I just listened to a fabulous new redthread research Podcast with Matt Gosney, Vice President of Organizational Development and Learning Services, UCHealth. This is very timely information that may be helpful to you and your organization as you work thought today’s HR challenges.
You can listen to the full interview if you wish – https://bit.ly/3dN1H3j
Matt Gosney has been with UCHealth for 6 years. During that time the healthcare system has grown from 16,000 to 28,000 employees.
In this interview Matt shares how they are working to change their company culture as they come out of a crisis management structure to a more sustainable approach to engagement, career focus and growth. He sees this as critical to their employment value proposition, as well as a significant contributor to recruiting and retention.
After 2 years of a reactionary approach to leadership, Matt is refocusing on a Culture more aligned to Values. This involves leader dialogue that creates a place for all employees to be their authentic self, while focused on the organizational Mission, Vision and Values.
His method emphasizes a conversation-focused approach. It begins with a new engagement survey that is shorter, has no hiding questions and tracks management, participation and accountability. They call it “Career Conversations” and it’s a more forward looking rather than a traditional performance review.
Matt’s team found that those leaders with a high action check-in score had much better engagement over time. This result is not surprising or new. The Hawthorne Effect along with the work of Elton Mayo back in the 20’s and 30’s proved that personal interaction, simply paying attention to people, had more impact on productivity than working conditions. Employees, particularly Gen Y and Gen Z, like to be noticed, involved, listened to.
They also realized coming out of Covid that there are a number of new ways to do work, deliver work and provide value. Remote work takes away some freedom to talk about nonbusiness stuff that is more natural in live settings, so Matt purposely promotes talk about family, kids, vacation, etc. If you don’t consciously do that, outside world events tend to lead the conversation and that is not healthy.
Under the new “Leadership Basics Program”, supervisors talk to their employees about their career growth vision and goals, not just data. This makes it easier to promote best practice summits where employees learn from each other. They find that teams generated better ideas than one-on-one reviews.
DEIB evolution has also changed at UCHealth. Rather than focusing on bias training, which can be a negative, they look more towards engaging the whole population by focusing on organizational goals. This leads to a strong impact on equity in opportunities.
As for the future, Matt is convinced that employees want an employer who is a part of their journey, not just a boss. He also believes that flexibility in how people create and deliver value is going to be a key differentiator for successful organizations.
Incentive Services has been working with UCHealth for a number of years to develop the logistics and technology that helps them communicate, measure and optimize their new approach to recognition, employee engagement and performance management.
I’d be happy to share what we have done with them and how it may be of value to you and or healthcare leadership.
If you’d like to learn more shoot me an email at jschaefer@IncentiveServices.com or call John Schaefer directly at 888-646-6670 toll free. Thanks!
