Introduction
Up to December 2007, Cleveland Clinic enjoyed the reputation of being one of the leading healthcare providers in the USA. The hospital also handled effectively new management practices and technological advancements. The facility under the hospital management is large and employs about 44,000 employees. In the year 2008, a report by HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers Systems) brought about concerns regarding patients experience (Patmchak, 2015). The Chief Human Resource Officer made a realization that a good portion of the employees feels unappreciated and undervalued. A specialist analysis report by Gallup proved that Cleveland Clinic had an issue in employee engagement resulting in poor patients experience (Patmchak, 2015). It also indicated that the leadership model in place significantly contributed to the problem. As a result, the hospital decided to implement Servant Leadership. This paper provides a case summary of Cleveland Clinic’s move to achieve Servant Leadership.
Defining the Problem; Employee Engagement and its relation to Customer Experience
Employee engagement is the extent of passion one has towards putting effort into their job, and the commitment to the organization (Clear Action, 2010). Engaged employees understand wholesomely the organizations purpose and how they fit in serving this role. Employee engagement is measurable by studying the strategic alignment, competency and satisfaction of the role players in an organization (Elliker, 2016). However, these measurements are valid if they are statistically proven and compared against other organizations. You can measure engagement by focusing on the relationship between employees and the organization as a whole, or finding a measure of the relationship between employees and management.
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When looking at organizational performance, engagement correlates positively with metrics such as customer loyalty, productivity, profitability and more (Patmchak, 2015). Many CX experts agree that a proper treatment of employees is indispensable in providing a better customer experience (Fletcher, 2016). The Chief Human Resource Officer reported that a good number of employees felt unappreciated and undervalued. Gallup ties the clinic’s management plan to the problem by exposing a lack of leader’s engagement in employees’ welfare, motivation, opinions and development.
Implementing Servant Leadership as a solution to Cleveland Clinic
Other organizations with capacities equal to the clinic have benefited from the servant leadership principles. Nevertheless, it is challenging to switch from one leadership model to another, especially in organizations or practices with deeply rooted traditions. In this case, Cleveland Clinic is used to being run by physicians with clinical excellence as the top priority. Like any other hospital, there are hierarchies and elements of command control approaches to operations. However, servant leadership takes a plan that makes sure that other people’s top priority needs are attended to (Elliker, 2016).
In the event of a change, resistance is common and requires a step by step approach to convince players to drop their old habits (SHRM, 2019). Involving various players in an orderly fashion paves the way for a smooth implementation. Upper management officials can be instrumental in communicating how the expected success looks like. They also play a major role in influencing other employees to accept new strategies (SHRM, 2019). The new strategy was well introduced at Cleveland Clinic by winning the support of the CEO and CHRO, who are best placed to champion culture changes. However, lack of support from other top officials such as the COO and surgeons was a setback.
Tentative Solutions to the Problem
Taking the servant leadership approach means effecting significant cultural changes (SHRM, 2019). In the case of the clinic, the servant leadership program dubbed ‘a great place to work and grow’ ran simultaneously with another change program called ‘we all care givers. The latter was objective in recognizing all employee’s contribution including those playing roles that are not clinical e.g. cleaners and other support staff. ’ I would employ such critical moves in making players understand the core purpose of the organization, thus the dedication to support its goals and steps.
Large organizations such as Cleveland Clinic, which use survey tools to determine their problems, guide their staff and avoiding employee churn. These tools are however prone to make employees counterproductive as they reduce them to mere data points (Fletcher, 2016). The management at Cleveland needs to understand the motivation to their employees by talking to them regularly. This way it is possible to have an employee intelligence that goes beyond survey numbers. As a result, new strategies are easily adapted by being employee focused and winning the support of major vital players.
Evaluation Criteria
Using the same criteria the clinic used to evaluate its performance prior to and after servant leadership, one need to make some adjustments to improve its credibility. The modifications include using better formally structured and empirical studies to discern the relation of employee engagement and customer experience (Fletcher, 2016). These structures would also provide a ground for evaluation of success. From the results, it is credible to say that servant leadership was successfully implemented in Cleveland Clinic. The patient satisfaction improved from a percentile of around 40 up to close to 90 between the year 2008 and 2013. Also checking the underlying factors behind engagement would ensure success. The extent of change in engagement culture quantifiable by revisiting Gallup’s points of concern regarding having a friendly workplace, leaders offering motivation and complement, and each person’s opinion counting.
References
Clear Action. (2010). Employee engagement in superior customer experience. ClearAction LLC . Retrieved on 15 March 2019, from http://www.clearaction.biz/PDFs/ClearAction_EngagementCEM_Whitepaper.pdf
Elliker, J. (2016). Understanding ontological conflict between servant leadership and organizations. Servant Leadership Theory & Practice, 3 (2), 72-89
Fletcher, C. (2016). How employee engagement helps drive customer experience. Vision Critical Communications Inc . Retrieved on 15 March 2019, from https://www.visioncritical.com/blog/employee-engagement-drives-customer-experience
Patmchak, J. M. (2015). Implementing servant leadership at Cleveland Clinic: A case study in organizational change. Servant Leadership Theory and Practice, 2 (1), 36-48
SHRM. (2019). Managing organizational change. Society for Human Resource Management . Retrieved on 15 March 2019, from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/managingorganizationalchange.aspx
