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TDH Employee Experience Initiatives

Improving Employee Experience & Retention at TimeDoc Health

TimeDoc faced two critical challenges:

  1. A high turnover rate—many new Care Coordinators (CCs) quit within their first 60 days
  2. Workflow inconsistencies that slowed daily patient calls and affected care quality

My role

Partnering with HR, QA, and recruiting, I led two research initiatives. I interviewed and observed CCs, mapped their task flows, and uncovered patterns in both workplace setup and onboarding experiences. These insights revealed where breakdowns occurred—and why some CCs thrived while others left.

The result

  • Introduced persona-based hiring to better match candidates with role expectations
  • Streamlined onboarding, reducing early turnover
  • Identified the most effective workspace layouts and task sequencing to boost daily output

Empathize

Qualitative Data Collection

Spoke with new employees from varying departments about their onboarding and training experiences
Spoke with members of the recruiting team to outline their process for recruiting new employees
Conducted ongoing interviews with care coordinators about their work practices and struggles

Participants shared their level of confidence after training and what portions of training felt most relevant once they were on the job.


It was often revealed that employees from different departments worked at cross purposes. In addition, most interviewees (regardless of performance level) felt that Quality Assurance monitoring and grading felt unreasonable and deliberately punitive.

Specific users often developed ad-hoc practices to make their work more accurate and efficient without breaching security protocols. This knowledge, however, was not widely disseminated leading to overall inconsistencies.

User Observation

Watched recordings of high and low performing employees

Cataloged the day to day practices of 5 high performing and 5 low performing Care Coordinators to isolate behaviors that could be consistently replicated across the team.

Identified personal history and previous employment trends of those people with the greatest longevity and highest performance rates.

data consolidation

Presented themes emerging from observations

User comments were categorized into themes using an affinity diagram


Stages of the overall process were isolated as swim lanes. Steps each role took in the overall process were organized into these swim lanes with breakdowns identified.


Identify

Lots of data

Patterns of Success: What Really Makes a Great Care Coordinator
Surprising predictors of performance

Our research revealed that candidates with the most healthcare training and experience were not always the top performers. In fact, standout CCs often had backgrounds in customer service or education—roles where fast context switching and communication are critical.

Performance ≠ Call Volume

Some CCs were flagged as underperforming due to low call numbers—but a deeper look showed many were bilingual, supporting non-English-speaking patients. These calls took longer but provided crucial, culturally attuned care. We used this insight to adjust how performance was measured.

Desk setup predicted performance

By reviewing session recordings, I could often identify top performers within seconds—just by how their desktops were arranged. High performers consistently:

  • Organized windows by task priority, left to right
  • Minimized visual clutter (e.g. simple desktop, only essential tools open)


These small behavioral details had measurable impacts on focus and call efficiency. turning qualitative research into organizational change—and you frame it with an ethical edge

Identify Personas

Persona & Anti-Persona Library for Hiring Alignment

To improve hiring outcomes and reduce turnover, I created a library of personas rooted in actual testing and interview data. Because Care Coordinators spend their days talking with patients about sensitive health issues, personal qualities like empathy, clarity, and persistence mattered more than advanced clinical credentials.

Persona Library

Each persona was based on real user behaviors and attitudes observed during testing and interviews. Over time, we began to see patterns—certain personas consistently aligned with high performance and job satisfaction. Hiring managers began to reference these when assessing new candidates.

Anti-personas

I also identified traits that raised red flags for system misuse or care quality concerns (e.g., disregard for protocol, lack of follow-through). These anti-personas helped hiring teams know what not to overlook.


The Result

A hiring practice that reflected the real demands of the role—not just a list of qualifications—and improved both team fit and retention.

Solution

Short-Term Solutions

From Quick Wins to Lasting Impact Workstation Setup Training
Workstation Setup Training

What seemed like a minor personal preference—how employees arranged browser windows—turned out to have major effects on efficiency. User observation revealed clear patterns: high performers consistently used a clean, organized desktop with consistent zones of work, while lower performers showed visual clutter and disorganization. We retrained staff on:

  • Arranging browser windows by function and priority (left-to-right, top-to-bottom)
  • Reducing screen clutter by closing unused tools
  • Removing distracting desktop backgrounds in favor of neutral, calming images
Knowledge Sharing Initiatives

We scheduled recurring sessions for high-performing Care Coordinators to share practical tips, tools, and shortcuts. These sessions helped spread effective work habits organically across teams.

Together, these small changes had a big impact—improving call efficiency, reducing stress, and building a culture of continuous improvement.

Long-Term Strategy

Supporting New Hires and Guiding Sustainable Growth Extended Onboarding & Compassionate Quality Monitoring

To accelerate productivity, the Care Coordinator (CC) training program had been shortened over time. But this led to unintended consequences: new hires felt underprepared, and early missteps resulted in demoralizing QA feedback. We advocated for a more robust onboarding process, extending the shadowing period with experienced CCs to build confidence and reduce early burnout.

Empowering Team Leaders Through Better Visibility

We granted team leaders access to FullStory, enabling them to observe their direct reports' workflows in real time. This shift allowed for coaching in context—grounded in empathy rather than punishment.

It also improved fairness: in several cases, team leads were able to identify system errors that caused QA citations and successfully reversed them. This built trust between staff and leadership and helped reinforce a culture of accountability without blame.

Persona-Based Hiring

Using the developed personas and anti-personas, we equipped hiring managers with clear behavioral markers to guide interviews—helping them prioritize candidates whose qualities aligned with successful, high-retention employees, while avoiding patterns associated with early turnover or compliance risks.