Gina Melby’s formula for success at JFK Medical Center is simple: “If I have happy employees and happy patients, I have a happy
hospital.”
As obvious as that sentiment might seem, Melby says the responsibility of keeping employees content is among her most essential
duties as a leader, and one that has a direct impact on the environment JFK provides for its customers or, in this case,
patients.
“Our patients are going to receive that positive energy on a daily
basis,” Melby says. “Making sure your employees are happy and
satisfied and that they have the best place to work is really a fundamental piece of infrastructure.”
Based in Atlantis, Fla., JFK is one of the largest health care centers in South Florida, with annual revenue totaling $359 million.
Melby, who came to JFK in 2004 after serving as CEO of Northwest
Medical Center in Broward County, says she was pleased to find a
work force that looked upon its fellow members as more than just
colleagues.
“We have a culture of family here,” Melby says of her more than
2,500 employees. “One of the things I would say when I got here is
that it’s a very close-knit group of people. They’re very supportive
of each other, they work as a team, they look at each other for
help, and that’s really where they build their relationships of family.”
With a work force consisting of a support staff of custodians
and receptionists as well as highly trained medical professionals,
such as nurses and physicians, JFK’s employees represent a
monumentally diverse set of cultural and experiential backgrounds. Melby says keeping her team in harmony has taken a
willingness to accept, celebrate and adapt to the diversities of
JFK’s employees.
“The challenge is to make sure that people are communicated to and that they have good information,” Melby says. “The
one thing that people will always second-guess is whether
they’re being dealt with on an honest and fair basis. If we add
a surgery service line, if we do something different and we
build a department, that’s easy to do. The biggest challenge is
maintaining the consistency and the communication and making sure people have what they need to do their jobs every
day.”
By listening to employees, providing them opportunities to
develop and nurturing a trusting environment on an ongoing
basis, Melby helps keep her employees, her patients and, in turn,
her hospital in high spirits.
A finger on the pulse
Remaining sensitive to employees’ needs is often challenging.
With a campus more than a quarter-mile long, Melby says it’s nearly impossible to do rounds through the entire facility and interface
with employees. Rather, in an effort to stay attuned to the changing needs of the JFK work force, Melby encourages individuals
throughout the organization to reach out directly to management
with concerns.
“It is critical that people have a voice,” Melby says. “If people
don’t feel they have a voice, they don’t feel supportive, but even
more important than giving a voice is really following through with communication back. Even if you can’t give them the answer they
want to hear, giving them an answer and following through is the
most important thing.”
Melby carefully balances not undermining her managers with
being available to discuss issues with employees, and she expects
other managers to do the same.
“Employees e-mail me all the time,” Melby says. “We have an
open-access policy here. People can come into my office and see
me. I e-mail people back. That’s the one thing we do a good job at,
whether it’s in terms of myself or of anybody else at the executive
level.”
While casual forms of communication are not necessarily discouraged, employees also have the opportunity to participate in
what is referred to as JFK’s employee advisory group, which provides a more formal venue for interaction between organizational
layers. The monthly meetings, attended by a rotating group of peer-nominated employees, create opportunities to express exactly
what workers need to feel comfortable and satisfied in their jobs.
“The employee advisory group is a little bit more structured,”
Melby says. “They have some tasks and policy changes that they
want to work on. For example, if we have to change something in
the cafeteria, they make sure that it’s going to meet the needs of
the employees. It’s bringing information to this group and really
changing things at an operational level that are going to be in support of employee needs and a work environment [that] meets their
expectations.”
Melby, who attends each session but is no more a leader of the
employee advisory group than any other member, says that such a
forum, where a cross section of a company’s entire work force is
represented, creates a strong and lasting link between the organization’s management and its staff.
“We have about 30 members on that group, and we try to represent different shifts and different departments,” Melby says. “That
group of individuals goes back out and communicates to their
peers what’s going on, and they’re really a great communication
link.”
Delegation and collaboration
Another aspect of employees’ satisfaction is the extent to which
they are able to take on responsibilities, make decisions, and contribute to the overall direction and success of the company. Melby
says that not only can delegation and collaboration benefit individual employees by giving them the opportunity to develop professionally, but also that an organization’s ability to grow depends
on it.
“If you’re stifling people and not getting the best out of them,
you’re not letting them grow,” Melby says. “If a leader feels they
have to do everything, it can also be problematic for the organization. Your organization will never grow when one person is so controlling.”
Once a company reaches a certain size, it is not productive for
one leader to control all aspects of the business. Melby says an
organization’s capacity for change and innovation is directly related to how well the members of its management team can shoulder
new responsibilities, and part of a leader’s job is to ensure that they
are able to do so.
“As you build your management team, you’re creating the building blocks to be able to do more, take on more and also to grow
your own employees and management,” Melby says. “It would
not be healthy for me to do everything. People would not have
their own developmental goals, and part of being a leader is
developing the people underneath me. That has to be part of what
I do every day.”
While giving employees responsibility and creating a sense of
ownership tends to yield improved performance, there are limits
to delegation. Though Melby says that bringing her people together to work collaboratively is her natural inclination, a leader must
also know when it is necessary to make decisions on his or her
own. Finding that balance requires a thorough familiarity of the
skills and capabilities of his or her direct reports.
“I have to know every single person in every single role in
management and understand their expertise,” Melby says. “I
watch them every day so I can see how much more I can give
somebody, how much more they can take on. That’s something
that executives do on a regular basis; that’s how you build your
management base.”
To Melby, effective leadership requires both a command of
strategy and vision and the ability to allow others to make decisions. Effective, responsible delegation can lead to many organizational benefits, not the least of which are employees who are
informed, involved and fulfilled.
“It’s weighing in for people who have a stake in a decision and
making sure you don’t miss anything as you roll out your plans,”
Melby says. “It really creates a better understanding of what
you’re going to be doing and allows people that are involved to
share in that so that you can make the right decisions.”
Trust and vision
Integrity is among the first adjectives Melby uses to describe her
leadership style.
“Every leader has to develop a style by which people trust
them,” Melby says. “If people don’t trust you in a leadership role,
you’re going to struggle. If you don’t have integrity as a leader,
you’re going to struggle. To me, those are the most important
things I can do, at least as far as keeping what we have here.”
For Melby, one aspect of fostering trusting relationships with
employees is showing them that she’s more than willing to get her
hands dirty. For example, she recalls during hurricane season,
running around a waterlogged emergency room floor dressed
in scrubs with the rest of the JFK staff. Melby says when
employees see that an executive and mother of three is not above
working through the night, side by side with her team, it goes a
long way toward developing a relationship based on mutual
respect and confidence.
“People at the front-line level look for your involvement just so
you have an understanding of what their day-to-day lives are
like,” Melby says. “To them, having you there with them, understanding what’s going on, whether it’s during a disaster or
whether it’s during an emergency situation, so that you can really be with them at that level and still be able to view you as a
leader, really makes a difference.”
While occasionally going above and beyond the call of duty is
appreciated, it’s the day-to-day consistency of behavior that
will have the most lasting effect on an employee’s sense of reliability in a leader. Melby says the foundation of any organization is a well-defined vision, and because a recognized and supported vision is a vital tool in maintaining the consistency
required to build an environment of trust, she says creating a
company’s vision should start the day a new leader joins an
organization.
“You develop your mission, goals and objectives based on what
you understand and learn when you get here, and then you create the future,” Melby says. “Everybody has different talents. It
could be based on being strategic. It could be based on being
innovative. It could be based on your experience. You take those
things, you move into an entity, you look at what you have and
you say, ‘Based on what I’ve done in the past or based on what
I’ve seen at other places, you develop your future.”
The process of inspiring trust in the leadership of an organization is one that necessitates constant and continual effort and
attention, and Melby says the work is never done.
“It takes a long time to build trust,” Melby says. “It’s consistency. It’s your communication. It’s following through. Once people
feel that you’re honest with them and forthright, it goes a long
way. If you don’t have the same philosophy going forward and
you don’t have the same mission and vision for the organization,
it’s really challenging for employees to trust what’s going to happen next.”
HOW TO REACH: JFK Medical Center, (561) 548-3791 or www.jfkmc.com