Penn State Health CEO Steve Massini sent the following email to Penn State Health employees on Thursday:
Dear Colleagues,
My inbox is overflowing with responses to last week’s email about our organizational goal to improve patient satisfaction. Thank you for your suggestions. They ranged from overhauling our clunky phone system and streamlining the check-in process to reducing noise in patient care areas, getting lab results to physicians faster and helping patients better estimate the cost of their care. Each idea is appreciated and is being reviewed.
It was great to hear from so many employees who care deeply about our patients … which segues nicely to our third organizational goal: employee engagement. Specifically, our goal is to improve Penn State Health’s employee engagement score by 2% or more in fiscal year 2020, which ends June 30.
Gallup defines engaged employees as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. Studies show that engaged employees are happier employees, at work and at home. They contribute to higher patient satisfaction, lower turnover and greater innovation. Simply said – you are our best ambassadors.
The results of our recent employee engagement survey told us that while we are an organization of people who love what we do, whom we do it for and whom we do it with, many of us are stressed. It’s affecting our morale, job satisfaction and work/life balance.
I appreciate that so many of you are involved in endeavors to improve our culture, communications, collaboration and conditions. Organizationally, we’ve made a few changes to address some of the challenges you identified in the survey. We launched the Daily Brief that is delivered to your inbox every morning to neatly package the most important news of the day, and we also launched the employee health care concierge service to help you manage your and your family’s health care needs.
We have teams of front line staff, managers and leaders working together in all corners of Penn State Health to address the issues that are most affecting us. To highlight just a few:
- A Hershey Medical Center nursing unit created a plan to ensure staff can take breaks off the unit throughout their shift.
- One of the Medical Group endeavors includes implementing ‘stay’ interviews with employees to build trust and assess job satisfaction.
- Joseph Medical Center’s leaders are participating in multidisciplinary patient safety rounds to gain actionable insights not only into patient safety, but also into their employees’ work environment.
- Departments within Shared Services have created collaboratives where front line employees are identifying and addressing areas for improvement.
The College of Medicine’s Humanities Department is tackling an issue that came up across the entire organization. Many of us feel unable to disconnect from work, and for some, that can make engaging at work more challenging. Humanities discussed this topic in depth at its retreat, clarifying what off-hours communication is appropriate and what’s not, and creating a process for handling emergencies when someone is not at work.
In late spring 2020, you’ll be asked to participate in a shorter ‘pulse’ survey on employee engagement. My hope is that the survey will indicate all of the work underway is making a positive difference for each of you.
If you have a moment, I’d love to hear about the plans underway in your department to improve your work experience within Penn State Health. You can reply to this message.
Next week’s message will focus on our final organizational goal, financial performance.
On a closing note, I often have the opportunity to visit places, meet people and participate in events that are important to Penn State Health. In an effort to share those experiences with our Penn State Health family and keep us connected, I’m trying my hand at creating short videos. We launched the first one yesterday and if you haven’t already seen it – a visit to Penn State Health St. Joseph – you can view it here.
Steve Massini
Chief Executive Officer
