At a five-hour introductory meeting with new staffers, Epic founder and CEO Judy Faulkner asks them: "Why do you come to work?" she wrote in a June 5 blog post.
She has them rank these six reasons, by percentage: the paycheck, something interesting to do, your coworkers, the customers, the competition, and the mission, she wrote. The most votes usually go to "the paycheck." She then asks how they think she answered a similar question years earlier. "The mission," they typically say. Her answer: "for the customers."
"I explain to our new staff how critical the decision to choose our software is," Ms. Faulkner wrote. "It changes the whole organization — the success of the health system, the jobs of leadership, the happiness of the clinicians and all the health system staff, and the health and lives of the patients. And to be good employees at Epic, they, too, have to see the success of our health system customers as the focus of our company and the reason they come to work."
She wrote that staffers often "sit up straighter, looking proud" after she tells them that. She also shows them the touching video "Empathy" by Cleveland Clinic.