Culture Club

By Vicki Z. Lauter

Health care leaders need to employ patience and persistence if they’re going to create a beneficial, shared culture in a growing system.

Vicki Z. Lauter

As health care systems continue to expand, many are struggling to create a shared culture among their diverse facilities, one that reflects core values and permeates all levels of the organization. Below are several steps that health care leaders can take to meet this challenge with flying colors.

Consistency

To ensure that its culture is represented in all of its offices or operations, an organization must apply and measure the same processes, policies and rules throughout the system. If there is a significant variance, then the culture will not be seen as important or a contributing factor to the organization’s success. Everyone within a system contributes to its culture, whether through support, neglect or subversion.

Bon Secours Richmond Health System, part of Bon Secours Inc., has managed to create and maintain a shared culture as it has expanded. The challenge has been multifaceted—from incorporating every hospital into a 50-year-old system to ensuring that a historically religious charity operation is vital in the current managed care environment.

By creating consistency in practices that guarantees fairness, Bon Secours was able to identify values and concepts everyone could embrace. The health system standardized many policies and procedures, and maintained consistent communication.

“We partnered with other hospitals that had the same value systems. That allowed us to share our mission and immediately communicate respect to each of the hospitals,” says Bonnie Shelor, senior vice president of human resources of Bon Secours Richmond. “We started branding ourselves as the Sisters of Bon Secours with the individual hospital names like St. Mary’s as one faith-based organization.”

Fostering a Connection

Lewis Parks of Lewis W. Parks Associates, leadership development consultants, emphasizes that a cultural transformation is not something that can be forced on people in a short period of time. “Culture influences human behavior and is a reflection of group behavior,” he says. “Rules and policies can be implemented or enforced; however, culture is how employees think and respond to the surrounding actions and behaviors of managers, customers and others. They are connecting with their environment.”

Hospitals have to make compensation decisions based on patient satisfaction scores, strict guidelines, accreditation agencies and so much more on a daily basis. If the overriding culture isn’t strong, the result is a lack of consistency in policy adherence, hospital performance and patient care. All of these can have a subtle, negative influence.

“A shared culture is a very powerful contributor to organizational performance,” says Parks. “A culture with an emphasis and reward structure on factors such as customer service, quality, equitable promotions, meritocracy and results will have high employee morale, good attendance, frequent new idea generation and low employee turnover.”

According to Parks, whose firm specializes in developing and implementing executive, management and leadership talent strategy, there is no simple formula for developing an “ideal” culture—it needs to be established over time. Parks lists the following standards that contribute to a shared culture:

- A common set of demonstrated values that are important to the organization, its people and its customers.

- A shared understanding, across all levels of the organization, of how the values and culture contribute to the value proposition of the system.

- Consistent use of policies, practices and processes, particularly talent management practices, that reinforces the shared values. Performance measures based on the values are incorporated with performance management criteria, which are in turn integrated with rewards, recognition and promotion criteria.

- Open and frequent communication across the organization as to how the values and culture contribute to organization, team and individual success (such as outstanding achievement awards, results directly related to demonstrated values and so forth).

- Managers at all levels who “practice what is preached.”

A Healthy Culture

When your goal is to create a positive, shared culture across a multifacility organization, it all comes down to thinking globally and acting locally. This approach helps individual facilities maintain their own personalities and processes overall while smoothly being integrated into the larger system. Managers have to make sure the culture is healthy enough to be emulated; the health of a culture can be determined through customer satisfaction feedback, employee satisfaction scores and turnover rates.

The culture should always reinforce and reflect the value proposition of the organization. If it is acceptable that the value proposition be tailored in different areas or for different groups of customers, then the culture will remain healthy as long as the values of the organization are reflected appropriately.

It takes tremendous synergy on behalf of the managers, employees and customers to create a positive shared culture. Values have to be established and practiced, all communication has to be clear and consistent, and time has to be allowed for everyone to acclimate and contribute. If these steps are taken, the desired shared culture will ultimately emerge within the organization.

Vicki Z. Lauter is president of Z=mc2, a recruiting solutions firm headquartered in Atlanta that concentrates on senior-level talent in the health care and technology sectors.

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This article 1st appeared on August 28, 2007 in HHN Magazine online site.

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