What happens when a small community hospital is asked to join a region-wide hospital conglomerate? Evelyn Campos Diaz found out when she was named director of human resources (now human resources, organizational learning and research) at MedStar St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown, MD.   

The Human Resources Leadership Organization honored Campos Diaz in June 2014 for her sustained influence and “above and beyond” leadership in helping her organization improve business performance. She was also honored as a role model who demonstrates well-rounded pursuits, continuous learning, and giving back to the HR community for at least the most recent three to five years.

Campos Diaz created a many-part plan to address the organization’s issues. Her plan included implementing a strategic model of HR services, strategically partnering with leaders to enforce core values, and increasing workplace collaboration. To achieve her plan, she created an education program for HR staff designed to increase their capabilities to support employees throughout the employment life cycle. She leveraged technology to streamline various processes, and increased focus on managing the whole employee.

Q: How did you assess the key challenges of having St. Mary’s join the MedStar Health system, and what were they?

A: I had an opportunity to assess the entire organization from a metric perspective when I came to St. Mary’s in 2009.  I was able to see what their turnover rates looked like; what the makeup of the entire work force looked like; and especially what the HR staff looked like in terms of providing HR services to the rest of the organization. As a result, when I examined the metrics, they weren’t what we wanted them to be. When I dug a little bit deeper by interviewing HR staff and leadership, I realized the HR staff wanted to be more than what they were currently doing. 

We established a three-prong approach. The first was to beef up the knowledge base for HR staff; the second prong was to educate leadership on what HR could achieve so I could empower them to manage their workers; and the third prong was touching every associate (MedStar St. Mary’s Hospital employees) and empowering them to make changes merely by speaking up and working on projects across the whole hospital.

I noticed the HR staff had a lot of outdated information--outdated manuals and outdated standard operating procedures. So we instituted a 19-week, one hour per week, training course where we updated their basic understanding of what HR involves.

We also updated the technology we had. Specifically, our recruiters were doing background checks manually, so we hired a background company to run the checks for us, and that cut down their recruiting turn around time significantly. I noticed the recruiters had a lot of paper records, so we put our official personnel files on line.

Our teams worked in silos. We joined the recruiting function with the employee relations work, which initially only one person was doing. We joined them and assigned them a strategic, business-partner role making them responsible for the whole employee throughout his work life cycle.  In HR we want to know the employee, his background, and history.  We watch each employee blossom through impactful performance management and evaluations. We help him maximize his benefits, and we follow him through to retirement. These changes proved to be a better model for our community hospital as we got to know what motivated and inspired our employees.

A final initiative included HR staff rounding on the hospital floors. Rounding involves going out to the floors to seek out concerns and problems, to assess those issues, and then help solve them. It’s a wonderful relationship-building tool. Being near the patients allowed the HR personnel to see how the associates did their jobs.  That enabled HR to better provide targeted training. Rounding was the key to our success here in HR. We became part of each associate’s everyday life. The results were astounding.  

For folks who weren’t used to looking at data, turnover rates, time-to-fill rates, and satisfaction based on customer service scores, we started to measure how the employees and leaders liked our customer service.   Initially, we were disappointed with our 66% satisfaction rate. However, in two years, we went from 66% to a 99% satisfaction rate. Each HR associate couldn’t wait to see the next quarter scores of what their customers’ service ratings were.

Q: Talk about the strategic model of HR services.

A: Our data showed that we were doing the right things for the leadership. The time it took for us to fill positions dropped 23% and it continues to drop. That meant MSMH generalists were working well with leaders, knowing what the requirements of the positions were before they even posted them.

Additionally, we flung the doors of HR wide open from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm.  That was not the most popular decision amongst our HR staff at first, but now they recognize the value, because we can touch our night-shift people when they come on. Prior to the change, leadership and associates had to make an appointment to come and see HR. I was flabbergasted that the night staff needed to make an appointment to come to HR during their time off. I thought they should be able to come in to HR and get the services they needed at their convenience.

Q: The HR leadership award mentions that you strategically partnered with hospital leaders to enforce core values. Tell us about that. Were the leaders on board right away or did you have some convincing to do? 

A: There was some convincing to do with leaders, but mostly in the area of building confidence in the HR professionals. Once HR was educated on the basics and we got out there and started rounding, leadership began to look at them differently. Leadership began to think of us as partners, rather than people who sat in offices waiting for appointments to appear on their calendar. We had to get ourselves in order before the leaders had confidence we had a handle on human resources. 

When we transitioned with MedStar Health, one of the items our executives were looking at was determining whether the core values at MedStar Health would mesh with those at St. Mary’s?  As it happens, their core values were very close to what ours were at the time of transition. When we launched our campaign, MedStar Health helped us with our marketing and PR professionals to refresh our core values. We renamed our core values—SPIRIT--which stands for service, patient first, integrity, respect, innovation, and teamwork. 

Q: Talk about the education program for HR staff you created.  How did that impact the employees at St. Mary’s?

A: There are a couple of good metrics on how the HR staff education program impacted the associates. We created a series of communications to the associates making HR processes more transparent. Now they are understandable and usable by any associate. We always published our standard operating procedures and our policies, but they are easier to follow now so all can access and understand them.

We published all of our job descriptions so people could understand what was expected of them. As a result of doing that, we saw a 13% increase in internal promotions, which is in line with our values and desire to promote from within. That’s largely because people felt confident enough in the process to apply for it. We are viewed as an employer that can shape our associates to a career they want, and one in which they can advance up the promotional ladder.

In addition, we saw an increase in staff understanding of how we arrive at our compensation rates. Compensation as it pertains to an individual is private and confidential, but the surveys we use here and the process by which we arrive at our compensation grade levels is not a secret.

Our engagement scores went up. The more information and the more transparent we were about all of our processes, the more the associates’ engagement went up. There was a quote in one of our engagement surveys where an associate had put in a remark saying “HR really must love us, because they are here at 4:00 am!” I think dedication to your workforce really comes across and pays. If you put in the time and effort for them, they will be inspired and engaged. That’s the secret formula.

Q: What have you done to further employee development for hospital staff in general?

A: I think the more prepared the HR associates are to answer HR questions, the more desire our associates have to engage in ongoing learning and development.  We have a vision of becoming a life-long learning organization. We cut the ribbon on an Education and Simulation Center on April 30, 2014, and now we have a dedicated space for our associates and affiliated physicians for on-going learning. We have some major research possibilities under the MedStar Health umbrella and we are looking forward to bringing that expertise here.

We also have an on-line learning management system, which is robust to the point where some of our associates want to educate each other on new processes. In health care, there is always something new going on: new research, processes, and equipment to roll out. Associates have an opportunity to create learning under the guidance of our learning professionals, but they also have the opportunity to dispense the learning they have via the technology and the learning management we have at the hospital.

Once we post the learning to our learning management system, it is freely available to the entire MedStar Health system. This has us tremendously excited about sharing our knowledge. We can inspire others to move forward and to want to do more for themselves and their patients.  Who knows, some day in the future, we may affect the next leader in the healthcare industry. 

Human resources is intoxicating to me, I wake up thinking about what’s going on; I can’t wait to get to work; and I love and enjoy rounding with the associates and learning from them. I am happy to be part of an organization and creating an environment where our associates want to come to work.