Get feedback
The cheerleader pranced around the hallways of Texas Health Plano in her short skirt and white ribbons in her hair, but if you look a little closer, you’ll quickly realize that the cheerleader is actually Canose. He promised employees that if he got a high response rate on the employee satisfaction survey, he would put on the cheerleading gear, and when he got an astounding 87 percent response rate, he made good on his promise to dress like a cheerleader for both the day- and night-shift employees.
“I can tell you that that did more for employee morale this summer, just the willingness to dress up in that kind of outfit,” he says. “Now the most frequent comment I got was that I have great legs, which my wife has known for 37 years, but it was the first time the employees found out.”
Feedback is critical to successfully leading, so he knew he had to do something good to get what he was looking for. Clearly it worked. Employees were amused for the day, and he got answers to critical questions — 65 of them in total that ask whether or not employees think their leaders communicate the most important information, that leaders listen to them and that leaders identify the things they need the employees to work on.
The results the last time around indicated that the hospital was between the 78th and 87th percentile on the majority of categories compared to the national average.
In addition to getting feedback for the annual employee survey, he also says it’s important to gather feedback in the moment. For example, after a town-hall meeting, instead of sending out an electronic survey, he asks those who attend to fill out a survey before they leave.
“If you get them done right there in the moment, you have the best chance of getting a good response,” he says.
While it’s not mandatory, he usually gets a 95 percent completion rate by doing it this way. Doing this allows him to see if employees actually understand what he says.
“We ask them whether they are experiencing a consistency in those messages and whether we are making it relevant to their daily work and do they feel like they’re getting the information they need in order to understand the strategic context for the very meaningful work that they do,” Canose says.