Health & Medical
Culture of inclusion
How to create an environment where employees know their input matters
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Indianapolis | March 2009
Page 1 of 2
Bobby Keen
president and CEO, Hancock Regional Hospital
Bobby Keen believes that as
a leader, you’re only as
good as your employees think
you are.
And for that reason, the president and CEO of Hancock
Regional Hospital tries to keep
his leadership style as participatory as possible.
“I have great respect for the
people I work with, their skills
and abilities,” Keen says. “In
many cases, I know those people have a greater expertise
than I personally do.”
Keen, whose organization
posted 2008 revenue of $155
million, says that a leader can’t
unite an organization without
getting employees from all levels to buy in to the organization’s mission and core values.
In order to achieve that level of
buy-in and effectively leverage
the talent of your employees,
Keen says they must remain
engaged in helping to shape
their company’s future.
Smart Business spoke with
Keen about how to foster a culture of inclusion in your organization.
Encourage free speech.
Most
people come to work every
day wanting to do a great job.
They want to be productive
for their organization. You
have to give them an opportunity to participate and be a
part of the organization.
My experience over the
years is that suggestions for
improvement come from
places that you might not even
think about. If you don’t realize in an organization that your
suggestions might come from
what you might consider to be
an odd place, then you’re
going to miss some very
important suggestions for
improvement.
You have to build a culture
where people feel free to give
their thoughts and suggestions. We have tried to build
what I would call a no-blame
culture, where we show our
associates on a daily basis that
we actually value their input
and thoughts, and we’re going
to take their suggestions and
try to do something with them.
We have various ways of
gaining input from the associates. When we do get a suggestion, we try to make sure the
associate always knows we
followed up on that suggestion. You have to let the associates understand that you do
respect them, their opinions,
and when they do come up
with suggestions, you have to
make sure you actually get
back with them, that you’ve
taken that suggestion seriously
and you’ve followed up.
Build trust with people over time.
In every situation, employees
are not going to respond if there
are not a couple of elements in
the organization. It all starts
with respect and trust. If they
respect you, if they trust you and if you are approachable,
they’ll realize that you really do
want their suggestions. You really do want their thoughts on
where the organization is going.
If all of those elements are
there, you can have great conversations. You just get on those
one-on-one conversations, and if
all those elements of respect
and trust are there, if they
believe there is not going to be a
punitive retaliation when they
bring up things, it’s a very positive environment.
