The Simplicity of Leadership Onboarding at Your Fingertips
Abstract Text
Effectively transitioning clinical leaders is vital for the success of an organization as evidenced by metrics such as retention and staff engagement (Leach & McFarland, 2014). Additionally, new clinical leaders have to develop the ability to balance both organizational initiatives and frontline staff at the bedside (AONE, 2015; Gapenski & Reiter, 2016). Finally, experts have illustrated that this transition can be accomplished more effectively if organizations approach said transition with a systematic framework of interventions for new nursing leaders (Manning et al., 2015).
Methods
IU Health Arnett identified a gap in the transition of nursing leaders. Specifically, IU Health Arnett identified a static onboarding manual (i.e. paper binder) which became antiquated when the next nursing leader began their onboarding process. As a result, IU Health Arnett implemented a dynamic onboarding tool nursing leaders could update as gaps and updates were identified between each nurse leader onboarding. This dynamic onboarding manual was created through utilizing Microsoft OneNote (Pinola, 2017). After implementing the tool, qualitative data was collected through feedback from both experienced and new nursing leaders given access to the onboarding manual.
Results
Qualitative data collected from multiple nursing leaders was obtained. Qualitative data illustrates that both experienced and new nursing leaders preferred the OneNote onboarding manual over the paper binder previously used.
Discussion
Implementing the innovative onboarding tool was received positively by experienced and new clinical leaders. Data illustrates experienced leaders reported they would have benefited if this OneNote onboarding tool would have been utilized during their transition. Finally, the OneNote onboarding received so much positive feedback that it was presented and adopted at the IU Health system nursing leadership council.
Conclusion
Other hospitals and organizations can adopt this leadership onboarding manual in their respective settings. A digitalized approach to leadership onboarding can eliminate silos present within an organization and ensure future leadership a much smoother transition into newly assigned roles.
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