Last week I finished another round of Town Hall Meetings. I thought these meetings may be of interest from an employee engagement and a content perspectives.
My belief is that an engaged workforce comes from ensuring that the staff knows what leadership and the organization are doing and why. It is important for everyone to understand the context for the decisions and to hear the rationale behind various actions – even if there is disagreement it is good for employees to have a voice. As a result, we started a systematic way for me to communicate and interact with employees. The Town Hall Meetings are one example of that practice. Here is a brief overview. I conduct 10 – 12 sessions each quarter and total attendance ranges from 1,500 – 1,800 employees with sessions held on each campus, including the night shift.
The agenda includes updates on strategy, system-wide goals (Pillars: People, Service, Quality, Growth, Finance, and Academics – the same information reported to the Board) and other timely topics. In addition, we close-the-loop on open issues or questions from previous meetings and request feedback via the Town Hall Surveys which include a subset of key questions from the annual Employee Opinion Survey – this provides a quarterly “pulse” of the organization. Preparation for the meeting has been very valuable for me. My experience is that whenever I have to teach or explain something, I learn it more deeply. That learning has helped me better understand the organization.
I invite you to take a look at the information we discussed at the last set of Town Hall Meetings. The format is fairly standardized and this was the 16th time I have held these sessions. Here is a link to the August Town Hall Meeting presentation. In particular, take a look at the presentation by Howell Clyborne dealing with the South Carolina economy. That is an example of giving employees a context for what is happening at GHS. I also believe that for the next several years the economy is the bigger story than Health Care Reform.
My belief is that an engaged workforce comes from ensuring that the staff knows what leadership and the organization are doing and why. It is important for everyone to understand the context for the decisions and to hear the rationale behind various actions – even if there is disagreement it is good for employees to have a voice. As a result, we started a systematic way for me to communicate and interact with employees. The Town Hall Meetings are one example of that practice. Here is a brief overview. I conduct 10 – 12 sessions each quarter and total attendance ranges from 1,500 – 1,800 employees with sessions held on each campus, including the night shift.
The agenda includes updates on strategy, system-wide goals (Pillars: People, Service, Quality, Growth, Finance, and Academics – the same information reported to the Board) and other timely topics. In addition, we close-the-loop on open issues or questions from previous meetings and request feedback via the Town Hall Surveys which include a subset of key questions from the annual Employee Opinion Survey – this provides a quarterly “pulse” of the organization. Preparation for the meeting has been very valuable for me. My experience is that whenever I have to teach or explain something, I learn it more deeply. That learning has helped me better understand the organization.
I invite you to take a look at the information we discussed at the last set of Town Hall Meetings. The format is fairly standardized and this was the 16th time I have held these sessions. Here is a link to the August Town Hall Meeting presentation. In particular, take a look at the presentation by Howell Clyborne dealing with the South Carolina economy. That is an example of giving employees a context for what is happening at GHS. I also believe that for the next several years the economy is the bigger story than Health Care Reform.
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