Multi-Million-Dollar Healthcare Provider
The business problem
A multi-million-dollar healthcare provider was dealing with an increase in competitive forces within their environment. The company devised a comprehensive strategy to internally communicate not only the competitive forces that existed within their market, but also corresponding countermeasures that could be taken in the form of strategic KPIs intended to transform the organization. The KPIs supported major strategic objectives including patient accessibility, ease of use, operational excellence, and a more comprehensive approach to patient care. The transformation strategy was intended to be launched across over 200 locations for a workforce of over 23,000 employees, comprised of on-site clinicians and remote employees.
The purpose of the strategy change communication was to align the entire workforce with the organization's strategic goals and KPIs via interactive, discussion-based workshops, and powered by customized content tailored to create a conversation between employees and awareness of the goals set forth by the organization.
NorthStar was engaged to plan and run program and project management, along with supplying trained moderators to ensure timely and effective delivery of the workshops and support the training phase for facilitators – those individuals responsible for delivering the workshops to small groups. The initial project strategy was split into two separate phases. Phase I: virtual workshops, and Phase II: in-person Workshops. Both phases would require a moderator training period, a facilitator training period, and leader access to meeting content and materials. In addition, both meeting styles would require breakout groups.
NorthStar's approach and solution
After conducting an initial discovery period, risk identification and risk management protocols, we began to devise process flows consistent with the proposed strategy. During the first iteration of our proposed process and execution flows, the resurgence of Covid-19 began to impact the availability of clinical resources due to increased front-line patient support needs. Consequently, this meant not all personnel would be available to train as facilitators or participate in workshops during the planned project phase periods due to the unpredictability of the virus. At this point, we paused to revise our approach.
As a problem-solving organization, NorthStar maintains a reputation for quickly adapting to challenges and improvising our approach to accomplish our client’s mission. Through a collaborative effort with the project governance team, we found a very simple path to accommodate a large workforce with competing clinical demands...by being as supportive as possible, shifting ownership and creating reproducible content. As a governance team, we worked together to re-map a process that included the following measures:
Shifted ownership of facilitator training enrollment to senior leaders of key organizational areas. Leaders determined which of their team members had the bandwidth to train as facilitators and conduct workshops for frontline stakeholders. The leaders also chose whether their facilitators should be trained to deliver meetings via in-person, or virtual settings.
After gathering all enrollment submissions on behalf of 100 senior leaders, we invited enrollees to respective training classes to learn how to conduct their workshops for both in-person and virtual formats. The recorded meetings also included a Q&A session at the end.
For those individuals that were unable to attend the trainings, we created a website accessible to all leaders that included resources relevant to the project including slide decks, training recordings, FAQs, leader talking points, enrollment forms, and strategic objectives and KPIs.
We also analyzed regional employee data to understand material needs for in-person sessions. We worked with support personnel across 12 locations to run logistics and distribution of physical workshop materials to over 200 locations.
Upon completion of the training, a sequence of launch communications was sent out to all employees at the organization, along with the assignment of the workshop completion and acknowledgment modules in the LMS system. Assignments and completion metrics were later used to daily measure completion across regions.
Within the first month of execution over 19% or 4500 employees had completed their workshops, setting a pace to reach the organization’s completion deadline 30 days earlier than anticipated.
NorthStar continued to provide support during the execution phase, while ensuring a smooth transition of remaining initiatives to the governance team for sustained execution.
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