Communicate at all
levels

Joel Allison
CEO, Baylor Health Care System

At Baylor Health Care System,
President and CEO Joel Allison emphasizes listening just as much as talking
with his employees, and executives are
encouraged to listen to concerns of
employees. Also, employees are surveyed every other year, with some 79
percent taking part in the 2006 survey,
the most recent data available. Baylor
also has focus groups with employees
and also an ethics hotline, in which
employees can anonymously report violations of company policy. The calls are
routed to a third-party vendor who handles the calls to assure the review is
objective. Every call is reviewed by
Baylor’s chief compliance officer, who
reports directly to Allison.

“That helps us to find out if there are
any issues or concerns about any problems or early warning signals to pay attention to,” Allison says. “It’s all back to quality. It’s all back to service. It’s about commitment to patient care and value of
integrity and openness that we want to be
the best organization we can be and to be
trusted as an organization that is delivering the highest quality of service.”

The two-way nature of the conversation engages employees in contributing
to quality. Allison’s own e-mail address is
made available to all employees, and he
tries to answer every e-mail he receives,
even if it is just to let the employee know
he’s forwarded their question on to
another manager. Surprisingly, employees aren’t abusive of having it, and often
have valid points or concerns that they
bring to his attention.

Employees have to feel valued and one
of the ways to do that is to be responsive.

“They are critical to you being successful,” Allison says. “They are the ones
who are out there, 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, taking care of patients. I
think it’s a CEO’s and management’s
responsibility to stay in touch with your
employees. You have to engage them.
You have to know what they are thinking
and what they can do to help you, how
they can make it better for the patient.
I’m a big believer in building strong
employee relationships and being out
with the people. We encourage all of our
senior executives and the presidents of
our facilities to do that.”