Staffing Challenges: Four Tips on Improving Culture to Retain Great Teammates

Debra McGinnis-Peterson

In December 2024, Pure Processing’s Voice of the Customer Committee met to discuss a topic that’s never out of style in sterile processing: staffing and staffing challenges. Debra McGinnis-Peterson, Sterile Processing Manager at Children’s Wisconsin, spent some additional time with Pure Processing following the VOC conversation to elaborate on her journey working to enhance culture and build morale to improve retention rates in her sterile processing department. On this journey, she learned some valuable lessons that can help other SPD managers embarking on a similar journey towards improvement.

 

Tip One: Be Reflective About Your Leadership Style

McGinnis-Peterson led with something she considered critically important to fostering a culture that retains great teams: a manager’s openness to self-reflection and introspection. She explained, “There have been times I’ve needed to think about and change my approach to leadership.”

Adjusting your leadership style can come in a variety of ways, a few expressed by McGinnis-Peterson included:

  • Develop your soft skills: This includes things like a manager’s adaptability, openness to new ideas, communication, etc. McGinnis-Peterson took advantage of various online courses to get insights on how further develop her own soft skills.
  • Assume positive intent: It can be easy for a manager to fall into the habit of thinking that certain actions, such as not following a specific process or SOP, are malicious or deliberate. McGinnis-Peterson explained the importance of always assuming your team has positive intent and tactfully exploring what the root cause of actions or mistakes might be.
  • Be persistent: Changing your approach to your leadership style is likely to feel a bit odd at first and it’s easy to fall back into your old ways. Being deliberate and persistent about the changes you make to your leadership style will help those changes become the norm, and something your teammates can come to expect and appreciate about you.

 

Tip Two: Find Ways to Show Gratitude

In sterile processing, there’s often something worth stressing over, whether it’s increased volume, a certain piece of equipment going down, or a teammate unexpectedly calling out for the day. This chaos and stress can create an environment solely focused on conquering the next task or problem, with the people involved being put on the backburner. McGinnis-Peterson put it succinctly:

“Everyone remembers the bad things. They rarely remember or acknowledge the good things.”

McGinnis-Peterson explained that going out of your way to demonstrate gratitude and appreciation for the work and efforts of your team is a key component to maintaining morale and fostering a culture that retains great employees. She found several ways the whole team can show appreciation, including a gratitude board, callouts at team huddles, in-the-moment comments while working, encouraging teammates to express appreciation to each other, as well as using Pure Processing’s Citations for Being Awesome as a fun way to acknowledge success of her team.

These small changes can have a considerable impact on your team and morale in your department, ultimately helping you retain great teammates.

 

Tip 3: Listen To Your Team

McGinnis-Peterson put an emphasis on a specific question she tries to ask often: “What can I do for you?”

Retaining a great team requires listening to them and understanding their needs. Managers need to make sure that they know what their team needs to be successful and deliver it for them. And they’re not all material; they include having a sense of belonging, understanding their role, feeling heard, a sense of team, etc.

A few questions to help managers gauge whether their team feels their needs are being met might include:

  • Do you feel like your opinion matters?
  • Do you have a sense of purpose in your role?
  • Do people acknowledge your good work?
  • Do you have the materials you need to do your job?
  • Do you know what’s expected of you in your role?
  • Do you feel like you have the opportunity to learn and grow?

Beyond questions about fulfillment in their role and the physical materials needed to do their job, it’s also important for managers to ask for input from their teams. This can include something unrelated to the work in the department, such as ways to improve the break room or lounge, or something directly related to SPD, such as what kind of training and education the team thinks would be beneficial.

Creating accessible ways to share basic department needs is also very helpful, McGinnis-Peterson explained. She put up two “wish list” whiteboards in her department; one in the break room, and one out in the department (what additional instruments are needed). These give her team the ability to share what they need easily, while also allowing her to keep a running list of what the department needs. She’s then able to prioritize and begin finding ways to fulfill the requests. These boards also provide a way for visitors to the department to get a brief look at all of the items required to keep the department operating smoothly.

 

Tip Four: Be Patient

Cultural and management style adjustments can provide long-term benefits, McGinnis-Peterson explained. To fully realize positive, sustained cultural change in a department, you need to keep at it. It took a little over a year and a half for her to see cultural changes she wanted to make in her department take hold and become habit. It took nearly three years to get the culture and morale of her department to the gold standard she was aiming to achieve. “It’s all about how much you put into it”, she explained.

There are some things that just take time to iron out on a journey to retool a departments culture; that there might be some staff members that aren’t interested in cultural changes and are inhibiting the team. It might also take a team some time to feel empowered enough to begin offering feedback and helping to build a new culture in your department. These hurdles take time but are worth it.

 

Conclusion

A great culture is a fundamental aspect of retaining a great team. While some aspects of cultural change can be difficult (and require a manager to be critical of themselves on occasion!), others can be very gratifying. Creating an atmosphere where your team proactively acknowledges wins and support each other through challenges brings benefits that a manager couldn’t achieve on their own. Further, tapping into your team’s industry knowledge and departmental needs can help you prepare them, and the department, for continued success and growth as your facility’s needs evolve.

You’ve spent the time finding and training great people, spending the time and effort to keep them is well worth it.

Interested in other VOC blogs and content? Click here to explore them!

 

About: Voice of the Customer Committee

The Voice of the Customer Committee is a panel of healthcare and instrument reprocessing professionals who have graciously donated their time to share their expertise and guidance on current challenges faced by the instrument reprocessing community. Through sharing their insights, experiences, and best practices, we have been given the opportunity to share these findings with our readership. We’d like to thank our VOC members for their outstanding input and insights, as well as their time! Thank you for your continued partnership, and all you do.