We’ve just launched our annual employee opinion survey. This is the sixth consecutive year that we’ve reached out to all our staff to tell us what they think about working at GHS. Recently, in my monthly letter to staff (The Riordan Report) that is published in our employee newsletter, I talked about the importance we place on this annual survey.

2012 Employee Opinion Survey

The February Riordan Report is one of my favorites. That’s because I get to talk about our annual employee opinion survey and to encourage all employees and physicians to participate in this important annual event. To me, the survey offers a great example of how we can connect to our values through our mission. The employee opinion survey allows us to measure what we value (e.g., honesty, integrity, trust) and it’s through regular and consistent measurement that we’re able to identify opportunities for improvement and to track our progress.

This year’s survey will take place from March 5th through March 19th. As in the past, all surveys will be completed on-line via the internet. Using an on-line process saves lots of paper and helps tabulate the results more rapidly. We’ll also continue the practice established three years ago of using a unique identification code to log in and take the survey. As always, all survey data is collected and maintained by our external vendor and individual survey results are completely confidential. Using the unique identification codes improves accuracy of departmental and demographic information and helps streamline the survey process. Since we’ve introduced these two features, our participation rate has continued to be strong, turn-around time for results has decreased, and we’ve “gone green” by not wasting paper on a printed survey.

This year we’ll be asking some new questions about how well some of our Commitment to Excellence practices are being implemented throughout the system and we’ve added an open ended question to solicit your feedback about improving communications between different levels of the organization. We’ll also be asking targeted questions to nursing professionals in support of our interest in Magnet recognition. Finally, we’ll continue to include employed and highly aligned physicians in the survey group to ensure that we provide physician leaders with the same type of information that other leaders throughout the system have about their work teams.

Your opinions about working at GHS are worth sharing. In recent years we’ve used the survey results to help guide decisions about many topics ranging from employee benefits to work environment, communications strategies and even leadership development needs to give just a few examples. The cover article of this issue of The View offers an array of examples of how we’ve been integrating employee feedback into plans and actions.

I’ve been talking about the coming survey at this quarter’s Town Hall Meetings and I have encouraged your managers to review initiatives related to your department’s 2011 results with you at staff meetings this month. I plan to circle back and report our 2012 results at the May Town Halls.

I hope you’ll plan to participate in this year’s survey. Your opinions are worth sharing. We want to hear from you.

Michael C. Riordan
President and CEO