Yet so often it amounts to little more than promises that are revealed as empty whenever the next initiative falls in your lap with inadequate time to communicate it.
There has to be a practical solution. Well, it turns out there is. Cleveland Clinic is modeling a better approach: embedding a communicator in human resources.
About 18 months ago, senior communications manager Kevin Kolus began a dual role in which he reports to HR as well as to corporate communications.
Historically, the two teams have operated in separate locations. Kolus’ corporate comms office is at the main hospital in Cleveland; HR is at the administrative campus, a 25-minute drive away.
Working from HR three days a week
The embedded role brings him to the administrative campus three days a week, where he can have a say about communicating serious matters to employees, from open enrollment to embracing company goals for excellence.
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Because Kolus’ full-time job is to support HR’s communications, he spends the other two days with the larger internal communications team on the main campus. There he coordinates HR communications with the larger team’s strategy.
He calls the embedding a partnership that benefits both departments of the famed hospital group, a $6.2 billion enterprise with 52,000 employees in locations stretching from the Ohio city to Abu Dhabi, Canada, Florida, Las Vegas and London.
“To have a communicator embedded there, pushing back when necessary to express when something doesn’t make sense or its overcomplicated,” Kolus says, “it forces people who are coming up with these programs to be more considerate of things like language choices and timing. Are we giving enough time to the communication steam to prepare these communications, or are we coming at them at the last minute?”
Both sides see improvement
On the other side of the partnership, too, the relationship “has made a world of difference,” says Maria Schmitt, executive director of HR Operations at Cleveland Clinic.
Previously, HR had an assigned corporate comms person at the other campus who would write up the information they sent her. The employee might call to get more clarity, but this employee wasn’t with HR day after day attending leadership meetings as Kolus is.
The communicator “didn’t have the level of understanding that Kevin has as a result of being an embed,” Schmitt says.
When Kevin came, he met with all HR’s leaders and explained how he puts together a narrative, Schmitt says. He asked them three questions. What do you want our caregivers to know? How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do?
Cleveland Clinic has seen results in many areas. Email open rates and click-throughs have increased, as has the amount of time spent reading messages.
The new communications approach helps explain an all-time high of 71 percent of employees actively enrolling in benefits during open enrollment in 2016, rather than allowing them passively to roll over from the prior year.
Also, the approach helped bring about 70 percent compliance with new performance management process only 90 days into its launch early in 2017.
Another area that has benefited from a comms embed has been conveying messages from the Global Leadership and Learning Institute, created in 2015 to help employees acquire business skills and be more effective. Employees were asked to connect their work to broader goals.
Patient call lights
For example, one goal is to help patients first—a mandate that spans quality, safety and patient experience. A nursing unit may decide that means improving call-light responses by 15 percent over the year.
“If you’ve ever spent time in a hospital, you know what if feels like to be powerless, in the sense that you rely on others,” Kolus says.
Another goal is caregiver engagement, in which employees might commit to joining activities that engender listening and collaboration. All these messages can be better delivered by someone who is talking face to face with counterparts in HR.
“It’s just driving a greater level of effectiveness, because I’m actually here,” Kolus says. “When you’re face to face, you can pick up body language, you can pick up on subtleties. You can pick up on other emotions that you may not be able to pick up on the phone.”
In the past, Kolus says, when communicators had a meeting with HR, it was easy to say, “Can I dial in?’”
Now, it’s a whole new relationship.
“It’s just changed the whole dynamic,” he says. “I feel it has dramatically improved the effectiveness of our HR communications and, with that, employee engagement.”
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