While researching his dissertation, A Correlational Study of Hospital Food-Service Employee Engagement and Quality Outcomes in U.S. Acute Care Hospitals,  Thomas Deringer, Ph.D., vice president, patient experience for Compass One Healthcare, found that employee engagement doesn’t have a significant impact on patient satisfaction, according to an article on the Food Management website.

“In my role, we’re always trying to figure out how to improve patient satisfaction,” Deringer said in the article. “For the last 20 years, I’ve always thought if you have high employee engagement, you’ll have increased satisfaction and decreased absenteeism, etc. But for my doctorate, I wanted to do something useful. Is there really a relationship there?”

While employee engagement should never be discounted out of hand, Deringer thinks there are other factors that foodservice should focus their resources on when it comes to employees.

Wages, scheduling, transportation and culture make the difference.

Read the article.