Reach out to employees
Your vision and the strategy for reaching it might be simple or complicated, but it will require communication in many different forms to reach every employee.
“I use a trite phrase, ‘seven times, seven ways,’” Jones says. “We have to communicate to all our audiences and stakeholders who are
involved. I personally believe nothing is better than eye-to-eye communication, talking to folks, getting down at the individual employee level.”
Jones says tailoring messages to various employee groups is one of his biggest challenges, particularly in a hospital setting, where the vision
has to be communicated to doctors, nurses, office staff and other support staffers. If you head a company that houses employees in various
disciplines, you might find yourself in the same situation.
“That’s a tremendous challenge,” Jones says. “How do you talk to people the way they want to hear, either in the message points or in
the way the message is delivered? Every one of us learns in different ways and employees all accept messages in different ways. There
are words executives use that other people might not appreciate. That will always be the case. That’s why there is a connecting factor
in communication. You need to be able to connect with someone.”
To aid in the connection with his employees, Jones has taken the extra step of periodically working alongside them at their jobs. He also
invites employees to spend time with him while he is on the job. Jones says the chance to spend time with each other creates a level of
understanding between employees and management that might not otherwise exist, and it also helps foster the idea that everyone at
Memorial City has a hand in steering the organization.
“I do it every two to three weeks,” he says. “I work side by side with an employee so I can fully appreciate what they do and how they
do it. I observe them in many situations and work with them in the system if I can. That gives me a full appreciation for what they do.
“What is happening is that when I’ve come to their space, from then on they’re more forthcoming. Now they’ve seen me work side by
side with them, and they have no problem coming up to me in the hall and talking about an issue. The key thing is they have to know
me. We’re a team and the collegiality of that is so critical. It’s the means to accomplishing what we want to accomplish.”
