Survive or Thrive: Using the Modern Leader Toolkit
Andrea Perdue and Conrad Kresge of Norton Healthcare

MODERATOR: Welcome to today's webinar, Survive or Thrive: Using the Modern Leader Toolkit with Norton Healthcare. We're so glad that you could join us.
We will send out a link to the on demand recording of this webinar later today, so watch for that in your emails.
This is something that you can share with other folks or just go back to to review your notes. If you'd like to earn SHRM or HRCI credits for this webinar, we will share those codes at the very end. And if you have a question for our panelists, please drop it in the chat or the Q&A. We will monitor those and save some time at the end of their presentation for some of that open Q&A discussion.
With that, I'm gonna turn it over to our two speakers.
CONRAD KRESGE: Right. Hello, everyone. Happy to be here with you today. My name is Conrad Kresge. I'm a manager of employee experience and insights, representing Norton Healthcare.
It's really my pleasure to be here with you today. You're gonna hear a little bit about what our team does, how we support all the providers, the clinicians, and the team members at Norton Healthcare, who we are as an organisation, and the journey we've been on, supporting our leaders over the last few years. We've made some inroads and really been able to make a difference in how they support their teams. So I'm gonna introduce my colleague, Andrea Perdue.
ANDREA PERDUE: Hi, everyone. I'm so excited to be with you guys today, and special thanks to Raven for kicking off today's session.
I am an employee experience culture strategist with the team, and I'm happy to be here, but I would like to just share a fun tidbit before we, dive into the presentation.
And I know you guys are seeing another fun photo of Conrad and I. We were able to gather, with a slew of other employees, with our spouses at the annual, employee, I guess, employee service banquet. We celebrated big milestones last year being ten years with Norton Healthcare.
So we got to have a nice snapshot with our president and CEO, Russ Cox, but we had a great time, and I thought that was a perfect picture to really kick off the intention of today's presentation.
But, of course, we do wanna share a little bit more about the our organisation, and that's Norton Healthcare. So I'll let Conrad tell you guys just a little bit about who we are.
CONRAD: So Norton Healthcare has been supporting the greater Louisville community for almost a hundred and fifty years. We've been around for a while, in various forms and shapes, but we're at our largest now. We've reached twenty three thousand, actually exceeded twenty three thousand employees this past year, with some recent acquisitions of various regional hospitals. We're now up to nine hospitals, acute care facilities, eighteen immediate care centers, and with over four hundred and thirty patient facing locations with about a hundred and forty stand alone locations. So we have a pretty large regional footprint.
It presents its challenges being a system, but also its advantages. We're able to kind of, share our culture with all these different folks and it really translates well to the community support that our organisation has strived for these hundred and fifty years.
So I'm proud to work for this company. To Andrea's point, she and I both been here more than ten years.
It's a great place to work. If you're ever curious about coming to Louisville, Kentucky, check us out. But really, you know, we've been on a journey, but it really doesn't encapsulate what our culture is. This is who we are. It's not who we are at work necessarily. And Andrea's gonna share some of that.
ANDREA: Yes. And, Conrad, I love that you said you're proud to work for Norton Healthcare because we really do pride ourselves on our culture. So we would not kick off Norton Healthcare with any justice if we didn't show some of the colour and spirit behind our workforce.
And all of these great moments, you know, really extend from focusing in on that employee experience, but it connects and extends further into our patient experience, and it touches our community as well. So there's so much heart and soul that really just start from our amazing workforce.
But as you can see from these pictures, we like to have a good time, and we like to make moments count.
And I think that really focuses on our intention to really elevate experiences where we can.
And the question is, you know, how are we ensuring that this is happening, you know, day in and day out?
CONRAD: So our team and the employee experience team here at Norton, we really centre ourselves by asking a couple of key questions and really assessing who we are, what our purpose is for the organisation.
We know we are here to support the caregivers. But, you know, how do we make sure that we're staying the course? And so it's these questions that recenter ourselves.
We ask why, why do folks choose Norton Healthcare? What sets us apart? Is it strictly compensation? Is there a total rewards package? Or is it something maybe a little bit deeper? Is it the culture of our organisation?
We saw significant gains in cultural appreciation for the organisation. We actually opened a facility to serve an underserved demographic of our community. It's the first facility in a very underserved area of Louisville, that's been open for the last hundred years. So that was a huge recognition and milestone for our organisation to say, hey. We're gonna meet our community where they are and provide that high quality care that they know we know they deserve.
And so that makes inroads for our community, and brought a lot of folks to our organisation and made them understand that our culture sets us apart.
What compels individuals to stay? Is it just their paycheck? Is it their teams? Is it their leaders? How do we how do we drive them to that connection and drive the employee fulfillment that we know is so important in the health care marketplace?
If caregivers are disconnected to why they're doing their work, then that impacts patient safety. It impacts patient outcomes, and that's not acceptable for our organisation. We always need to be cognizant of what drives their purpose and tying them to that purpose.
If folks leave the organisation, which it happens, you know, life changes. Maybe something's compelling you to leave this this marketplace, our region.
Maybe we're not a great fit right now. Folks go back to school, get different accreditations.
But what can compel them that they'll come back? How do we leave that lasting impression where they know that they're gonna get the level of fulfillment, job satisfaction, and be around people they wanna work with, and make sure that they return to Norton Healthcare?
When folks leave, how do we stay connected with them? This has been a big topic of conversation, not just in health care marketplace, but in all various industries across the nation.
So we've actually developed an alumni network where folks leaving the organisation, whether it's you're retiring, you're moving across the country, you can stay connected with what's happening at Norton Healthcare. You can receive communications, know about job opportunities, and stay connected with your former team members here at Norton.
And then most importantly, how do we create that culture that folks wanna stay connected with?
How do we have that organisation where if you leave, if something takes you away from us, you wanna come back?
Or if you're, maybe you're leaving the workplace altogether. But when your time is right, you're gonna choose Norton Healthcare, not only as a caregiver, but as a place to work.
So all this together kind of helps encapsulate, you know, what we're trying to accomplish as a team. And the partnership that we've had with O.C. Tanner has been pivotal across all facets of this cultural strategy and journey we've been on. I'd say going back for the twenty plus years we've been partners with O.C. Tanner.
So, really excited to kinda dive into some of these with you, share the the inroads we've made, especially on the leadership journey we've been on.
ANDREA: Right.
And we did wanna take a moment to also explain a little bit more about the employee experience umbrella at Norton Healthcare.
This may look different across industries and organisations. But what I love from the key questions Conrad shared with you guys is they're all really focused around the employee first and foremost, and their connection to our organisation.
So that's really what our teams strive to do. So employee experience is made up of four key teams.
First being, I'm gonna talk on our teams in a little bit later, Conrad, but first being our employee experience people ops team. And they really ensure a seamless operations experience for Norton Healthcare from credentialing to employee postings.
But my favourite program of all that they manage is our employee life events program in the family. And that's really there to celebrate, honor, or offer support for employees outside of the workplace and outside of the work that's happening.
So I think Conrad may share of his life event that happened in a few slides, but I'll let him share his news.
But also another key team of the employee experience umbrella is our people centre team. And our people centre is managing day to day employee questions, calls, concerns, any kind of immediate needs, or pebbles and shoes, like our team likes to refer to them. So any kind of day to day frustrations or obstacles, we have several employees that reach out to the people centre team for for immediate support.
In 2024 alone, the people centre team actually answered thirty thousand two hundred calls. That is a team of six full time employees and one part time employee. And that is incredible, and that impact, I had to make sure I recognise that.
If you think about thirty thousand minor obstacles or questions or delays, and processes across any company, that's profound. So offering support where support is needed has been really key in enhancing the employee experience overall.
Now I will give Conrad a moment to to share in a couple slides a little bit more on employee experience insights and their effort to engage our employees.
But I work in the culture strategies umbrella with four other amazing peers, and we are very focused on impacting the employee experience before day one to retirement and beyond. We have a very unique approach to our onboarding, but that now includes engaging with employees before their first day. But to Conrad's point, you know, if employees exit the organisation for a variety of reasons, we stay connected through our alumni network, which has been very successful.
But we're also actively communicating and upholding our internal brand that's referred to as the Norton Way. So different leader communication tactics are crucial for our team as well as employee communication.
And my favourite, which is leading a culture of appreciation for the organisation.
So, of course, we're really gonna focus in on that modern leader toolkit as we get into our presentation.
So you'll see that we'll kind of grow into this topic a little bit more, but these are four key areas where we wanna make sure we're taking an active approach to leading that culture of appreciation for the organisation.
So N Recognition of You, this is our performance recognition platform that is powered by O.C. Tanner.
And speaking of O.C. Tanner, every small star you see on the screen indicates an O.C. Tanner partnership of some sort. So I had to make sure I give them kudos.
But in addition to our performance recognition where we have several tactics to make sure we're encouraging efforts and rewarding results, we're also celebrating. So celebrating service milestones, retirement, and key events in the organisation.
You know, speaking of key events, I know we are less than a month away from employee appreciation day, so keep that in mind for your employees. Make sure you've got something in place.
But just one day wasn't good enough for Norton Healthcare, so we actually celebrate our employees for an entire month, later this year. So continue to think about ways where you can embed different events and engagement and celebrations in your organisation.
But I will say with everything being said, I've gotta hand it over to Conrad who manages our insights team because he's been a huge support and really quantifying, is the work that we are doing meaningful to our workforce?
CONRAD: Certainly. And so, I would say if an organisation is trying to justify, for instance, a large expenditure on, you know, developing culture, whether it's through integrating a recognition platform, service anniversary awards, retirement awards, especially in our space, we're a not for profit organisation, so we really have to be accountable, and be good stewards of our resources.
So how do we justify that work? How do we find, you know, the return on investment? And that's really what the employee experience and insights team is here to do. We're here to make sure that we see the proper outcomes based off of the the time, the effort, the investment that we take in approaching these various programs.
Whether it's something, you know, dedicating leaders to employee rounding, whether it's that in N Recognition of You program, the N the Family program, all the stuff that Andrea just mentioned, that's what we're here to support. So we do this by having a pretty robust employee listening mechanism in place. Whether it's new hire surveys, our annual census surveys that are available to the entire organisation, we have surveys built for exiting employees, topic driven ad hoc surveys.
Like I mentioned earlier, we acquired a couple facilities this year, So we wanted to see, okay, how did they feel about the acquisition process?
And we can embed demographic fields within each of these saying, okay. These employees recently went through onboarding. What are their perceptions of, you know, the new hire gift? Okay.
These employees received recognition x amount of times over the course of last year. What was their perception of value? And it really gives us a picture of, okay. Are we succeeding? Are we making the program adjustments that we need to to create the culture that we expect?
And the partnership that we've had with the culture strategies team, with our HR ops support team, it's integral to the success.
But we do wanna be, like I said, great stewards of our resources, make sure that we're assessing the proper things, and driving the program development that really meets our employees where they are.
One of the more intuitive things that we've done the last couple years is we launched a leader rounding program.
This is a means for leaders to engage with staff and record these interactions.
What's special about this as opposed to our surveys is they're they're one on one interactions. Alright? So this is just a, you know, a typical touch point that a good leader has with a team member.
And we know that here at Norton Healthcare, we have a lot of great leaders, and they're already doing this work. But what it allows us to do is measure it and make sure that we're holding folks accountable.
So then we can go back and say, okay. How many interactions does it make for successful leadership at Norton Healthcare? We can also tie other tools and resources to this, this leader rounding.
So for instance, we've embedded HR alerts. This is a way for a leader to say, hey. I need some HR assistance or this employee needs some HR assistance, whether it's help with their benefits, retirement, they need to meet with an HR manager regarding some concerns. It's a great way to trigger that assistance and make sure that we're, once again, meeting employees where they are.
We can do a Code Lavender. This is a little more specific to the health care industry, but it's tough on our caregivers if there's an adverse outcome on a unit or if they lose a patient. So we're gonna be cognizant of that. We wanna give them the resources they need to cope, and so we can trigger a code lavender where they get help from our chaplains. They can reach out for counselling services, and those resources are driven directly to the individuals that need them.
Andrea mentioned our N the Family program, our life events. This can also be triggered by a round. So if, for instance, my leader, Jason, was rounding on me, a couple months ago, and he found out that my wife was expecting.
And, we welcomed a healthy baby girl to our family just two weeks ago, believe it or not. And then he triggered a life event. So when my daughter arrived, we got a a meal delivered to our house. We got a awesome onesie that says welcome to the Norton Healthcare family.
And we've got, Norton Healthcare got to celebrate with us. It was a really special time, so it's one of my favourite programs.
We also have bereavement life events, marriage life events, and this program is ever expanding. So it's really awesome, and it's one of the core things that we've done. I think last year, we celebrated over fourteen hundred different life events across the organisation. So it's become a very large program.
And then most importantly, we've integrated our recognition program N Recognition of You. This is a way for leaders, real time within our rounding platform, to recognise employees for doing great work. Maybe they find out that they went above and beyond in a patient, or maybe their team member really supported them and they wanna recognise them from the tool. They can do that.
So it's just another tool in the toolkit to help our leaders make sure that they're showing the level of appreciation that our staff deserve. It's giving our leaders the resource and power to do that. So we're really excited about that partnership, and O.C. Tanner has been integral every single step, in making that happen. So really excited about this work.
We'll go into some of the outcomes that we've seen as a result of it, but we'll continue with, sharing our journey in the modern leader toolkit.
ANDREA: Right.
In addition to just sharing the journey, we kind of wanted to leave this thought provoking sentence up for a moment. No matter the journey, we have the opportunity to learn, grow, and build thriving teams.
So take a brief moment, and I want you all to think back on some of the key points in your career, and especially those memorable individuals that have really shifted and molded the leader that you are, the leader, the influencer, the best self that you are, that you bring into your work.
Now I'm sure there's several things that have stood out about these individuals that have made them so impressionable in your careers.
Hopefully, most of them good, but I also have a feeling that some of you on the Zoom may be having some flashbacks of some key moments that have impacted the maybe the leader that you do not wish to be.
So as we kind of go into this, I just wanted to make sure, first and foremost, that we talk a little bit about leadership style, because truly that's a key point in building and upholding thriving teams.
CONRAD: So when you all think back on your careers, I'm sure we've encountered the individual that we think of as the traditional boss.
Hopefully, they're few and far between now because if you run into a traditional boss at Norton Healthcare, they stand out kinda like a sore thumb.
But the traditional boss, they lead from the back. They say things like I think we should do this rather than gathering feedback from their team on, you know, what they think might be the successful approach. They take credit. They micromanage.
That one drives me crazy, "CC me on every email." No. No. We don't want that here at Norton Healthcare, and I'm sure you don't want it in your organisation.
Criticizing. Lack of appreciation is a big one.
They blame. They speak more. They inspire fear or a sense of urgency all the time.
It's not the type of leadership style we wanna see. I know that we're a very intergenerational workforce right now, and let me tell you, us millennials, the Gen Zers, they do not adapt well to this type of leadership style. And I can't imagine that our Gen Xers and, Boomers still in the workplace can either.
So we've really adopted this new modern leadership style and tried to give our leaders the tools to really adapt to it and make it easy. So that way they have the resources to meet our employees where they are and develop that kind of culture, exemplify the culture that we want here at Norton Healthcare, which Andrea's gonna talk about all these different tools, resources, cool programs that we have, and then the celebrations that we have for our modern leaders.
ANDREA: Oh, absolutely. And I will not read the list of the modern leader, but just know it's all of the opposite things that Conrad initially said. But if you have anything to add to attributes of the modern leader, just drop them in the chat. I'd love to take a look at what resonates with you guys.
But if you all haven't, I really encourage you guys to take a look at O.C. Tanner's current Global Culture Report.
There's such a key focus on employee transitions, and we really took an interesting approach with this presentation for you guys today, focusing in on our leaders, and our frontline leaders. And all of our leaders come from a different starting point. So where can we support not just employees, but our leaders in particular, and support them at the start?
So I do have some new friends I'd like to introduce for you guys.
They are all Norton Healthcare employees and agreed to share their likeness for the purposes of this presentation.
But we're gonna share some key leader transitions that we all may experience from time to time.
So our first, I wanna welcome Olivia. Olivia is a Norton Healthcare employee, and you can see the glimmer in her eye and the excitement.
Olivia originally was an external hire with Norton Healthcare, and a new people leader. So, of course, we can all understand challenges of learning about the culture and processes of a totally new leader or a totally new organisation.
But also there's unique challenges that comes with being a new people leader for the first time. So the support we wanna offer Olivia may look different than the support we offer Heather.
Heather, who's very familiar with the Norton Healthcare culture as an internal transfer, she's taking a role into leading a new team. And that maybe I should say Heather and Juno, one of our facility dogs at our women's and children's hospital.
Great partnership there.
But last but not least, I wanna introduce John with you guys. And John is coming to us from a surviving team, we'll call it. A team that experiences significant turnover, but John had been with this team for long enough to finally rise to the occasion and accept a promotion.
So we'll see if John is up for the task. I don't know. What do you guys think?
So before I go to the next slide, I do kind of like to, you know, reiterate that all of these leaders have so much potential, and they all have different starting points. So we wanna make sure that not only can leaders feel confident to hit the ground running, but they have a wide range of support.
And I think that really starts with setting a solid foundation for our leaders.
So we're gonna hang out with our new leader, Olivia. And, again, we're just as a reminder, Olivia is a new people leader.
But when we're laying the foundation, our team is really focused on how we can make a lasting impression.
In this case, we're also making a first impression.
So, actually, before Olivia's first day with Norton Healthcare as a leader, she received a lovely package in the mail, thanks to O.C. Tanner's partnership here. So this package is an amazing way to celebrate your new leaders, express excitement and congratulations.
However, it's also a very intentional tactic to set key culture expectations for Norton Healthcare. So you can see that there is a lovely piece of collateral included with our package for Olivia.
You may or may not be able to read the header, but it says positive culture starts with you. And there's very key culture strategies on this document, just a nice taste and a nice feel of what we expect from our leaders, but also the support we offer our leaders to dive right in with your teams.
So, of course, we're exciting Olivia for her first day, but we're also, you know, supplying her with some initial content so she can really feel confident to grow and learn more as she gets started.
And with learning and growing more, of course, we wanna make sure we're building in key learning opportunities and growth opportunities.
So that's where we try to really make this leader toolkit we've discussed earlier very robust. So we have several strategies where we're actively connecting and communicating with our leaders.
I could talk to you guys about this for the whole hour, so we won't do that for today.
But I really just wanna focus on one of our unique approaches to really kind of extend that leader connection.
One of our communication tactics is what you see, in the image below, the Norton Way publication for leaders. It is a leader magazine that's really designed to bring the latest, not only news, but best practice information.
Anything that's culture related, any new developments, things to support leaders to support thriving teams.
I know Conrad shared a few moments ago about the opening of one of our new facilities in an underserved area.
And pictured is Karenza Townsend, the CAO of that facility. And, she's been an employee with us for, many years. But when she started initially before her CAO role, she was a leader of an employee resource group, and she had a dream to open this facility and to serve others that needed that.
So we have a lot of purpose filled stories and purpose fueled energy that really fuels this magazine too, that just brings it back to the work itself being so impactful.
So I can't reiterate that enough.
But there is more power with not just communication, but just connection.
And I wanna remind you about one of our leaders, that we introduced you guys to moments ago, and that's Heather. Heather was our internal transfer, but she's leading a new team. So let's see how Heather is adjusting to getting to know her new team and building that nice rapport, which is so crucial early on.
CONRAD: So Heather is a super utilizer of our leader rounding tool, which is what you're seeing on the screen here. It's a way for our leaders to engage with their teams in a one on one capacity.
So by entering the Cipher Health leader rounding tool that we've developed for them, they go in, create this interaction, select the team member they wanna round on, and then record that discussion.
We have a series of scripted items, whether it's something like, what can I do to support you What's the what do you love about your job? That's probably one of my favourite questions. That's really a purpose driven item. These are all rooted in Studer principles, and our leaders can interact with their staff, record these items, and then it gives them something to lean back on.
A lot of times, it's a great way for our teams to identify barriers, things that might need to change within their department, within their unit, and that the leaders should probably be aware of.
They can then circle back and connect with these teams and say, this is what we did with the suggestions that you gave.
How powerful is that as a leader? Making sure that your team has a voice within the organisation and that they are the change agents. It's extremely important.
I mentioned that we integrated our N Recognition of You platform within this tool. So leaders, without hopping in and out of various platforms, making a note to themselves that, "hey. I should need to send recognition later." They can do it right then in the moment. Very powerful. And we wanna be that culture of appreciation.
So it's just another tool in that toolkit, really empowering leaders, to make changes, and collect that feedback on a one on one basis. It's also extremely powerful for us as an employee experience team to have these interactions.
We've actually integrated AI functionality where you can imagine if we've got twenty three thousand employees, best practices says that we want about ten interactions per employee per year.
That's a huge amount of data, especially if you're thinking that there could be, you know, five comments within each each round. So we're leaning on AI to look at themes. Tell us, okay. What, for instance, does this service line need? Or if we really wanna adopt to a new communication style across the organisation, what are our employees asking for?
It's becoming very powerful very quickly, and we're looking forward to new and exciting integrations down the road.
But so happy we were able to partner with O.C. Tanner with Cipher to get that N Recognition integration built.
To date, that's been up for about a year now, and we've seen thousands of recognition moments completed within this tool. So it's making it easier for our leaders. We've heard nothing but positive feedback. So looking forward to growth of this tool and, continued growth of our N Recognition of You platform.
But what does it look like, you know, when we close the loop for our employees? And that's what you're gonna see. I really wanna share. It's not enough just to walk in and say, hey. How are things going? You really need to make sure that as a leader, we hear employees, and we're taking action based off of the feedback they give us.
So I've I've been managing our employee surveys for about eight years now. And in early days, we'd hear the the same old thing. We hear employees say, I left the same comment last year, and nothing was done about it.
How discouraging is that? The quickest way to drive disengagement from employee standpoint is to gather the feedback and then do nothing with it. It's just screaming into the void from an employee's perspective rather. So we've created this closing the loop methodology to ensure that leaders are held accountable when they gather employee feedback.
So when an employee is rounded on or when we do a survey, we ask our leaders, what did we hear? And then what are we gonna do about it?
We have a very simple action planning methodology. It's called one two three action planning. What's one thing you heard, two things we're gonna do about it, and three times we're gonna follow-up. Okay?
We've created collateral like this, your voice matters poster where it's basically a red, yellow, green report. Okay?
Here, greens, what have we done? What have we done? What do we hear? What have we done about it?
Okay? Maybe there's something as simple as, we didn't have enough bedside commodes on the unit. Okay? Well, we ordered those, and guess what? That problem solved. Celebrate it. Okay?
Let your teams know that they gave that suggestion, and we took it to heart, and we did exactly what you all asked.
Maybe there's an in progress. Maybe it's something that we're working towards accomplishing.
Okay? Maybe it's a bit larger scale project, whether it's moving to a new electronic medical record or, launching a new HCM, something that might take a while. But then there are also roadblocks. Things that maybe it's not a hard no, but it's a no right now.
Well, we're gonna put in our roadblock, let you know, guess what? We heard you. We know that this is a concern. We're gonna address it when the time's right.
It's very powerful.
A good example of this in action. We had a chief nursing officer at our women's and children's facility who was rounding on night shift nurses, believe it or not. So how cool is that, you know, an executive for that facility came on night shift, was on a med surg unit, and decided I'm gonna just start rounding on these nurses. Okay? I'm gonna gather their feedback and see what they have to say.
Throughout the course of those rounds, one nurse was asked, what can I do to support you? Is there anything that I can do, you know, as a leader to help you out?
And that nurse said, yeah. Actually, you know what? Every time I take my lunch break, I get about a half hour. It takes me a good fifteen, twenty minutes to heat up my food because there's one microwave and we all break at the same time, and there's always a line for that one microwave.
And that chief nursing officer said, you know what? That's a pebble in your shoe that we can really help remove. And so the next day, she went out and ordered three additional microwaves for that unit, and guess what? Problem solved.
They brought it back, put it in that green box, said, we heard you. You said you needed microwaves. Guess what we did? It's pretty powerful.
It also makes employees, makes those nurses feel like they are the change agents for the organisation, which is extremely valuable. It makes them feel that they have a voice, okay, which is what we all want through our workplaces, through our organisation.
So Norton's done a good job of that, especially in the last couple years, and we're gonna keep growing this program and meeting employees where they are.
Yeah. And, to oh, I'm sorry, Conrad.
I was just saying, I think we get to see what it looks like in action actually, which is really cool.
ANDREA: Yes. And, you know, everything that we've been able to develop and grow over time has become very intertwined. So we've been seeing a nice ripple effect, how it positively is impacting our employees and their experience.
So we've got a shortened video that we'd like to show for you guys where we just put it all together.
Norton Healthcare employees do remarkable things every day at every facility in every role.
Moments when a coworker or leader witnesses incredible work, great human interactions, and formally recognises it can start a chain reaction of celebrating great things that spread through the organisation in an amazing way, and it has the power to change attitudes, hearts, and minds.
To truly make an impact, recognition has to be an attitude we embrace every day when we walk in the door.
A passion for not just creating great human interactions on our own, but taking the time to celebrate those interactions we see happening all around us and even being inspired by it to do something great ourselves.
Today, Norton Healthcare is made up of thousands of employees, and we're still growing.
If each of us committed to recognising one act of a employee this year, that would be thousands of people being recognised for their great work.
Thousands of reasons to celebrate.
And perhaps most importantly, thousands of people who go home from work on that day feeling just a bit more appreciated for the work they did.
Imagine the power of that recognition.
One single act of recognition can spark a culture of gratitude and celebration.
Thanks for letting us share that with you all.
CONRAD: So, a saying that we have organisationally is we do the right thing. I hear our CHRO say it all the time. We as an organisation do the right thing. But how do we connect doing the right thing to success from a business perspective?
So how do we measure these outcomes and measure what success looks like? And that's what we in the employee experience team are tasked with doing.
And then how do we identify what success is going to look like once we get there? Or how do we know if we need to pivot to something else?
And so we measure all these programs. We measure utilisation. We measure outcomes.
We're able to share a view of that with you today. Before we get there, though, I wanna throw out a a poll to the to the group. I wanna ask, Andrea, if you don't mind.
What is your, is your organisation able to measure ROI of your recognition program specifically? Are you able to see the return on investment if you have a recognition program with O.C. Tanner or, if you're looking to grow one? Are you able to measure this, or do you have a plan to do it? I'd be curious to see what the response is. So we'll take a moment, and you all can respond in the chat.
Alright. Let's see what we got here.
In some ways. Okay. So maybe in some facets, you're able to do it, whether it's your, maybe it's your just overall recognition, service awards, retirements.
But, surprisingly, forty one percent of folks said no. So our team, for a long time, and O.C. Tanner challenged us to do this early on. We've tied it to business outcomes. So we look at, for instance, what are the perceptions of folks on our employee experience surveys who are recognised frequently versus those who don't?
And it's pretty astonishing the power of recognition and the power of a well rounded appreciation tool for your organisation. At least I know it is for us. So that's really curious. I thank you all for sharing. I've got one additional poll question.
So we're gonna ask if you don't mind advancing.
So have you integrated your recognition program into other platforms, whether it's your HCM, Workday, Oracle, if you have a rounding application, maybe you have a separate mobile app that you've integrated into. I'm curious to know, if it's just not a stand alone application, if you've tied it to other resources, other sources of information.
So take a moment. Please respond.
Alright. Let's see what we got.
Here we go. Wow. Only twelve percent. So I will say that this is new for us as well.
So, we have not integrated with our HCM Workday yet, but we did do this Cipher integration. And, O.C. Tanner and Cipher did a great job. They were wonderful partners in getting this stood up.
I'd say it represents a huge opportunity for a lot of organisations, including us, in expanding this out.
Because the one thing we hear very often from our leaders is that, please don't give me one additional thing to do.
Try and make my life easier. Leaders are burned out across industries and especially in health care. They have a lot on their plate. So let's try and make their lives easier, create one stop shops where everything's at, you know, their fingertips.
And fingertips specifically on mobile applications is what we're hearing very often. So make it accessible for them. And, the O.C. Tanner mobile app is a great way to do that. Integrations like what we've done with Cipher Health, with O.C. Tanner, what we're planning on doing with Workday is gonna be another facet of this as well.
So, thank you all for sharing. That ends our quick survey.
So now I'm gonna share some outcomes. I'm gonna show you all how we've been able to kinda tie our culture of appreciation to the business outcomes we expect.
So, what you're seeing here is two different graphics, two different items that we utilise in our surveys, which I have to call out. Perceptyx is a wonderful survey partner. We've been partners with them for going on, I believe, five years now.
They have wonderful approaches on how to survey your employees, how to engage with them, and, these are hallmark items from our employee experience survey administered by Perceptyx.
So we ask folks, do you intend to stay with the organisation for the next twelve months? And another item is we ask, are your ideas and suggestions valued? And what we find and we're able to do is we actually embedded and bucketed employees based off of how many rounds, if we can go back. Thank you.
How many rounds they received in the year leading up to our survey. And what we found is that, unsurprisingly, the more interaction employees have with their leader, the higher they were, the more likely they were to score these items highly.
So, you know, you're seeing about an eight percentage point swing on intent to stay.
Doesn't seem, you know, that significant until you realise that this is a leading indicator for turnover. If an individual says that they do plan on leaving the organisation in the next twelve months, guess what they typically do? They leave. Alright?
Eighty percent of the time, they leave our organisation if they score this item negatively. So anything we can do to positively impact this is gonna be pretty significant.
And so an eight percentage point swing when you translate that across twenty three thousand employees, pretty, pretty important to take a look at that and know that rounding's making a difference.
Even more so, my ideas and suggestions are valued. When an employee receives ten or more interactions with their leader over the course of a year, seventy six point two percent favorable.
That's significant, especially when you see that if they don't receive a round, it's only sixty two point seven percent favorable.
What's really curious about this is, the slight dip from no round to one to five rounds. And what's happening there is our leaders aren't closing the loop. They came in, gather feedback from an employee. They rounded on them, collected that, and then they weren't seen again, or they didn't circle back and say, hey. I heard you. This is what we did about it. So like I said, that's a great way to make employees disengaged. We wanna avoid that.
So we've been sharing this research. What happens when we look at the other side of the coin? This is just rounding. What happens when we look at recognition and appreciation?
Alright. So we've been on this recognition journey for a long time. So you're looking at ten years worth of data now, and you can see from this graph that we've actually been able to successfully scale our recognition program with the growth of our organisation.
It has been a challenge, let me tell you, especially last year when we built a new facility, acquired another facility. The year prior, we acquired two facilities, bringing in, launching our recognition program, getting folks to adopt it quickly, it's a challenge, and the culture strategies team does a great job of it. So we've been able to scale that.
We also were recently celebrating our millionth recognition moment back in 2021, and I'm really excited to say that we're gonna be celebrating our two millionth moment this coming year. So another reason for us to celebrate.
That's to say that we've got a lot of data centered around recognition. So when we embed this in our employee experience surveys, all of our different listening strategies, what do we see? And that's what you're seeing here.
So the timeliness of recognition, we ask folks, when was the last time you were recognised by your leader for doing great work? Okay? And we have them bucket it by a week, last month, six months, a year, and the dreaded, I do not recall being recognised.
And then what we see is the impact on these items, intent to stay, and feeling of value. So we know that that intent to stay item is a predictor of turnover.
So, unsurprisingly, folks that feel appreciated, that are appreciated often, they are less likely to leave the organisation. They are also much more likely to feel valued, which is pivotal in the health care marketplace because feelings of value translates to high levels of engagement, high levels of purpose, and increases in patient safety and decreases in adverse outcomes for our patients.
So those are the business outcomes that we're looking for as an organisation, and we see it right here on this graph.
But like I said, these are two sides of the same coin. So what happens when we do both of them well? What happens when employees are recognised at a high clip and they interact with their leader frequently?
And that's how we've adopted what we're calling the power of ten.
It's ten recognition moments per employee per year and ten leader interactions through our rounding tool per employee per year. Okay? And what kind of gains do we see when these these things align? And that's what you're seeing here.
Well, we're gonna check back in with John before we see that. Sorry, Andrea.
ANDREA: Oh, I'm sorry about that. I was muted as well. But, yes, it's time to check back in with our, our leader, John. So remember, John is, recently promoted into a surviving team, and John is definitely learning how to navigate the traditional modern leadership style.
But I really wanna reiterate here, to trust your employee voice. So as John can see, his team is struggling. So that's this is where that uh-oh effect comes into play.
And, you know, some things really do bear repeating. To Conrad's point, just looking at the intent to stay question that our employees, answer, when we hear unfavorable responses, eighty percent of the time we see that they are leaving if they're answering unfavorably.
So that is very powerful.
And trusting that voice, that also gives us a moment to pause and have a quick accountability check to see if what we are doing or what we're not doing is working. So maybe we need to pivot and start action planning to make a big impact for our employees.
And, you know, my leader actually just shared with me something yesterday, and I found it pretty profound.
Most employees don't necessarily report survey fatigue.
And I know in my entire career, I have heard the term survey fatigue, but truthfully, I don't think I've ever felt survey fatigue if I really paused to think about it.
But to Conrad's point, the fatigue comes in, you know, with actionless results, when your voice is shared and it falls flat. So really closing this loop again. So progress tracking and, of course, celebrating results. So we wanna make sure we're continuing conversations.
Share results, current state, share plans, share goals, make sure we're measuring progress.
But as we celebrate results, we wanna make sure, even those small moments, you know, are cascaded to all of our employees. So they really see that their voice matters.
But a couple things that we do wanna celebrate with you guys, I'll let Conrad kinda share some of the things we've recently seen.
CONRAD: Sure. So, you know and I don't think John was exhibiting the power of ten. He might have been doing the power of zero. But what happens when our leaders do buy into the power of ten?
And that's when we see a ninety two point four percent improvement, and I feel valued as an employee of Norton Healthcare. Alright? That's just appreciation. That's just interaction with their leader.
It's not something like compensation or, you know, total rewards. It's just having that culture of appreciation and leader buy in. It's huge. You can see huge gains for us.
And then similarly, we see a decrease in burnout. I think it's forty two percent decrease in employee burnout when we do these two things well. Okay? So it's very impactful for our employees.
And as I mentioned, having this tied to business outcomes gives us all the more credence to double down on this work, you know, buy into the partnerships that we have with O.C. Tanner and we have with Cipher, we have with Perceptyx, all these great partnerships that we've developed over the years and really share this work, and we're happy to share it with you today.
And then what does it mean for our patients?
This is perhaps, I think, the most I think well, for our patients, I believe it's a thirty six percent improvement in patient safety scores. And I don't know if we've embedded that here, but that translates to better and higher quality patient care, which is what we're all about here at Norton Healthcare.
ANDREA: Awesome.
Well and also kind of, you know, reviewing these outcomes over the years, our team has created what we call the employee experience culture champion award.
So we celebrated our second annual event this past year.
And, of course, Olivia and Heather, this is real. There is no spoof here. They were celebrated at this year's culture champion event.
So all of these key outcomes that we've been reviewing, these the data we've been able to pull through recognition and rounding utilisation, employee experience survey results, all of these go into a very nice composite score so we can identify these key successful leaders, and we can tap into what they're doing, and really proclaim their story throughout the organisation.
But, of course, we have a lovely afternoon where we celebrate them. So we do that through a wonderful lunch and recognition ceremony, but we also leverage key symbolics.
So all of our leaders receive a symbolic pin. We like to say wear your flare. So we have our badges on at all times while we're working so that those are proudly displayed.
But you can also see in the image below that Heather and Olivia actually received not one but two trophies, because we understand, to build a thriving team, it's not a one person job, and it's not just on the leader. We really need team buy in, and we need team engagement and a full commitment for the operations of the department. So we wanna make sure we're celebrating that team as well.
So offering a trophy to be displayed in their unit or department area is just one of the small pieces and small steps we take, to continue on that celebration of the culture champions.
But I do wanna also add with our culture champions, we continue to leverage their expertise and their experience throughout the year. And this is a great group to pilot, ask questions, really just hear their voice on what they see, what pebbles in the shoe they experience so we can continue to explore and enhance our programs as well. So it's been a phenomenal partnership that's come from this program.
But I do think there is one, I'm gonna call it the elephant on the Zoom that I might need to address.
Is anyone wondering what happened to John?
What happened to our leader, John? So he maybe wasn't a 2024 culture champion. However, I still think there's hope for John. So luckily, John really rose to the occasion as he saw his results.
He really had the a-ha moment of time to take action and really not only address those results, but tap into the employee experience strategies to make some big impact for his team. So we can't wait to see what great things come from that.
But really here just reiterating that leader buy in is key to our programs. And having strong partnerships with our leaders, it helps us be successful, but it helps our employees thrive through that.
And now, Conrad and I, we just wanted to take a quick moment and shout out the employee experience culture strategies and insights team, because we could not do this alone, and it really does take a village. And we have quite an excellent village.
CONRAD: And thank you all for joining us today. I think we do have some time for some questions. But, before we get there, I just wanna thank you for your time, letting us share our journey with you.
You know, we always look forward to networking with folks after these events, sharing best practices and, and the partnerships that we've had with these great organisations.
And, to Andrea's point, shout out to our team. We could not be here without them and all their support, all the great work that they do every day, and especially the great work that our clinicians and caregivers at Norton Healthcare provide.
MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Andrea and Conrad.
I think I've been watching the chat. I think, between you and Jason, I think a lot of the questions are getting answered. There was one, that maybe you might wanna dive into a little bit more, which is how do you approach employee experience and culture from an inclusion angle, and how do you ensure that different needs from different people are captured in those programs?
Jason mentioned employee personas and employee lifecycles.
CONRAD: Sure. So within the listening mechanisms that I mentioned, all the, when you think listening mechanisms, just think, employee surveys. We embed demographic fields, whether it's, you know, how long you've been with the organisation, your age demographic, so age cliffs.
And then we also have, an equity inclusion and belonging index.
And we partner really closely with our belonging and health equity team to look at those results and make sure that, hey, we don't have pockets of the organisation that are feeling like they're being left behind.
Whether it's, you know, nurses who are just out of school and getting after the workplace or maybe you're a senior executive who's getting ready to retire. We wanna be cognizant of that your journey at Norton Healthcare, your experience is gonna be different and be respectful of that.
And we try and curtail our products, and our programs to meet their needs. Andrea mentioned briefly that we have employee resource groups, and these groups actually collect feedback as well and then connect with our teams on, okay, hey, are there holes in our program development, basically?
So we gather their feedback, and our culture champions are also a great resource. We lean on them heavily.
And with you know, it's not disingenuous to say that we wanna celebrate them and all the great work that they had, but selfishly, we want them to be kind of our task force. We wanna connect with them and hear what best practice actually is. This is what success looks like. How do we get there?
So that's been pivotal for us. So I think it creates a well rounded approach to making sure that, you know, we're we're respecting all these different personas and understanding what's going on with our workforce. You know, twenty three thousand plus unique stories at Norton Healthcare and trying to respect that at each and every day.
It's a challenge, and you see, you know, we're a small but mighty team, so we do what we can with the resources that we're given. But it's always it's always something that we strive to do.
Great question.
MODERATOR: Yeah.
And I was just noticing Michelle earlier said circling back on your alumni program, which I think is such an interesting concept. You know, what percentage of your total new hires end up being rehires? And Jason said around thirty percent, which I think is just such a testament to all the work you've put into creating this strong, healthy, motivating, engaging culture. So kudos to you.
Well, thank you.
I'm not seeing any other questions. I do wanna just say again, thank you, Andrea and Conrad, for kinda giving us this behind the scenes look at your culture. I think it was really valuable for everybody in attendance today.
And thanks to everybody who joined.
We will be hosting a generations in the workforce panel in March, and we would love to see you there. And as you can see, Andrea has put the codes up if you're looking for those credits through SHRM or HRCI.
So thank you, everybody.
CONRAD: Thank you.
ANDREA: Thank you all so much for your time.
February 11, 2025
February 11, 2025
12:00 pm
February 11, 2025
12:00 pm
The difference between leaders using old-school “command and control” techniques versus those using modern leadership practices has never been more apparent. No matter the industry, a modern leader adapts to the needs of their employees to help them thrive in the workplace and beyond.
In this webinar, you will learn how Norton Healthcare:
- Defines the attributes of a modern leader
- Helps their employees fulfil more than just basic needs
- Leverages company resources to help employees shift from surviving to thriving
Register for the webinar here:
With over 10 years of health care experience, Andrea Perdue, Employee Experience Culture Strategist, Norton Healthcare, specialises in elevating employee experiences. Since joining Norton Healthcare in 2014, Andrea has supported the onboarding journey of new team members as they navigate their careers and create meaningful experience with the organisation. In addition to engaging employees through professional and personal development, Andrea oversees Norton Healthcare’s leader publication, Norton Way, which is designed to target best practice retention and engagement strategies for employees and leaders. You’ll also find Andrea embedding a culture of appreciation through her work managing the organisation’s performance recognition platform, N Recognition of You, powered by O.C. Tanner, as well as leading the Employee Experience and Safety Culture Champion leader award program.
With over 10 years of health care experience, Andrea Perdue, Employee Experience Culture Strategist, Norton Healthcare, specialises in elevating employee experiences. Since joining Norton Healthcare in 2014, Andrea has supported the onboarding journey of new team members as they navigate their careers and create meaningful experience with the organisation. In addition to engaging employees through professional and personal development, Andrea oversees Norton Healthcare’s leader publication, Norton Way, which is designed to target best practice retention and engagement strategies for employees and leaders. You’ll also find Andrea embedding a culture of appreciation through her work managing the organisation’s performance recognition platform, N Recognition of You, powered by O.C. Tanner, as well as leading the Employee Experience and Safety Culture Champion leader award program.
Conrad Kresge, an experienced healthcare analyst working in Louisville, KY, brings a background in public health policy and population health analysis to Norton Healthcare. Conrad joined Norton Healthcare in 2014, taking on key responsibilities as the builder and facilitator for all employee experience surveys. He has defined, built, and implemented a comprehensive listening strategy for the more than 18,000 employees of Norton Healthcare.
Conrad Kresge, an experienced healthcare analyst working in Louisville, KY, brings a background in public health policy and population health analysis to Norton Healthcare. Conrad joined Norton Healthcare in 2014, taking on key responsibilities as the builder and facilitator for all employee experience surveys. He has defined, built, and implemented a comprehensive listening strategy for the more than 18,000 employees of Norton Healthcare.

O.C. Tanner is recognised by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for SHRM-CP® or SHRM-SCP® recertification activities.

The use of this official seal confirms that this Activity has met HR Certification Institute’s® (HRCI®) criteria for recertification credit pre-approval.