Employee Engagement: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Q&A with MetroHealth’s Chief Employee Engagement Officer on best practices for cultivating an engaged workforce.
By Shea Holman, COO & Counsel
I recently sat down with Cheryl Forino Wahl, Chief Employee Engagement Officer and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer at MetroHealth in Ohio. Cheryl is a leader in the employee engagement space and a compliance expert – and at the Purple Method, we know that making employees feel valued creates a positive workplace culture that in turn helps prevent and address harassment. Cheryl, thanks so much for joining me. Let’s get started:
What is an Employee Engagement Officer?
As MetroHealth’s Chief Employee Engagement Officer, I am charged with ensuring that our company’s policies and practices reflect a people-first culture, are committed to equity, inclusion, and diversity, and promote ethical conduct for the protection of our patients, staff, and visitors. Our mission at MetroHealth is to lead the way to a healthier you and a healthier community through service, teaching, discovery, and teamwork. We believe that we can only do that if we have a comprehensive employee experience strategy to ensure that our employees can flourish, feel valued, and have opportunities to grow and develop.
What does an Employee Engagement Officer do?
As Chief Employee Engagement Officer, I’ve built out a team that prioritizes listening to employees, appreciating what they bring to MetroHealth, and ensuring that their well-being is top of mind. I hired and now oversee two new directors: a Director of Listening and a Director of Flourishing, who report directly to me and help our office fulfill its goals. We also have a manager of appreciating. Our goal is to coach leaders on how to lead with empathy, gratitude, and appreciation. We prioritize a speak-up culture and build trust through transparent communications with our workforce. Our team has embarked on defining the employee experience by mapping out what we want employees to know, feel and do at every point along the employee journey, beginning before they even apply for a job at MetroHealth and continuing through their exit from the organization.
How do you build a strong listening culture?
Our team implemented a four-step approach to building a strong listening culture: “crawl,” “walk,” “run,” and “sprint.” “Crawl” involved making a case for leadership, creating the engagement structure, building out our team, and obtaining buy-in from the necessary stakeholders. At the “walk” stage, we focused on establishing our listening strategy, expanding the necessary tools, and prioritizing metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). We continued to grow our listening methods during the “run” stage and involved leadership in listening, establishing goals, and tracking methods. Finally, within the course of a year, we reached the final stage: “sprint.” We now let our listening strategy drive our decisions, we aggregate the data, and we communicate relentlessly across the organization.
How do you measure employee engagement?
As part of our 18-month engagement strategy, we committed to really listening to employees and analyzing the results of our various feedback outlets. We expanded our listening tools, using pulse surveys and exit surveys to increase our employee engagement data. We set up an email box called “Ask the CEO” to encourage employees to voice their questions, concerns, and compliments to the highest level of the organization. There was a real advantage in seeing what information was coming through the various channels, as it allowed us to analyze which employee programs were having the intended positive impact and allowed us to intervene when programs were not serving employees. We also prioritized KPIs to measure impact. The metrics encourage us to identify and manage potential blindspots, prioritize new initiatives, set goals, create accountability, and measure the impact.
What’s the connection between Employee Engagement and Human Resources?
In the future, I think we’re going to see more organizations implementing employee engagement departments as standalone functions. Employee well-being and engagement are not just nice things to have. These aspects are market differentiators. Engagement teams have to think about how they’re building trust, staying true to organizational values, and attracting not only customers (in our case patients) but employees as well. The employee experience has to become embedded in the fabric of who we are, not just seen as a cost of doing business.
When it comes to prioritizing employee well-being, what are some of your lessons learned?
In reality, this process is a marathon, not a sprint. Sprinting is just not sustainable for the long term. Prioritizing employee well-being involves more than just implementing a few new programs. It’s important to be flexible and patient. This work takes time to build and influence the culture of the organization. Although results may be slow to impact, that doesn’t mean you should give up if you don’t see an immediate improvement in retention or recruitment. Engaged employees bring their best selves to work every day, which translates to better business outcomes and healthier workplace cultures. To reach this level of engagement, we needed to thoughtfully build a comprehensive, evolving strategy. In building our strategy, it’s been crucial to have executive buy-in, align stakeholders, diversify our listening methods, and insist on closing the loop at both the system and leader levels. We’ll continue to grow and change but having this strategy as the foundation allows us to be stronger and to flourish as an organization.
If you’re looking for custom-tailored support as you ramp up your employee engagement efforts, the Purple Method is here to help. We work with you to create customized anti-harassment solutions that actually work – tailoring all of our offerings to your unique workplace, culture, mission, and needs. Reach out to us at hello@thepurplemethod.com to connect!