Encourage employees
To position an organization to win over the long haul, you need employees who are engaged with what is going on in the organization and will maintain a high level of interest over the long term.
Norcross says a big key to that is to show your employees how much you value them, and doing so beyond your monthly organizational newsletters or in the periodic meetings where you hand out awards and deliver recognition.
You need to show your appreciation and reward high performers on a more consistent, informal basis.
“You need to compliment people on a regular basis,” Norcross says. “Our middle and senior management has spent a considerable amount of time out and about, complimenting people on how they perform over the course of each day. When I’m walking around in our institution, I’m engaging employees in that manner. The person could be working in our maintenance department, in security, a receptionist, a parking attendant. No matter what role they’re in, they need to feel good about their work. They need to be complimented. It’s just a natural thing that people want to hear when they’re doing good work.”
Recognition from management is a component of showing employees how their job fits the overall mission of the organization. As you’re delivering proverbial, or real, pats on the back during your daily interactions with employees, it also provides you with an opportunity to explain or demonstrate how every job in the company contributes to satisfied customers, new and repeat business, and increased revenue.
In a medical organization, it is sometimes difficult for management-level figures like Norcross to draw a direct line from patient care to support staffers who don’t directly interface with patients. But the connections are there, and Norcross takes every opportunity available to refract an employee’s individual contributions through the wide-angle lens of the entire Cooper system.
“Historically, the patient has been served specifically on the physician or nurse level, and it has happened at the doctor’s or nurse’s convenience, not the patient’s” Norcross says. “That’s why we’ve placed a cultural emphasis throughout the organization on customer service in the form of serving patients. Each and every person, whether they’re a parking attendant or maintenance person or doctor or nurse, we emphasize that they’re touching our customers in some way, they’re affecting the customer experience, they’re key to our ability to serve the people who come through our doors seeking care.”
It’s an organizational philosophy that rings true, whether you’re healing the sick, manufacturing cars or running a bakery: If your employees recognize that they’re part of a team and are contributing to team goals, they’ll feel more satisfied with their day-to-day work, and they’ll project their satisfaction onto the customer that they serve.
“Whether it’s a sports team, a business enterprise, a charitable organization or otherwise, people want to be involved in things that they feel rewarded by,” Norcross says. “It could be an emotionally based award, a financial reward, but ultimately, people need to feel that level of excitement. They need to see that they’re doing more than just working from 9 to 5 each day. They need to be a part of something they enjoy, because it’s most of what they do during their waking hours.”
