Build relationships
One of the best things you can do to help
your employees do their jobs is to provide
them with good leadership at all levels.
“People leave organizations because they
don’t get along with the people that they
work with or their manager,” Corley says.
“Our managers’ jobs are to make sure that
the employees achieve their maximum
potential. When the employees perform,
they make you look good. Employees want
to do the right thing.”
An effective manager needs to be able to
relate to his or her people.
“The output of our work is important,”
Corley says. “But we emphasize not only
the quality of the care but the quality of the
caring. Not just to the patient and their
family but also to the employee. How do
you know whether your organization cares
about you as an employee? Do they listen
to you?”
Community Health holds a regular twoday course on relationship development.
The goal is to emphasize the importance of
regular communication about what everyone’s role is in the company.
“It’s critical that people understand what
their job is and what the expectations are,” Corley says. “We try to make sure that’s very clear.”
Those discussions about job and expectation should take place
in multiple ways. Corley and his managers regularly eat in the company cafeterias in order to interact with employees in a more casual setting.
When new employees join Community Health, they take time to
sit down with each group of rookies in order to get to know them
a little better.
“It’s a commitment we’ve made,” Corley says. “It’s amazing the
number of times people say, ‘You know, I worked for another
organization for 10 years, and I never met the CEO.”
The point is to build a sense of team among your leaders and
your employees through the sharing of information.
“Provide a lot of information to the managers and leaders
because they are the ones who have day-to-day contact with the
individuals,” Corley says. “They are the ones that communicate the
information. You know that the culture runs through the organization when you hear that directly from employees. It’s when
employees take the challenge of improving the exceptional patient
and family experience or the exceptional physician or exceptional
employee experience.”
