Intro: The following SHSMD Podcast is a production of DoctorPodcasting.com.

Bill Klaproth (Host): On this edition of the SHSMD podcast, we talk about Building Morale, Metrics and Community Ties with a Creative Communications Program as we do another session preview for SHSMD Connections this October in Denver. Joining us is Tania Luciow and Danielle Stemple. They will be speaking on this topic. Are you registered yet? It's going to be great. It's October 13th through the 15th in Denver, SHSMD Connections Annual Conference. So, let's talk about building morale metrics and community ties with Tania and Danielle right now.

This is the SHSMD podcast, Rapid Insights for healthcare strategy professionals in planning, business development, marketing communications, and public relations. I'm your host, Bill Klaproth. In this episode, we talk with Tania Luciow, Public Relations and Corporate Communication Strategist at Mount Nittany Health and Danielle Stemple, Communications Strategist at Mount Nittany Health. Tania and Danielle, welcome to the SHSMD Podcast.

Tania Luciow: Thanks so much for having us, Bill.

Danielle Stemple: Yeah, it's great to be here. We're really excited for the conversation today and to be part of this.

Host: Yeah, this is going to be a great session. Building Morale Metrics and Community Ties with a Creative Communications Program. So, Danielle, tell us about your session.

Danielle Stemple: Yeah. So, despite COVID-19 challenges, Mount Nittany Health's Internal Communications and Public Relations Team, which Tania and I are both part of, successfully reinvigorated the healthcare system's corporate culture by enhancing our content on our intranet platform, which has been really a morale booster for our employees. So, through a positive earned media campaign and employee recognition programs, while also implementing various system wide celebrations, we've been able to help boost our morale and engagement and create a really robust internal communications and public relations program.

During our session, we'll share how we've been successful in creating content that resonates with our employees and tells the story of our health system's connection to our local community. There aren't many independent health systems left in the state of Pennsylvania, but we are one of them. So, we're an independent community-governed health system, and our people are our greatest asset. And we have found that by highlighting their accomplishments, backgrounds, and talents, We've seen that these stories really resonate with our community and help us connect with our patients and their families and this sense of employee connectedness is highly valued by our executive stakeholders.

Host: So, getting buy-in from them, obviously, is very good. So, yeah, it sounds like a great program. I like how you say you reinvigorated your culture and the people are your greatest asset, so it's good to pay attention to them and come up with these types of programs. So, Tania, tell us, why is corporate culture so important?

Tania Luciow: Corporate culture really guides an organization's work. And one of the key areas in our health system strategic framework is really focusing on sustaining a respectful team-oriented environment, because that really allows our people to thrive. And teamwork is also one of our core values at Mount Nittany Health, because when organizations have positive corporate culture, it often means that vacancy rates are lower, retention rates are higher. And, you know, we saw that during the last fiscal year, our onboarding rate, you know, increased from the previous year, and we maintained a pretty good vacancy rate that was below the national average. Also, we're in a very specific area of Pennsylvania, and we are competing with some larger healthcare systems and also, in general, national organizations for our staff.

So, one of our key goals is to really recruit and retain the best employees, and the health and well being of our patients, of course, as a health system, that's our top priority. And we know that satisfied and happy employees also make better clinicians and are able to provide a better patient experience. On top of that, we also want employees to be happy and really find their work to be meaningful.

Host: Yeah. Better outcomes is certainly one of the benefits of this. So, Danielle, what were the signs that led you to believe you needed to boost your corporate culture?

Danielle Stemple: Well, I think you'll find it's well-known the pandemic impacted almost every aspect of our lives, and it significantly increased employee burnout, especially in healthcare. So, we knew that we needed to do something to foster a better sense of community where our employees felt valued and respected. There were a lot of changes in the organization happening throughout the pandemic. There was employee turnover and it was evident that connection amongst our employees had weakened. So, as we were getting ready to embark on some significant infrastructure projects that required employee and community buy-in and support, we knew that we needed to enhance our corporate culture to keep employees informed and engaged during these changes.

Host: So then, how did you put a plan together to address this and what were the steps, Danielle?

Danielle Stemple: I always like to say that one of our mottos is give the people what they want. As we were putting together a plan to address this, we focused largely on revitalizing our intranet platform, which is called Connect. So, we tried to make it a fun place for employees to learn about important health system information while learning about each other. So, we increased the quality of our posts and included interesting stories about our employees and their hobbies, pets, and accomplishments. These are among some of our most popular intranet posts and weekly receive thousands of views.

So, one of our most popular features is Pet Party Friday, where we showcase our employee pets. Pet Party Friday, we like to say is everyone's favorite day of the week, and it provides a great way for our employees to learn about each other in just sort of a fun, light-hearted way. And we also make sure that our employees are our top focus on our intranet site, Connect.

So, the second thing that we did was we focused really heavily on our employees. So, we simplified processes like our Employee of the Month nomination process. And by doing this, we went from receiving one or two nominations each month to receiving upwards of 50. So, that's something that all of our employees take a lot of pride in, nominating each other for employee of the month.

We launched a values campaign where we brought our health system's values to life with employee focused stories, photos, and quotes, and also a poster series, which was really impactful. And we made it a priority to host multiple recognition weeks for our employees, like Mount Nittany Health Week, which takes place during Hospital Week; Random Acts of Kindness Week, which takes place in February; and our Season of Giving, which takes place throughout the holiday season. So, by really focusing on our employees, we were able to boost morale and revitalize that corporate culture.

Tania Luciow: And one of the things that I'm really proud of that Danielle and I have worked on together is that we've been able to really bridge the gap between what we considered our internal and external communications. Together, we've been more deliberate in tailoring the content to those multiple audiences. So, one of the examples of communication that Danielle works on is something we call Team Member Monday, and each Monday we feature a story about a team member, which is one of those ways that we like to highlight our people. And for example, we started using these Team Member Monday features, and I would share them with our local media and see what press coverage we could get. And we would also share them on social media, and these have turned out to be some of our most popular pieces of content. For example, one of our providers is a physician who also practiced sleight of hand magic. And in his practice, he often uses magic, especially when he has children that come in as patients or people who might be nervous. And it's a great way for him to provide care and make people feel comfortable. That story was picked up by our local news station and led to the sort of longer feature about how that provider uses magic to connect with patients and ultimately provide a better patient experience

 One of the other things is we really did know that we needed to build employee morale, and we thought about different ways to really actively engage with our employees through our multiple channels. And I would call out that we were very lucky to really have the support from the leaders in our team on our communications team. They really encouraged us to try new things, see what works. That's really how Pet Party came along. That's how our Team Member Monday feature happened. And that's really, as Danielle said, about giving people what they want, we were given permission to see what would work and to see what people responded to and what resonated. And we really were able to experiment sort of with the tone and the tenor of our communications and measure their effectiveness to see what our employees wanted to hear from us.

Host: Having the ability to try things and get feedback and then adjust, I think, is really great so that's wonderful of your leadership to say go out there and do it. And that is really a good thing. And I love how you said give the people what they want, Danielle. That's really cool. And the Pet Party Friday and Team Member Monday, those just sound like fun. So, I imagine all of this has been well-received. Tania, how about it? How has this been received by the staff?

Tania Luciow: That's very true. It's been well-received from staff from our fellow employees. It really has seemed quite notable the difference that these types of communications have made. And I think now we're very lucky to be in this position, but we are definitely now in the position where folks come to us with more ideas and requests. They see things we've worked on. It's really a great problem for us to have because, of course, we do have a limit to the amount of staff resources. But it's great that we've had almost too much content in a way. And I really want to put a shout out to another one of our colleagues, Richie Velasquez. He is a very talented videographer. We've been able to increase our video content as part of highlighting our employees of the month, highlighting our Daisy Award winners. And he is in high demand for those services. And also, you know, honestly, in addition to our employees, a lot of this has been received incredibly well and with a lot of enthusiasm from our executive team, and they too have also come to us with thoughts about other projects.

And Danielle spoke to this earlier, but a lot of these efforts were done purposefully, because we knew that our health system was undergoing larger changes. We're building a 10-storey patient tower. We're opening a very large medical outpatient center building this year. We opened an express care location this year. So, we're undergoing these big changes. And we wanted to make sure our employees were engaged so that they were staying in touch with all the news with these big projects and things happening within the system as well.

Host: So then, what have been the results so far?

Danielle Stemple: Yeah. We have been so pleased with the results of our efforts. I know as Tania mentioned before, during the last fiscal year, we increased the number of new staff members we've onboarded by 15% compared to the previous year, which is really an incredible number. And we've maintained a vacancy rate of less than 7%, which is below the national average for most healthcare institutions.

One thing that I'm incredibly proud of is that Pet Party Friday inspired Mount Nittany Health's Volunteer Pet Therapy program, which has been wildly successful in improving morale amongst employees, and enhancing the patient experience. And as Tania also mentioned, you know, our patients are outop priorityty. And when we began our Volunteer Pet Therapy Program last October, we had three volunteer dogs and now, we have eight. So, with those volunteer dogs also come their volunteer humans. So, we've added seven new human volunteers to our Blue Cape Brigade. That's what we call our volunteer services, thanks to Pet Party Friday. So, that's something we've also had a lot of very positive news stories regarding our Volunteer Pet Therapy Program, and it's something that's really impacted the community in a positive way.

And as Tania also mentioned, we have increased our employee awareness about the important happenings within our health system, which is tracked through our monthly employee pulse survey. And during most recent fiscal year, which we're nearing the end of fiscal year '24, we saw a 10 percent increase in our pulse survey response rate, which is something we're really proud of.

Tania Luciow: I'll just also add that we've also seen an increase, as Danielle mentioned, about the media loved the stories about our pet therapy volunteers and the different pets who come to our facility. And we've seen an overall increase in the number of earned media stories, you know, each month and over the last year. We've really built strong relationships with our local media. They know to come to us for these really interesting human interest stories that feature our employees. And we've had a lot of success collaborating with them. And it really has helped us build a lot of trust with our local media partners.

Host: Yeah, I think that is really, really some good thoughts. And as you both were talking, I'm thinking, this really helps with you mentioned retention and recruitment. Danielle, would that be right?

Danielle Stemple: That would be right. I think that it definitely helps with recruitment. I know we work really closely with our talent acquisition team to figure out ways to get all of these exciting programs in front of potential employees so they know more about the corporate culture at Mount Nittany Health and how they will impact our community being part of our team.

Host: Yeah, that makes sense. And who doesn't want to work for a company that respects and values their employees and knows how to have fun at the same time? Everybody wants that. So, it's easy to see why you've gotten such great results so far. Well, I know in your session, you're going to go more in depth on all of this and you'll have examples and other things. It's going to be a great session. I want to thank you both for your time. Before we wrap up, if I could get some final thoughts from each of you, that would be great. Danielle, let me start with you. Any final thoughts or things you want to add?

Danielle Stemple: Yeah, I think I just want to echo that we've had such strong leadership and we've been so fortunate to have managers, leaders, executive buy in on all of our ideas. And I think that you really need that buy-in and for the other members of your team to believe in you to execute what we've been able to do in terms of revitalizing our intranet platform and bringing some of these programs to life. So, that's been something that's been really an important part of this, is having that buy-in.

And I think another thing that I like to touch on is in terms of financial resources. We have been able to do most of this with a very, very small budget. So, it's something that, I think, health systems of all sizes could implement fairly easily. It just takes that executive buy-in.

Host: Yeah, I think that's a great point to bring up. One, how important it is to have buy-in from upper leadership. And then, you said this is basically done with a limited budget. So, it really makes sense some of the programs that you've done, you know, Team Member Monday, Pet Party Friday. I'm sure there's others that you'll be discussing in the session, but that is an important component to it. The budget, and like you said, this doesn't cost a lot, so that is going to be a factor. So, thank you for that, Danielle. And Tania, as we wrap up, any final thoughts or anything you want to add?

Tania Luciow: Thank you for having us today. It's very exciting to get to talk about this and I know Danielle and I are excited to share more in the fall at the conference. I do think that something that I was thinking about was that we do really like the opportunity to try new things, and we did talk about that. And one of the things that we started with at the very beginning was sort of figuring out the angle, you know, of what stories we were going for. And we've mentioned this a few times, but we are, you know, really focused on community. It is in our mission. It's healthier people, stronger community.

And the thing that I think sets us apart from other health systems, and that resonates as our message is when we tie everything back to the community, when we explain that the people who work for Mount Nittany Health are active within the community, when we share stories about them and what they're doing and their talents, the community responds really strongly to that. And so, I would just say, and we'll get into this more in our session, but really thinking about the angle, the story, what resonates the most with your system and with your community to figure out sort of the lens that you're going to be telling your stories through.

Host: Yeah, that community focus is very important. And, like you say, you'll be going into more of this in your session and working through some of these things as well. So, any session-goer certainly will walk out with a roadmap of how to put together a program to boost morale like you have done and reinvigorate your culture. So, I want to thank you both for being on the podcast today. Danielle and Tania, thank you so much.

Danielle Stemple: Thank you.

Tania Luciow: Thank you, Bill.

Host: And once again, that's Tania Luciow and Danielle Stemple. They will be speaking at this year's 2024 SHSMD Connections Conference in Denver, October 13th through the 15th. Make sure you get yourself registered. Do it right now if you haven't already. Just go to shsmd.org. That's shsmd.org/education/annualconference. Do that right now. Get registered. It's always a great conference. And if you found this podcast helpful and, of course, how could you not? Please share it on your social channels, and please hit the subscribe or follow button to get every episode chock-full of goodness. And to access our full podcast library for other topics of interest to you visit shsmd.org/podcasts. This has been a production of DoctorPodcasting. I'm Bill Klaproth. See ya!