BizVoice -- May / June 2018

76 BizVoice/Indiana Chamber – May/June 2018 Parkview Hospital Quartet Earns Honors FANTASTIC FOUR By Charlee Beasor Speak with representatives from Parkview Health, the Fort Wayne-headquartered health system, and it’s clear that their colleagues are “co-workers.” Not “employees” or “staff.” Co-workers. That’s intentional, stresses Dena Jacquay, chief of human resources for Parkview Health System. “It’s really about the work that we each do together. This isn’t about the leadership and ‘employees’, or some say ‘staff’. This is about how all of us are interconnected to achieve the mission of the organization. We are co-workers,” she expresses. Intentionality is another theme, including the strategic move from applying just as a health system for the Best Places to Work in Indiana program to having several individual hospital facilities participate. Jacquay acknowledges that after several years of not making the list as a health system (the last time Parkview Health was named a Best Places company was 2010), it was time to try something different. It’s a move that paid off. Four Parkview Hospitals – Parkview Huntington Hospital, Parkview Noble Hospital, Parkview Wabash Hospital and Parkview Whitley Hospital – are members of the 2018 Best Places class. “For the last several years, we have been applying as a system. We have 11,000 co-workers. We’re a large and complex organization,” Jacquay comments. “We have so many different facilities. We wanted to apply individually and the reason is that so many of our smaller community hospitals, they are able to do things in a much more flexible way.” Forums and feedback Parkview Huntington Hospital President Juli Johnson notes that her approximately 352 employees can take part in conversations in smaller forums about the hospital’s culture and offer opinions for improvement. “We are able to do four quarterly meetings with the front-line co-workers and it allows us to have our little piece of what we can contribute to the (overall) health system,” she explains. Getting feedback from the Best Places to Work in Indiana confidential employee survey is more important than making the list, Jacquay asserts. But what’s even more vital is using that feedback to make positive changes. The health system also hosts its own employee engagement survey on an ongoing basis. “We have done tremendous work over the last several years and applied (to Best Places) as a system and each year gotten the feedback of why we have not made the list,” she notes. “I feel like we’ve learned a lot and wanted to highlight the great work that all of our facilities are doing (by applying separately).” Jacquay and Johnson assert the company’s various awards – whether it’s Best Places to Work or other accolades in its display case – are not the ultimate goal of applying. Best Places to Work in Indiana Parkview Health team members are contacted regularly by the health system’s corporate human resources department for engagement surveys. Feedback from those surveys and other discussions often leads to improvements throughout the health system.