St. Luke’s University Health Network
Evan Ochs, senior vice president of human resources, said the leaders at St. Luke’s — which has been ranked as a Top Workplace for two consecutive years — believe people are the health network’s greatest asset, because they’re the ones who deliver health care.
Ochs, who’s been employed with St. Luke’s for 12 years, said, “We believe in a flat organization that empowers employees to complete their jobs. We try to remove obstacles for employees to make their jobs easier whenever possible. We have a supportive environment where we encourage employees to find new and novel solutions when they arrive.”
On the flip side, he said, employees are expected to treat each other with respect, compassion, and kindness.
That style of management comes from the hospital’s president and chief executive officer, Richard Anderson, who Ochs said, “charges our senior team with the responsibility of maintaining our culture, and that effort comes out in the way our leaders lead and care for their employees.”
To provide a caring and efficient workforce, he said electronic communication is liberally used but, “We refuse to allow technology to drive or dictate our jobs.”
Much of that includes being available in person and to arrange meetings only when needed instead of “for the sake of having a meeting.”
Ochs said a key metric to measure whether the management style is resulting in a high performing workforce is employee engagement.
“Our most recent [employee] engagement survey found caring and empathy from leaders as well as an environment that promotes belonging were identified as pivotable strengths,” he said.
When the coronavirus pandemic took hold, he said, St. Luke’s leadership met challenges by remaining nimble. “We made decisions rapidly in response to constantly changing facts and issues. We did not panic.”
St. Luke’s multigenerational workforce poses no issues with employees who are recruited through various educational partnerships and placed in clinical and nonclinical positions.
Once a person is hired, they receive additional training and once completed, he said, “We focus on career progression in an effort to ensure every new hire feels and remains challenged and continually grows during their career at St. Luke’s. The result is a workforce with tremendous retention rates and a great understanding of our culture.”
Ochs said St. Luke’s is unique in that its work environment of caring and quality is almost palpable and developed over the course of 150 years. It’s also something, he added, that’s been “handed down from one generation of employees to the next … it’s special and it cannot be replicated.”