Massini, Black encourage employees to complete engagement survey

Steve Massini, Penn State Health CEO, and Dr. Kevin Black, College of Medicine interim dean, sent the following email to employees Monday, Aug. 10.

Dear Colleagues,

Penn State Health and College of Medicine employees will receive an email today from Press Ganey Associates with a link to participate in an engagement survey. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey. It is short, and the topics predominantly focus on our culture, leadership and communications.

This survey is important because it tells us how we are doing in building upon the strengths and addressing the challenges you identified in last year’s in-depth engagement survey. We learned a lot through that survey. Perhaps most important is this: while we are an organization of people who love what we do, our recent and rapid growth has caused real and significant stress that is impacting morale and job satisfaction. You told us about challenges you face regarding our communications, collaboration, coordination and accountability.

Following last year’s survey, leaders and employees began addressing these challenges in their units and departments. Work groups got underway; changes began taking place. As just one example, at our Penn State Health Medical Group outpatient practices, managers are implementing morning huddles with staff to share information and solve problems. We’ve been told that at those practices where these huddles are in place, there’s been significant improvement in communications, collaboration and even comradery. Our Human Resources Department also has been working with managers in departments with low engagement scores to help them improve skills and build trust among their teams. After all, our relationship with our managers and colleagues has a lot to do with how much we enjoy our jobs.

We’ve been really proud of the way you responded to the immense challenges and stress of COVID-19. We know many of you took on new and different roles – at work and at home – during this pandemic. Our hope is that our frequent town halls, remote work opportunities, leadership campaign that generated $560K in employee and student financial assistance, and months of continued pay and benefits for those who could not work at all, made your lives a little bit easier.

We all want to be at our best every day for our patients, learners, community and each other. Our culture can empower or discourage that. Thank you, in advance, for providing important feedback in this survey. Your responses are anonymous, but collectively they will tell us where we have made progress and where we need to focus our future efforts.

Steve Massini                     Dr. Kevin Black
CEO                                      Interim Dean
Penn State Health             Penn State College of Medicine

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