There was nothing really wrong with the mission and value statement at Aultman Health Foundation. But in late 2004, Ed Roth, president and CEO, and his team decided it was time to simplify things.
“We had a nice mission statement, but it was really too long and a value statement that was really too long for anyone to know,” he says. “You’d have to read it to know and understand it. We took what was already an excellent mission statement and a value statement, and we put it in something that we could communicate to our employees so that every employee would know and understand exactly what the mission of our organization is, which is now very simple.”
It was as good a time as any. The company, which has more than 5,000 employees, was growing and, as new staff members were added, they would be taught the new mission and values.
“About 33 percent of our staff has been here five years or less, and then on the other side, about 41 percent of our team has been here 10 years or more,” he says. “As you think about that, it’s about how do you create the teamwork approach to take a group of people that’s delivering very good service and try to drive them to excellent service? So, we did some thinking about that and went through a variety of different things that led us to where we’ve been able to see some significant improvement in both our patient satisfaction but more importantly in our employee engagement. Engagement in employees, according to Gallup, leads to a more satisfied customer.”
A big part of employee engagement is making sure employees buy in to a company’s mission and values and that they understand them.
“Today, we really need a positioning statement that is something that your employees can get (their) hands around and they’re able to know and understand,” he says. “If we want them to deliver on the values of the organization, we thought it was important that they understood those values. In order for them to understand them, we’ve simplified them so people could remember them.”
