Meeting Employee Related Challenges with DynaMates Program

For the second year in a row, DynaMed ?, a Clinical Decisions resource from EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), was identified as the top-performing point-of-care clinical reference tool by KLAS , a research firm that specializes in monitoring and reporting the performance of health care vendors. This is a great honor for EBSCO, as it highlights the important work happening within the company to create a best-in-class tool that helps empower healthcare professionals in their efforts to provide high-quality, evidence-based care to their patients.

DynaMed takes learning and development of its employees very seriously, as they are the company’s most important resource. Today, we’d like to highlight an important aspect of DynaMed’s professional development portfolio: our DynaMates peer connection program.

A Mentoring Focus for Changing Times

In 2018, EBSCO partnered with MentorcliQ , the #1 rated mentoring software platform, to solve a problem now common among most companies given the COVID pandemic: Employee engagement and professional growth in the remote/hybrid work environment. EBSCO has leveraged the mentoring software’s thoughtfully-designed algorithms to develop a formal Mentoring program, using MentorcliQ to pair and manage highly-successful relationships for hundreds of workers. Team members have since spent thousands of hours connecting and learning from each other.?

After seeing these positive results for the larger EBSCO organization, we applied both the lesson learned and the tools at our disposal to create DynaMates.?In contrast to a traditional mentor/mentee relationship, the DynaMates program allows participants to?connect and discuss topics such as professional development, work-related situations, and work-life balance. The overarching goal is to build connections across teams and maintain a strong sense of community, which has been the hallmark of working at DynaMed since its inception in 1995.

How DynaMates Works

We launched DynaMates to meet many existing employee-related challenges that our team members told us they needed to thrive. DynaMates was also a response to many of the realities that DynaMed was facing in a post-COVID era. Our teams, like most others, were feeling the heavy burdens created by the pandemic. As studies continue to show, the global pandemic sparked a strong desire among workers to find new ways to connect to their colleagues.?

DynaMates pairs colleagues using MentorcliQ ’s proprietary SMART matching algorithm, with the goal to match them on their area of interest: individual professional development, career support, or developing social connections. Pairs are encouraged to meet at least two times a month to connect for at least one hour per month, and discuss topics that are aligned with their own career and personal goals. DynaMates is structured in its design, yet unstructured in its approach to content, giving participants the flexibility to make the relationships exactly what they need, at the time they need it.?

Since its launch in February 2021, DynaMates have spent more than 600 collective hours discussing a variety of important topics, including strategies for combating burnout, setting boundaries in a remote work environment, and methods to self-assess professional growth. Overall, the response to this program has been overwhelmingly positive with 100 percent of participants reporting satisfaction with their mentoring relationship.?

Success Stories from DynaMates

Data is the backbone of our business. While it’s fun to talk about the data, the human success stories behind that data give life to why we created and continue to support programs like DynaMates. Here are a few that speak to the program’s success.

“I made a great social connection with a new colleague. Our conversations were interesting and supportive.”

“We had (and have) a great colleague-type relationship and it's been a pleasure. We kept things informal but did discuss issues and possible solutions and ways to achieve goals. We plan to continue meeting informally to see how things are going and progressing.”

“My DynaMate and I have developed a great relationship. We have focused on ongoing issues we are each facing and have been using our collective experiences to solve them rather than the resources in the library, but I am thrilled to be part of this program - it has been very helpful!”

At DynaMed, people are a priority. While we are customer-focused by design, we also turn that ethos inward by offering unique ways to support the life and career of our team members. Among these is by creating opportunities that allow team members to connect, engage, and learn from each other while building up deeper and stronger relationships across the organization.?