Health & Medical
Getting personal
How Steve Walli got his employees at UnitedHealthcare of the Midwest to work together
By Mark Scott
Smart Business St. Louis | September 2009
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Steve Walli can feel the eyes of his employees when they look to him for guidance as to which path they should follow at UnitedHealthcare of the Midwest Inc. But Walli says it’s his willingness to ask for the same type of support in return that enables his company to succeed.
“They need to feel like their voice is heard,” says Walli, president and CEO of the provider of health care network services. “They want to be involved in the strategy and they want to feel like it matters when they bring in feedback from the marketplace.”
The idea behind this concept can be tied back to simple human nature.
People want to feel like they have done something to help their organization win, whether you’re talking about a family or a 1,300-employee company that provides health care services to more than 900,000 people.
As Walli looked at the company upon taking his post in 2003, he felt like there was more that could be done to engage and empower his employees.
“It’s got to be actions and not words,” Walli says. “The fact that we’re a large complex organization, there are a lot of different parts of the company that need to work well. We needed to find a way to collaborate better and work more effectively to bring out the best in each person.
“We were successful in the marketplace, but maybe we didn’t resolve things as quickly as we could. It was very clear that interdepartmental cooperation could be improved. To really operate at peak performance, you have to have everyone on the same page, because more satisfied employees lead to more satisfied customers. A lot of this was just empowering people to take on new responsibilities.”
So Walli set out to build a team that felt more a part of everything that was going on in the organization. He began actively soliciting feedback and input and made sure to take opportunities to publicly recognize the talents and skills of his people. He provided opportunities for employees to get to know him a little better and even engage in some playful competition, such as a weight-loss contest patterned after the hit TV show, “The Biggest Loser.”
“We came up with the idea of beat the CEO, and we’ve done a number of different variations,” Walli says. “I was very involved in the recognition program and I took the winners out to lunch.”
Walli won the weight-loss competition. But more importantly for his company, the contest gave employees an extra reason to feel excited about coming into work each day and being a part of the UnitedHealthcare team.
“It’s just making sure people understand that we care,” Walli says.
