Eight years ago, Richard Miller discovered that a business could grow through downsizing.
It’s not as contradictory as you might think.
In 2001, Virtua Health’s Camden, N.J., hospital was facing low occupancy rates and, in turn, a lack of revenue production. Miller, the president and CEO of the 7,200-employee South Jersey health care system, soon found that the only option was to close the Camden hospital as an inpatient facility.
More than 500 employees’ jobs hung in the balance. History is full of companies that closed a facility, padlocked the doors and walked away, leaving displaced employees to fend for themselves.
But Miller saw an opportunity emerging from the adversity. He could support the affected people, strengthening Virtua Health’s bond to its employees and the Camden community while performing the necessary closure. So Miller and his management team set about reassigning as many of the Camden employees as possible.
“We found a job for virtually every employee in the hospital,” Miller says. “Our human resources department painstakingly went through and placed them at our other sites. The ones that wanted early retirement, that’s what we let them do, but the very first thing we did is went through and decided on job placement.”
Virtua Health maintained a presence in Camden by using the former hospital as an outpatient services facility, now known as Virtua Health Camden, and leasing a portion of the facility to other businesses. It took a great deal of extra work, but the end result was a creative solution to a problem, a solution that strengthened both the trust of employees in management and the trust of the Camden community in the Virtua Health organization.
“People didn’t forget what Virtua did in that regard, because we didn’t board up the doors and walk away from our people,” Miller says. “The community never felt we abandoned them, and now the building is full and is a successful economic venture for us today.”
It’s a lesson Miller still carries with him: Even in difficult times, if you are willing to take the steps to build trust and a spirit of teamwork among your employees, you will strengthen your business over the long term.
