He recently told Becker’s he sees two pitfalls to avoid when rolling out such efforts — inconsistent messaging and ignoring employee feedback. He also shared details about Houston Methodist’s employee engagement, which led to initiatives such as additional paid time off and a savings program to address financial well-being.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What is one specific workforce policy you strongly endorse and would like to see enacted at Houston Methodist in the next year if you had your preference?
Michael Brown: We’re constantly reviewing our policies, but at this point, we’re comfortable with the policies that we have in place. One that really comes to mind that we continue to monitor is work location and where our employees work from, whether they are designated as being on site, whether they have hybrid work schedules or whether they can be remote. And so we evaluate this on an ongoing basis, and we allow our managers to make decisions. And so there are times when there are changes that are made based on business needs. For example, there may be more time needed for collaboration amongst the team, and so we give our managers the freedom to make those decisions. They may decide to bring the teams in more regularly than working remote, and that can go vice versa as well.
Additionally, we continue to focus on virtual care, and so this offers a level of flexibility for our employees, particularly those in care teams supporting patients. Instead of being at the bedside, maybe they can go into one of these virtual positions, which may offer some flexibility for them.
Q: What has surprised you most in leading workforce strategy, particularly in retaining healthcare talent and developing leadership pipelines?
MB: What surprised me here at Houston Methodist is how engaged our workforce is when we take surveys or pulse our workforce. I shouldn’t be, but I continue to be surprised with just how responsive our employees are. We conduct an annual employee opinion survey, which we did this past year in 2024 in September, and 90% of our employees completed that employee opinion survey, which allows us to be responsive to the needs of the organization. We also conducted a total reward survey last year, and we exceeded the response rate that we had targeted. And so what that demonstrates is that we have a very engaged workforce, and that our employees trust us to be responsive to the needs that they have. When we ask them for their input, they certainly provide their input.
To further this point, every year we have an experience called “Pathway to Unparalleled,” where we connect with all of our employees. We have all of our employees reconnect to our mission, our vision and values. And last year, just as it has been consistent in prior years, we had close to 85% of our employees and physicians who attended this Pathway to Unparalleled experience, where we recommitted to the mission vision and values and the culture of Houston Methodist. And so, while I probably shouldn’t be surprised anymore, now that I’m in year two in my current role, I still am surprised and just very impressed with how engaged our workforce is.
When it comes to developing leadership pipelines, we have a talent management strategy, and as part of that strategy, one of our initiatives is to develop effective leaders, and in doing so, we decided that we wanted all of our leaders to have a very consistent approach. We wanted to take a consistent approach to developing our leaders across our system, so that whichever campus that you’re on, there would be a consistent approach to leadership development. To do that, we developed a leadership behavior model so that all of our leaders are exhibiting the same behaviors that we want them to demonstrate. And then as part of that, we developed a core curriculum that we rolled out at the beginning of this year. It’s our “Leadership Essentials” program, where all of our leaders who have moved into a leadership role within the last three years … take the same courses, so that they are being developed consistently across the organization. The program has been strongly supported by senior leadership, and we’ve already filled all of our courses in both quarter one and quarter two, and we’re starting to fill our sessions in quarter three. We make those sessions both in person and virtual, so that we can accommodate the different work styles of our leaders.
We’re really excited about Leadership Essentials and establishing a consistent way of developing leaders across our system so that they continue to exhibit those great behaviors that lead to employee engagement.
Q: Can you share a time when employee feedback directly influenced a change in Houston Methodist’s HR policies or workforce initiatives?
MB: I have a couple of examples. We conducted a total rewards survey in May of 2024 because we wanted to understand from our employees how they value their compensation, as well as their employee benefits. We had set a target for a response rate, and we exceeded that response rate, so we felt like we had good, credible employee feedback by which we could be responsive to their needs.
We had asked a question about our employees’ ability to cover a $400 financial emergency and 53% said that they would find it difficult, or somewhat difficult, to cover that $400 financial emergency. So what we did was, with the leadership of Marc Boom, MD, our CEO, we developed a savings program, in which if employees would contribute from their paycheck up to $250, we would match that. And we also added an additional $100 for any of our employees who have opened the account. So even if you didn’t put money in that savings program account, we would put $100 into the account to get it started. Because we look at financial well-being for our employees as part of overall well-being.
In that same survey, our employees, consistently across all demographic groups and tenure, said that paid time off was most important to them. We’re an organization that feels like when the organization does well, we want to share that with our employees, because, after all, they’re the ones who are taking best care of our patients. So if we take care of them, they will continue to provide great care to our patients. And so we offered an additional day of PTO to all employees, because we care deeply about the well-being of our employees. And because they said that PTO was so important to them, we felt like this was another way to celebrate them for taking tremendous care of our employees.
Q: What is one common pitfall hospitals should avoid when rolling out workforce engagement or retention initiatives?
MB: Consistent messaging is key. Dr. Boom always talks about focusing on the fundamentals. And so that’s one thing that we take pride in that’s important to us, which is consistency. So consistency in messaging is really important. In doing that, we’ve been consistent with our messaging to our workforce when it comes to things like employee engagement, and what we found is by being consistent and really focusing on those fundamentals, we have enjoyed great employee engagement. And Forbes just published its 2025 list of best employers, and Houston Methodist ranks No. 3 for large employers. We’re the highest ranked health system. And we believe that that is because of the consistency, the focusing on the fundamentals. So staying on message, having clear communication, communicating goals, benefits. If it’s processes, new initiatives, having that consistency, so that there’s no confusion, and that everyone is bought in and understands the change and how they contribute to the change.
The other pitfall to avoid is ignoring feedback. Our employees trust us, because when we send out an employee, when we conduct our employee opinion surveys or our total reward survey, we get really strong feedback, and that’s because we do something. If they’re going to take the time to complete a survey and share their feedback with us, then we feel like as leadership, we have a responsibility to be responsive to the employee sentiment, to what they’re telling us as best we can. And so that’s where we came up with the savings program, and there’s been other initiatives like that, the additional [paid time off] day. And that’s because we’re responsive. When you’re responsive, not only do you get high employee engagement, but you instill trust with your workforce.
If you’re going to take the time to ask the question and your workforce is going to be responsive, then you have an obligation to do something. Even if it’s something that you can’t do, it’s having transparency to explain why it’s a decision that you can’t make, or something that you can’t do at the present time. It’s that level of transparency that also instills trust in the organization.