In this week’s inspirational episode of the Leading Real Change podcast, Stephanie Mercado CEO of the National Association of Healthcare Quality shares how her organization transformed healthcare quality from compliance to competencies and career paths that lead to greater improvements and employee engagement.

Key takeaways include:

Moving beyond compliance as a box checking exercise involved creating a list of competencies that would lead to improved quality in daily work practices

Operationalizing quality improvement processes allowed employees to see the important role they played in driving better care

The list of competencies allowed employees to see how they could continue to grow in their careers by building more capacity to contribute to stronger quality processes

Stephanie shared how she connected her role to improving healthcare for all so her kids could understand why her work had meaning

In the same way quality improvement is an ongoing process, Stephanie believes that leadership is also an ongoing process of persisting on a journey of growth

Having purpose related to delivering better outcomes is a key employee engagement strategy