Add personalization to your employer brand

“You want to show your employees that you see them.”

– Meg Aldrich, associate administrator, corporate communications, Keck Medicine of USC

Think of what effective ambassadors employees would be if they knew that they were important as individuals to their bosses, to their colleagues, to their organization. That feeling is not as common as it should be.

In this series, we established that healthcare leaders need to know how to lead with personalization, which means seeing patients and employees in their full humanity. We talked about why personalization is important, how we can shape our organizational cultures to facilitate it, and what leadership skills are needed for that.

In the previous article I said that personalization is achieved when people know they matter.

But once you’ve done all that, how do you ensure your employer brand reflects this level of personalization that so many people crave?

At the Healthcare in the Age of Personalization Summit 2024we had a session on this titled Personalization is clearly visible in your Employer Brand.

This article is the seventh in a fourteen-part weekly series in which I share insights from that summit. We heard from a wide range of healthcare experts – leaders from all facets of healthcare organizations, from the boardroom and top management to the patient’s bedside – on topics such as navigating the unknowns of healthcare, reinventing strategies, patient experience, equity and much more.

In this article, I share highlights from the panel discussion on why and how personalization should be evident in your employer brand.

Panelists included:

• Meg Aldrichdeputy administrator, corporate communications, Keck Medicine of USC
• Cara Williamsvice president and chief human resources officer (CHRO), Cottage Health

The employer brand rests on your most important ambassadors: current and former employees. That is why the panel consisted of experts from HR and from corporate and management communications. Your reputation as an employer depends on how existing employees feel about the work they do and how they are treated. These feelings are often shaped by the extent to which they have a voice and the opportunities they have within the organization.

Through the voice of managers and employees

As associate administrator of corporate communications for Keck Medicine of USC, Meg Aldrich handles executive communications and collaborates with colleagues in HR, media relations and crisis communications.

She said people want to hear more from their CEO than just company policy, especially when something big happens.

“If you look back at the summer of 2020, with civil unrest and all kinds of pent-up feelings and very important issues coming up,” she said, “people want to hear from their CEO. They want to hear what happened, what is important to them and how their personal concerns can be supported in the workplace.”

But people want that too are heard. What if they don’t agree with what they hear from the CEO? How do you maintain individual focus when something is going on in the world and employees react differently to it individually?

Aldrich uses what she calls an Issues Response Framework as a way to scale personalization in a situation where there are many points of view on complex issues.

“The Issues Response Framework came out of a need where different people in the organization felt like we needed to respond to what’s happening,” Aldrich said. “Whether the issue at hand is a political issue, a wildfire in Southern California impacting our workers, a global conflict. What is our position as an organization?”

She said part of her role in a crisis is looking at sensitive issues. First, she advises people to consider whether or not the organization should express a position in a given situation, and offers these guidelines (taken from her presentation slide):

1. Not too fast! Situations evolve quickly. Sometimes it is better to wait for more information.
2. Is it about us? There are a lot of terrible things in the world, but do we have anything to add to the conversation that would be helpful?
3. Beware of virtue signaling. Do we say something because we really care or because we want to show that we are aware?

“These high-touch moments are where you can make a meaningful impact with an employee,” says Aldrich. “Perhaps it simply requires our employees to be observant, patient and careful with their colleagues who may be going through difficult times. But this is a new space in communication. Every issue in every issue is different.”

Every employee is different.

For example, Aldrich said two of their health care system’s hospitals are in different communities. Verdugo Hills Hospital is located in the largest Armenian diaspora outside of Armenia, and their Arcadia Hospital is located in a predominantly Mandarin-speaking community.

“We have very different audiences that we have to take into account and look at differently,” she said.

The Issues Response Framework is about providing a process to achieve that.

“What are the questions we’re all going to ask when we huddle together? What is important to us? Who will be in the room? It’s a step-by-step process,” Aldrich said. “For any expressions, make sure that you have your own small focus group that is diverse, because everyone reads something or receives information with their own interpretation. One group may read it and take it in a certain way. Someone else may take it another way, and a third way. It is important to gather input and voices from individuals with diverse perspectives.”

It is a tough task to get in touch with what is important to different groups. Many of these answers exist within an organization’s own workforce. Think of how powerful it is for them to see that this reputable institution cares about what they think.

Talk about empowering someone overnight.

Through non-linear career paths

Cara Willliams is vice president and CHRO at Cottage Health in Santa Barbara, California. She shared what Cottage Health has done to be more personalized in the development, training and advancement opportunities available to employees.

“The pandemic has made us think differently in terms of retention because there are so many other options outside of the traditional healthcare bubble, and people want that,” Williams said. “So they’re leaving en masse.”

That’s why Cottage Health rethought their workforce development strategy to make it more personal and create non-linear career paths.

“We’re sending someone back to school to do something completely different,” she said. “We call it the ‘other side of the fence’: giving people the opportunity to follow someone into a job and see if that’s something they’re interested in. It may be something they have never thought about, or never thought they would do. would be good at it. Non-linear means the org chart looks like a spaghetti drawing, and it really helps people get the best out of themselves and gives them the tools to do that.”

By giving them the tools, she wants to go much further than just paying for the training itself.

“There was a program where we took medical residents and sent them back to school to become radiologic technologists, and we paid for them to go to school, but you can’t go to school and work,” Williams said. “So we supplemented their wages so they could go to school full-time and keep their full-time salary. And now they become Rad Techs, which is a better career path for them.”

But it doesn’t just help the individuals, it helps the organization build a workforce for a job that is difficult to recruit for, Williams said. The program also takes employees who already have relationships in the city and helps them grow their careers by staying in the community instead of moving.

Williams said they are expanding the program based on lessons learned along the way.

“One of the things we didn’t take into account is driving to the school and how much gas costs,” she said. “We supplemented their wages and paid for school, but they came to us and said it is very expensive to drive to the school, which is a little further away than where everyone lives. That is why we are pushing our boundaries.”

This program shows me that the organization sees this as an investment rather than a cost item.

When we invest in employees in ways that support their dignity and humanity – through financial investments that expand someone’s career opportunities, or communications investments that give people a platform where their voices can be heard – we honor their individuality. They become influential ambassadors of your employer brand, because they have experienced personalization first-hand.

The success of an organization is no longer about the business that defines the individual. It is the individual that defines the company. So we have to be careful about the way we view and treat our employees. For them to be at the forefront of our institution’s brand, we must recognize the investments we are making, not just for the short term, but for the long term.

Watch this short video to learn more from the panel.

Next time: I’ll kick off the second half of the series, which focuses on patients as consumers. The following article will share insights from a summit on health disparities and leading change through collaboration and innovation.