By Derek Fenwick
Senior Director of Human Resources
Each year, Infinity Rehab conducts an employee survey to help us understand our employees’ thoughts and feelings about work, and to help guide us on action where it is needed.
Why? Because we want Infinity Rehab to be a great place to work! Our company is only as strong as the people who come together to work here, and your unique voice is important in helping to make our company be a great place to work for everyone who chooses to work here.
Thank you to those of you who completed our recent survey. Over the next several Insiders, I will provide a look inside the results and talk about the actions we are taking in response to your input.
I want to start by sharing our high-level strengths and opportunities. These are important because they help us decide where our action is most needed and can make the biggest impact for the greatest number of people. This view also helps us see where we should celebrate our successes while we work on our growing edges.
Here is a high-level view of our company’s strengths, as reported by you:
You see that on 5 of our questions we had 85% or more people say that they agree (A) or strongly agree (SA) with these statements. That’s nearly 9 out of every 10 people, which is a great place to be on these items! Also note that we look at both measures because while it’s great to agree with a statement, what we strive is for is to create an environment where people strongly agree with these statements.
Following that group is a block of statements where at least 8 out of every 10 people agree. Together these 9 questions offer a look at some of the things that we do relatively well.
This is also a perfect opportunity to point out an example of how we can – and do – make movement year-over-year when we focus on a particular area. Look at these two questions:
2022 % SA/A |
2020* % SA/A |
Change | |
Throughout the year, my supervisor provides me with regular feedback about my performance. | 87.9 | 79.4 | +8.5 |
My supervisor takes an active interest in my career development. | 80.6 | 73.1 | +7.5 |
*Question not asked on 2021 survey due to vendor change
During 2022, we made a focused effort to strengthen the communication and connection between managers and employees through our new Quarterly Check-In process that replaced annual reviews.
While 2020 was truly a unique year, if you go back to look at 2019 data scores on these two questions, you find scores closer to 2020 (80.8 and 76.8, respectively) than 2022.
To me, this data suggests that our efforts around Quarterly Check-Ins has paid off, and that we’re on a stronger path now than we were before. It’s just one example of how our company can make tangible change in response to survey feedback.
Now, let’s put that to the test for our company’s current opportunities:
Looking at these 5 questions, I see 3 specific actions that we can take this year:
- Increase our recognition and appreciation efforts by reigniting our Culture of Caring
- Continue to lean into our DEIB work until every person feels that they belong at Infinity
- Live into our strong belief that every employee is a leader by re-introducing the Five Practices of Exemplary to the entire company
I recently made these 3 recommendations to the senior leadership team, and I am happy to report they responded with an emphatic thumbs up. I’m also happy to report that this work has already begun:
- You will see our Culture of Caring coming to life in new ways very soon as we launch our new Ambassador program this month.
- The DEIB team recently met to discuss these two questions and begin creating a strategy.
- We will be discussing ways to re-introduce the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership later this week with our current cohort of scholars who are graduating on Thursday.
I also want to note that we are also looking at how to best respond to the results from question about materials and equipment. This is more challenging because we often (but not always) need to partner with our customers to help make this happen. Rest assured that we are discussing this and will figure out a way to attack this in the coming year as well.
Next Insider, I will begin a deeper dive into certain questions and themes, including a look at some areas where different groups of employees have different opinions, such as managers vs. non-managers, therapists vs. assistants, and generational differences. We’ll also look at topics like trust in leadership, employee pride in the company, and communication preferences, among other things. There’s a lot of insights to share, so I invite you to follow along as the story unfolds over a series of articles coming your way via Insider.