Last night I was reading an article on building employee empowerment in a hospital in Florida. The hospital had some of the lowest rates of employee and patient satisfaction; therefore, the administration decided to implement a new program to build morale, and thus improve satisfaction among employees and patients. This immediately reminded me of our current project with the university. The hospital used various strategies (although they were not labeled as such) like implementing reward and incentive programs, creating rituals and ceremonies, and perhaps most significantly, identifying influencers and leveraging the Hawthorne effect. The hospital administration asked for employee suggestions and feedback and said that nearly 7,000 of these suggestions were implemented (not just submitted) every year. The article provided some good ideas for building morale, and were obviously successful since the hospital is now ranked in the top 1% of patient satisfaction in the U.S. In addition, the health center has also been named one of the 100 best companies to work for by Fortune magazine for three years running.
While reading the article, I found myself scribbling notes about word-of-mouth techniques and principles as if it was an article for this class. It was a pretty interesting case study to look at since it relates closely to our project, so if anyone wants to check it out, let me know!
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WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication Northeastern University
2 comments:
This case study clearly shows that it takes a truly progressive organization to genuinely attend to their consumer's (or in this case employee's) wants and needs. The fact that the hospital incorporated 7,000 employee suggestions shows their organizational commitment to responding to employee feedback. Hopefully we will see a trend of more organizations showing the same kind of commitment.
I think it also demonstrates an approach that we rarely see by companies. While patient satisfaction is often a concern out of necessity, their interest in their staff is a rarity. Even after a survey like that, I've heard of far too many businesses adjusting their ways to appease the customer and ignoring the concerns of the staff, replacing employees if the need were to arise.
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