Milestone Retention: Retention Boards and Therapy Involvement

By Gary McGiven, Milestone Therapy Resource, Utah
Milestone’s HR Resource Brandon Lane has rolled out a retention plan with most of our facilities to better live our culture and show our new-hires our Love One Another culture. As a visual for the whole department head team to see and be a part of, this plan includes a retention board. This board has weekly tasks for the department head team to complete, following the employee from new-hire through their first 12 weeks. Some of the weekly tasks include:
● Assign a mentor
● Phone check in
● Non-work connection (i.e., off-site activity with mentor and/or other facility employee)
● Thank-you treats
● Empower them to recognize and reward a peer
● Send a text

With the retention boards being a department head focus, the Therapy leaders and their teams decided they wanted to partner with the department heads to take part in the retention process. To coincide with the facility’s retention plan, the Therapy departments each came up with a plan. Some of those ideas include:
● Therapy involvement in orientation process (transfer, gait belt, and body mechanics training)
● “Therapy Moment” in each all-staff meeting
● Therapy leader identifies new facility hires and relays to the team; each team member is encouraged to introduce themselves and get acquainted with the new-hires
● Discuss facility hires in weekly Therapy meeting and find out what was learned about new-hires
● Therapy “Open Door Friday” new-hires are encouraged to stop by Therapy for a treat and some therapy education

These are just a few of the ideas for the retention boards and the Therapy team retention plans. Our Therapy teams take loss of employees very seriously and want to be part of the solution to making a work environment where we are the facility’s workplace of choice.