Judy Faulkner, founder and CEO of Epic Systems, has embedded "caring" into the company culture.
In a recent blog post, Ms. Faulkner recounted a team meeting when a leader from KLAS and a former CIO of Geisinger joined to congratulate the team on taking the No. 1 spot on KLAS's top EHRs list for several years. Frank Richards, the former Geisinger CIO, gifted Epic with a large bone in a frame with the words, "For bone-deep caring."
"The bone has been on the wall in our main reception area for more than a decade, and we suggest to all our new staff that they look at it," Ms. Faulkner wrote. "One of our senior staff proposed that we give a chicken bone to every new employee to remind each of them of 'bone deep caring.' We decided not to do that but instead to show them a slide of the bone and the words."
Ms. Faulkner also shared an example of caring. She wrote about a dedicated, hard working employee who was having trouble with an "unkind" customer. Ms. Faulkner called the customer and told them how much the employee cared about them and their organization, and described how hard he was working for them.
It was a simple, but effective message.
The customer called the employee to apologize and afterwards the employee told Ms. Faulkner, "I don't know what you said to him, but I hope you never say it to me."