Organizational Culture: the key to improving organizational performance
By Nicole Kirchhoffer, Patient Experience Officer, Assistant VP and Tonya Richards, VP of HR Operations & Organization Development, Maimonides Medical Center
Across the nation, healthcare organizations are focused on improving patient services, quality of care, workforce retention and engagement and cost containment. No matter your professional role in a healthcare organization, everyone’s goal is to improve performance, whether you are the CFO striving to improve the bottom line, the CHRO seeking to optimize labor relations, the patient experience officer striving to improve the patient experience, or the physician, impassioned to improve patient’s healthcare outcomes, we are all working toward being the best healthcare service provider and choice among patients. An important indicator of an organization’s culture is the information gleaned from patient experience surveys and staff engagement surveys.
Our organization’s top priority includes improving our patients’ experience and workforce engagement; therefore, it was imperative that the institution embarks on a cultural transformation and define its overall purpose. The underpinnings of an organization’s culture are its values. Values are defined as a standard set of behaviors and something that is viewed as highly important to someone. They are the guiding principles for the organization and all key stakeholders. Changing workforce behavior is the most challenging task; however, doing so will achieve the best results. If organizational leaders believe their employees’ behavior needs to be more empathetic to create an environment that is caring and supportive, however, empathy is not valued by the employees, this will be a difficult feat to accomplish and sustain.
Values direct behaviors as they are lived out among their employees. When hiring employees, it is imperative to assess their values to ensure they align with the organization; otherwise, there will be a value mismatch which may lead to conflict. When employees’ values align with their organizations, they are more engaged and productive, thus improving their organization’s performance, profitability, and growth.
Without any documentation or clear understanding of what those values were in our organization, we conducted employee focus groups as well as a workforce survey to determine what they were. When evaluating the results of our employee values survey, it was clear there was a standard set of beliefs and assumptions about what our employees held that aligned with the organization’s objectives. Once we curated our values list, we hosted a value acronym contest to confirm the top core values. Our organization’s core values were honesty, empathy, accountability, respect, and teamwork (HEART).
With HEART as the winning acronym, we convened a cross-functional working group to define each core value clearly and precisely. The goal was to ensure they were relevant and could be easily understood by everyone. As we continue on this journey of cultural transformation, we have outlined a communication and education plan. It is crucial to communicate the values effectively to all employees via various communication channels to ensure everyone understands the significance.
The core values are integrated into various aspects of the organization and the employee lifecycle to ensure they are lived and practiced regularly. Our leaders are vital to the success of this initiative. They are expected to demonstrate the values in their own behaviors and encourage others to do the same. With the appropriate plan, reward structure, and accountability measures, we are confident our newly identified core values will be embraced and upheld. As an organization, we will regularly review and assess our patients’ and employees’ feedback to determine whether our values have become a part of the organization’s social fabric and identity.
