,” said Carol Helsel, vice president of Human Resources at Porter Hills Retirement Communities & Services. The program addressed common barriers to maintaining employment such as issues relating to finances, child care and transportation. “Turnover rates fall significantly when workers receive adequate support and training,” said Hollis Turnham, MI state director for PHI. “That’s why the HFC and its OPEN program are so important – they provide a model for addressing the care gap before it spirals out of control. The HFC is developing a sustainable approach for expanded employer-provided support services for frontline caregivers.”
OPEN was developed and launched by the HFC in 2004 as a two-year pilot program to help keep frontline employees in their jobs. One OPEN employer estimated the cost of turnover ran as high as $5,000 per frontline worker. While across the long-term care industry annual turnover rates among direct-care workers are estimated to be as high as 70 percent, among the five employers who initially participated in the OPEN pilot, turnover rates were as high as 58 percent.
The OPEN program consists of a shared Occupational Enhancement Coordinator, based at Goodwill Industries, who provides counseling and support to workers to help them overcome barriers to sustained employment. Additional assistance offered through the program includes:
- Opportunities for training and education, from basic health skills to English as a second language and career development;
- Workshops for managers and workers to improve communication across class and cultures.
Employees who used OPEN services repeatedly praised their experiences with the occupational enhancement coordinator as overwhelmingly positive and critical to their career success. “With the coordinator’s help, work has become more flexible and so I can manage. I wasn’t going to be able to hold on to my job and that would have really been a hardship,” said Kathleen. “OPEN makes opportunities available to you.” Supervisors and staff from the HFC’s participating companies also received training. Managers participated in a Poverty Simulation Program and both managers and workers attended workshops based on the seminal work of Dr. Ruby Payne to help better understand the “hidden rules” of social class and communicating across socioeconomic lines.
The overwhelming success of the OPEN pilot, which concluded in 2006, led the HFC to continue this program beyond the pilot period and expand its focus into other areas of opportunity. Currently, several initiatives are underway:
- Development of a new program called ACT (Assess, Counsel, Train) to assist employees with career advancement through the use of a step-by-step process with built in guides to enhance an employee’s ability to be successful;
- Expansion of the HFC towards adjacent counties (Muskegon and Ottawa);
- Pilot test of a caseworker program with the Michigan Department of Human Services modeled after OPEN.
PHI concludes that the HFC and its OPEN program in Kent County, Michigan, offers a highly adaptable model to the health care sector that makes a positive difference in the lives of frontline workers, in the bottom line of their employers, and ultimately, to the clients that both serve. For a copy of the full report, download Opportunity Partnership & Empowerment Network: A Case Study of an Effective Employee Retention Project (pdf 547k).
Contact: Carol Helsel
President of the Health Field Collaborative
Vice President of Human Resources
Porter Hills Retirement Communities & Services
4450 Cascade Rd. SE, Suite 200
Grand Rapids, MI 49546
chelsel@porterhills.org
Maureen Sheahan
PHI Michigan
248-376-5701
MSheahan@PHInational.org
Alan Krawitz
Youngworth Communications, Inc.
Public Relations, Ph: 1-800-615-1230, Ext. 1180
newsroom@youngworthpr.com
I have to wonder how much money all this cost. Programs like this are good but when so much focus is on one element of the front line staff, the other elements lose importance; the other elements and aides who have it all together suddenly find themselves being held to a higher standard…I’ve seen this firsthand in the past 5 yrs or so.
I believe these programs drive down wages and expectations of good care. They may help some..but others see it as a slap in the face.
Aides who are not “disadvantaged” are indeed held to higher standard; they are expected to shoulder more burdens and take on more workload. Yet they get no credit or better wage for being able to do all this.
In a way, these programs are driving out those aides who want to do this work, who work for their own solutions to their own problems, and who stick with the profession for years..whereas these people who seem to always need help tend to come and go. I don’t know.
The other thing I see with these programs is the lack of attention to the true issues affecting aides: Poor pay (that could help with paying the babysitter); no insurance; no real empowerment. And, finally these programs create dependence upon others to solve one’s own issues. And they become an excuse for poor performance…which really irks many of us.
As one of the PHI staff who researched and wrote the case study, I wanted to respond to some of the points in Patti’s thoughtful post. Thanks for caring a lot and taking the time to speak of your concerns.
I agree wholeheartedly with you that programs like OPEN are not the whole picture to linking quality jobs to quality care. OPEN is not a substitute for good wages and benefits. And, it seems true to me that the low wages and lack of benefits that are the norm for many caregivers generate a good deal of the need for such initiatives.
Yet, I wouldn’t want to undervalue efforts like OPEN because of that reality. It represents a positive response that acknowledges the challenges that many direct care workers face and that alleviates some of their difficulties and is doing good, even though it’s occurring in a broader context we also wish we could change now. As long as employers cannot see a way to pay higher salaries and benefits, but can envision some steps that support many workers, it seems good to encourage those steps and offer models to spread them.
Another issue that you raised highlighted the frustration many hardworking, independent workers feel who are able to live up to management requirements and provide great care without the kinds of assistance offered by OPEN – and often without much appreciation or recognition. When managers focuses their intention only on those employees who are challenged and need supports, and ignore the contributions of workers who do not call attention to themselves because of their steady reliability, it undermines the entire culture and success of the workplace, and has to be challenged as poor management. Highly performing workers need recognition and to be appreciated.
Supporting workers who need interventions when they are going through challenging times, though, doesn’t take anything away from the independently successful ones, particularly when programs like OPEN move that help off of in-house supervisors to others outside the LTC organization. It can actually help make their work lives easier too – as they work over less often to cover fewer absences, and work short-staffed less often, and share workloads with co-workers who are less stressed and strained.
It’s also really important to stress that the people helped in the OPEN program aren’t necessarily, or even usually “chronically troubled” employees. They’re like the great employee who is the Mom of an autistic son whose car is unreliable and who doesn’t know of all the community supports available to help her with her child. The reliable worker who is going through a horrific divorce and trying to hold her life together. Many of us who are usually valued employees go through tough times and it would be such a much more better world if we all had somewhere to turn. What we saw in OPEN was an investment to keep reliable employees who have a rough patch not an attempt to hold on to employees who cannot make it.
Finally, OPEN is occurring within a context of broader programs being sponsored by the Health Field Collaborative (HFC) that includes opportunities for education and career development for all employees, and training for supervisors and staff in communications and culture change. If the OPEN retention program was the only positive initiative of the HFC, it would fail for the reasons you cite, as well as because the OPEN program would get a reputation as being only for “problem employees,” and no one would want to take advantage of its services.”
I am a newly hired employee at Porter Hills and I am interested in the job training program that the OPEN Program offers. I can be reached at (616) 745-5159.
I am a CENA in the Health Center an am interested in attending a course at Walker Medical to learn EKG and advance my Phlebotomy skills. I you could give me some information on the opportunities avaiable I would appreciate being able to ask you some questions.
Thank You,
Haria L. Smith
Hello Haria,
We currently don’t offer training through the OPEN Program. You may be referring to our ACT Program, were would do offer training, but only for positions that we currently have at Porter Hills.
I have heard of some training being offered for EKG and Phlebotomy through the Goodwill, Michigan Encumbent Worker Program, but again we are not allowed to offer those position through this program because they do not exist at Porter Hills. Currently the only training we are able to offer is for a CNA.
I wanted to make a correction to my previous reply regarding the ACT program. I have done some additional research on the ACT Program and found that it is used for any employee seeking a career change, regardless of what career they end up pursuing. The ACT Program uses a process to assess the best career fit for an employee and connect them with education and training to move in that direction.