Health care systems are facing a crisis in retaining great employees and recruiting new ones. This perennial problem has only worsened through the pandemic. Internal marketing plays an important role in improving this situation, as well as the working lives of health care professionals.
“Corporate communications are key to building workplace culture where teammates feel heard and seen,” according to Diette Casey, Corporate Communications Manager at Roper St. Francis Healthcare. “Corporate communications set the tone for the organization. It’s the voice of the organization. So, we need to see ourselves as playing an integral role in creating culture and therefore retaining employees.”
“Over these past two and a half years, the work has been so hard,” observes Andy Lyons, Director of Corporate Communications and Content Strategy at Roper St. Francis Healthcare. “And sometimes it’s been never-ending for our teams. That’s how they feel. We need to inspire them as well, not just tell them what they need to know. We need to go beyond that.”
Three Tips for Creating Engaging Communications
Lyons and Casey offer three tips for creating engaging internal communications, beginning with adding a human touch. “Don’t be afraid to have fun. Your internal coms can’t all be vegetables and protein. You need to serve up something sweet and fun as well,” says Lyons. “That could be a pop culture reference, you could share family photos from your team, film a zany TikTok dance. Your messages can make work fun.” Pop culture references are also fun for internal communications.
The second recommendation is to extend the engagement to the real world. “If no one is creating fun outside of communications, if there are no fun events or happenings, own it, create it, that’s on you,” Casey advises. “I think it’s important that if there’s a void in your organization, you help fill it.”
Third, “Photos, photos, photos. We’ve learned over the years that, looking at our analytics, people love seeing photos of themselves and they love looking at photos of other people,” explains Casey. “Find a way for people to engage with you. Have them submit photos, first day of school, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Halloween, you name it. I promise they will submit it. And those will be the posts that draw people in.”
Fostering a Culture of Transparency
“Value transparency. I just can’t say that enough,” Lyon adds. “Be the first to explain what’s happening to your employees. They need to hear it from your corporate communications office first, not from the media, not from a friend or a loved one or a neighbor down the street. Transparency isn’t just sharing the bad news first. It’s also responding to any sort of feedback you receive, trying your very best to answer that question or address the issue of the day it comes up.”
Referencing the tools available to field employee feedback online, Lyons continues, “Be comfortable in blowing up your plan for the day. I can’t tell you how many times Diette and I think we know what we’re going to share one day with our employees or our physicians and realize there is this little fire burning over here.” Addressing those “fires” as they erupt is the key to maintaining the trust of employees and building a culture of transparency.
Methods of Delivery
Email is the communication method of choice at Roper St. Francis Healthcare. With four hospitals and over 100 locations, email is most efficient. Frequency depends on urgency. Pandemic communication prompted a couple emails per day.
Post-pandemic, the frequency of emails isn’t the only thing getting back to normal. “We were able to have some kind of revamped teammate forums, we used to call them, and now they’re called teammate talks.” Lyons relates that these short, TED Talks-like events are focused on conveying needed information to employees on the front lines.
“I think those have been super effective in maintaining that culture and getting people back together in a safe way, where they can see each other, they can stand up, they can ask their facility leader a question, they can see an inspiring video.”
Engaging Results
“I would point to engagement as one of the key metrics that we look to, to gauge how we are doing.” Casey points out that Roper St. Francis Healthcare has been ranked one of the top 150 best places to work by Modern Health care for three years in a row, and they consistently score well on their annual Press Ganey employee engagement surveys. Internal emails have an open rate of 90%, which is impressive for a system of 6,000 teammates.
Casey agrees. “Think of yourself in corporate communications as, ‘We are the keepers of culture.’ We do more than just write and listen. I mean, we are the ones giving pep talks. We are the ones organizing pep rallies. This is our job to help set the tone of the organization and help people engage.”
“The more comfortable with your voice, the more efficient and effective you’ll be in sharing difficult news or telling employees what they need to know during difficult times. And that’s a great way to build and maintain culture,” Lyons concludes.
Learning More
Diette Casey
Corporate Communications Manager
Roper St. Francis Healthcare
Andy Lyons
Director of Corporate Communications and Content Strategy
Roper St. Francis Healthcare
The original version of this page was published at: https://my.shsmd.org/blogs/the-shsmd-team/2022/07/25/creating-an-environment-for-retention-with-interna
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