Industry: Healthcare Services
Organization Size: 1,500+ employees

The Challenge

Employee retention, talent management and customer service effectiveness.

The Objectives

Equip people to identify and solve problems by teaching skills in initiative and innovation. Increase involvement and commitment by empowering people to directly impact the organization. Build a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

The Results

Memorial Hospital was facing a nursing shortage and struggling to retain talented employees in a tough environment. Additionally, the organization as a whole was facing middling customer service ratings from their patients. Management was clear on the issues and wanted to create a more innovative culture.

"The benefits of training with Ninth House have been incremental and radical. Ninth House provides us with the tools that help us think bigger and rise to the top faster. Further, we are saving in traditional training costs and giving our employees access to the greatest business thinkers in the world. In the end, this is truly a win-win-win result that has increased staff satisfaction and enabled us to better serve our patients and the community."
- Phil Newbold, President, Memorial Hospital

Upon selecting Ninth House, achievable objectives built on the learning strategy were put in place:

• Initiative and innovation: Equip people to identify and solve problems by teaching skills in initiative and innovation.
• Empowerment: Increase involvement and commitment by empowering people to directly impact the organization.
• Create a learning organization: Build a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

By working with the Ninth House Learning Professional Team, Memorial identified the six pillars of world-class service-People, Service and Community, Financial, Growth, and Quality-and aligned their learning objectives and solution specifically to assist employees in meeting goals in these areas. And because many of the learners are doctors and nurses who don't sit at a desktop computer, the hospital created unique learning lab environments with fun themes to drive usage, learning success rates and to give them a place to learn. Additionally, to further the success, they partnered with a computer distributor to offer employees the opportunity to purchase home computers at discounted prices.

"We had a unit that was consistently scoring mid-level marks in patient satisfaction surveys. They were basically stuck in a rut, and we felt that they could use some "wowness" in their thinking. After taking Ninth House's Innovation: Wow! Projects™ with Tom Peters, the unit started to approach each job and each task they performed as if it was the most important thing in the world. Within four months of taking the course, the unit's scores went through the roof."
- Diane Stover, VP Marketing, Memorial Hospital

Once the initiative was launched, a difference was immediately seen and felt. Innovation: WOW! Projects™ from Ninth House enjoyed a 100% completion rate and enabled employees to feel empowered to make decisions and know that they are able to have direct impact on the organization's results. Building Community changed the way the entire organization looked at customer service and satisfaction resulting in significant improvements in patient satisfaction scores. Moreover, a positive shift in the corporate culture emerged and the talent retainment issues shored up quickly.