Define a direction
To define the culture at Bayada Nurses — which generated $448 million in 2008 revenue — Baiada had to define what his employees and clients believed about the company. That began with research conducted by a clinical psychologist hired by Bayada Nurses.
The psychologist ran a series of more than 30 focus groups with employees and family members of clients. At the same time that the focus groups were proceeding, Baiada took his management staff on a series of retreats aimed at facilitating discussion on the company’s values, mission and vision.
“We did three overnight retreats with groups of our officers, during which we led them in guided exercises to help come up with our values, the true heart of what we’re doing,” Baiada says. “Then we did a survey of every client and employee, totaling about 19,000 people.”
The psychologist then worked with the leaders at Bayada Nurses to distill the large amount of feedback and data that they gathered into a page-long first draft that outlined The Bayada Way — the company’s mission, vision and values — in a simply stated, easily communicated form.
For the first time since the company’s inception, every employee could specifically define what Bayada Nurses stands for as well as the company’s long-term goals. Bayada Nurses’ mission is to provide in-home nursing care that allows clients to live with comfort and dignity. Bayada Nurses’ vision is to provide a lasting legacy as a leader in the home health care field. The core values include honesty, integrity, compassion and maintaining a strong financial base.
After laying the initial foundation, Baiada and his senior leaders began putting miles behind them, hitting the road in a 38-foot motor home and visiting all company locations for rounds of communication and feedback that helped refine the first draft into a final copy of The Bayada Way.
“We kept refining it,” Baiada says. “We rewrote it, and then went back out again, using more focus groups to make sure the words matched the meanings behind them. Language can be a funny thing, so we needed to clarify it through communication.”
Baiada used multiple avenues of communication to promote the culture and receive feedback. As part of that, the leaders at Bayada Nurses began gathering perhaps the most powerful form of cultural promotion in business: personal testimonials.
Baiada says communicating the personal stories of clients is a great motivator in business. It lets employees know that their jobs are making a difference to the people your company serves.
“We would have a couple-hour session where we would show a video on The Bayada Way,” Baiada says. “People would talk about their personal experiences. Our people would talk about what it has meant for them to serve our clients. It was really quite emotional, and that’s what we’re trying to get at. We tried to tune people in to how this feels, what it is like to serve a client. It really worked. We had a very positive, enthusiastic reaction from those who attended.”
The defined, refined culture wasn’t a product of Baiada and his direct reports sitting in a conference room. It was a direct reflection of the input from employees, clients and their families. It’s something Baiada has emphasized to his employees.
You should take every opportunity to show employees how they impact your company. If you give them a sense of ownership, a sense that they’re helping to drive the company, their willingness to buy in to the culture will be all the greater.
“Going around, I was basically telling people that I believe in The Bayada Way,” Baiada says. “I told them that I didn’t write this. I told them that this is a reflection of what we heard from you and your clients.
“As the leader, first you have to believe in the culture, mission and values yourself. You have to believe that your values and mission are about something more than just making money. Great work and happy clients produce large revenues and decent profits.
“Some people go for the revenue and client numbers, and you can always come up with a better idea to make more money. But in the long run, you’re serving your clients, and they have to know why you’re in business. They have to know that it’s in your heart first. Look at Enron. They had a beautiful mission statement, but they probably didn’t believe it. It was probably done by an advertising agency for public consumption.”
