Articles

How a Focus on Workplace Culture helped Clarke County Hospital Deliver Superior Care

The following article about Clarke County Hospital, republished with permission from The Studer Group, shares how CCH relied on Great Place to Work’s Trust Index Survey to drive their journey to build a great workplace.  CCH used the Trust Index to identify strengths and areas of opportunity, and measure the impact of their workplace initiatives.  The article also explores the path CCH pursued to create a workplace culture that would drive success in patient satisfaction and become a more integral member of the community they serve.

Return on Wellness: Counting a Strong Workplace Culture Among the Benefits

In the wake of rising healthcare costs, many employers are electing to spend even more on employee wellness programs. In 2013, Great Place to Work saw a surprising 55 of the 100 Best Companies to Work For offer rewards and incentives, from reductions in healthcare premiums, cash bonuses, and gifts and other prizes, to employees who participate in wellness programs, including health screenings, weight loss or smoking cessation programs, or maintaining certain biometric standards.

What Tech’s Best Employers Know about Workplace Culture

Regardless of specific market niche, tech companies share similar workforce and workplace challenges: how to attract and retain the best talent, how to reward employees (in a field where players are fiercely competitive about their workplace perks!), and how to keep employees innovating. While media attention usually focuses on tech’s outlandish perks—like InfusionSoft’s company Camaro for the employee of the month, Go Daddy’s prizes like 40” plasma TVs  for top performers, or Google’s famed gourmet cafeterias and on-site bowling alley—what sets these companies apart as workplaces are the philosophies and practices they have designed to keep employees engaged, enthusiastic, and thinking like owners. 

This is a new paper by Alex Edmans, assistant professor of finance at Wharton, in which he affirms the positive link between employee job satisfaction and firm performance among the public companies of the 100 Best. You can download this paper here.

As Edmans writes "This paper analyzes the relationship between job satisfaction and firm value. The dependent variable is firm value, rather than job performance, to take into account the cost of increasing job satisfaction.

The best workplaces find innovative ways to create personal and meaningful connections with their employees despite common challenges associated with virtual workplaces and demographic diversity. (Courtesy SWISS Business.)

Saying thank you to colleagues, staff members, associates, and people more distantly connected to us is an annual year-end ritual for many people in leadership positions.  Speeches, memos, newsletter articles and blog posts are often filled with lists of peoples names and the events or actions for which they are receiving thanks. These gestures of appreciation are mostly nice and thoughtful yet they can be accepted with a bit of cynicism by recipients, especially if this is the only time during the year when ‘thanks’ have been provided.

In business, happiness is often seen as a result of profits, not a driver. What happens when this dynamic is reversed and happiness becomes a first line of business? In the case of Zappos, the result is a multi-billion dollar on-line sales company known best for their customer service, free shipping and 365-day return policy. This article shares highlights of the philosophies and practices that has helped this Las Vegas-based company deliver “Wow” experiences for customers and create an avid following of customers.

Creating a base of avid customers is the dream of many executives. Loyal buyers offer the promise of steady repeat business, free advertising, greater revenue, and ultimately happy investors. Workplace culture efforts by CarMax, the U.S.'s largest retailer of of used cars, have led to industry leading customer satisfaction, strong associate engagement, and record setting revenues after weathering the recession. This article highlights the key strategies and practices used to achieve these outstanding results.

What does it take to transform a large hospital system characterized by operating losses, high turnover, labor shortages, and both union and legislative risk? This study shares Scripps Health’s journey to becoming a great workplace, including how it assessed, benchmarked, and improved its workplace. As a result of its efforts, Scripps Health has seen drastic improvements in financial performance, turnover rates, and employee morale. Over the past 10 years, employee results have improved by 54% while the system has realized over $70 million in cost savings and increased its annual profits by over 1200%.