Inova Health leaders realized that when workers are motivated, engaged and happy, they can make a significant difference in terms of the care they provide to patients. This realization led the Falls Church, Va.-based organization to double down on culture transformation.
"In doing that, we've been very intentional," said Chief People Officer Terri Feely. "We've intentionally engaged well over 1,000 leaders to intentionally shape our culture."
Several years ago, Inova created a group of about 150 leaders from across the organization, called the guiding coalition, to carry out that engagement. The coalition met regularly every month or every other month to address big topics.
"We would focus on things like psychological safety. We would focus on topics such as purpose and joy. What brings our team members joy in the workplace, and what instills purpose in their daily work and in their jobs. We focused much of our time together on inclusion, leading inclusively. And we created specific training around how to help leaders lead inclusively," Ms. Feely said.
Additionally, leaders who were part of the coalition would work in between meetings to pass learnings along to their teams.
"It didn't stop at leadership," Ms. Feely said. "This became an entire culture of work. And we focused on all aspects. We focused on creating an employee value proposition that made sure that we were providing the right benefits, the right compensation, creating a culture where our team members felt safe to bring their whole selves to work.
"That means recognizing that work is just one piece of someone's overall life. It's not their life. It's one piece. In recognizing that, we had to learn to provide flexibility. We had to recognize that sometimes people bring challenges they are having at home, and we have to learn to be empathetic and compassionate, and help them through those times, so that we can help to take the stress off."
Inova also focused on well-being by offering benefits and resources and support, hired on-site counselors for team members who need them, put new hiring practices in place, and created a set of leadership competencies that leaders are expected to demonstrate, she said.
Still, Ms. Feely sees safety, psychological and physical, and leading inclusively, as the largest focus over the last year in the system's culture transformation journey. This includes creating specific training for 1,000 leaders and making it mandatory, as well as storytelling among guiding coalition members, where leaders share their success stories and times when psychological safety fell short.
"It's those two areas of focus," said Ms. Feely. "We know that because results just came in for an employee engagement survey, and when asked about the one or two things that mean the most to [workers], they talk about the trust of their leaders, the psychological safety they have to speak, feeling like they belong. So clearly the focus we've placed on our leaders in those areas have made the biggest difference."
For example, turnover at Inova is the lowest it's been in five years. The health system ended 2023 at 12.69% turnover, compared to more than 16% at the height of the pandemic. As of May 1, turnover among the organization's roughly 24,000 employees was 12.4%.
"We have invested heavily in our team members in terms of their benefits and things like loan repayment programs and paid parental leave and those kinds of things, college scholarships for team members' children. But at the end of the day, we know team members don't leave because of anything other than their leader," she said.
"They stay because of their teams and their leaders, or they leave because of their leaders. So we know that investing in our leadership is the key to our success, and we have done that heavily, consistently over the last five years. And in the last year, we focused on the particular areas I mentioned. That has created the right environment for our team members to thrive."
Moving forward, Inova plans to embed more of the health system's culture work lower in the organization.
"We basically have said it's time to close the guiding coalition, and it's now time to bring in all of our [vice presidents] and above," Ms. Feely said. "Now we're focused on embedding the work all the way to the front lines. By leveraging more of our leaders to hear first hand the things we're talking about, and really starting to put it into action as we focus on our strategic work, we think it's going to get every further traction."