In a recent virtual event hosted by Perceptyx's Healthcare EX Consortium, Israa Khan, M.A., Director of Organizational Development at Onvida Health, shared how her team transformed their employee engagement approach from a compliance-driven exercise to a strategic initiative focused on meaningful action and sustainable improvement. Under her leadership, Onvida improved engagement from the bottom decile to the top quartile in just four years while navigating rapid growth and rural healthcare challenges.
Khan opened the session with a stark admission: “When I joined Onvida, we were surveying every 18 months with a vendor that gave us static reports. Leaders treated engagement as a checkbox — they’d throw action plans into the system just to say they’d done it.” This approach changed when Onvida partnered with Perceptyx in 2020. Despite surveying during the pandemic’s peak, Khan insisted on establishing a baseline: “We braced for impact. But you don’t avoid surveying because it’s a ‘bad time.’ You need that pulse to know where to act.”
The shift began with quarterly pulses to combat “inaction fatigue,” a term Khan credits to Perceptyx: “People don’t tire of surveys — they tire of feeling unheard. We committed to closing the loop, even if it meant starting small.” Leaders initially resisted the cadence, but Khan’s team tied data to operational KPIs: “If a department had low engagement but great safety scores, we asked executives: ‘Is this leader avoiding tough conversations?’ Data became a mirror, not a hammer.”
By 2023, Onvida refined its cadence to two annual surveys. “We found our sweet spot: a census survey to set priorities and a pulse to course-correct,” Khan explained. “But none of this works unless executives see engagement as their plate, not just HR’s.”
Khan emphasized translating raw data into actionable narratives: “Executives glaze over at spreadsheets. We built divisional heatmaps. (“Here’s where your leaders excel, here’s where they’re faking it.”) She trained leaders to “let comments add color, not chaos” by pairing quantitative scores with qualitative insights. For example, when a heatmap revealed a high-scoring leader with poor team performance, Khan challenged executives: “Is this manager prioritizing popularity over accountability?”
One make-or-break “power of listening” moment came when Onvida’s marketing leader embedded survey-driven updates into monthly SharePoint emails. “She wrote: 'Communication was flagged in our survey — here’s how we’re fixing it.' No one asked her to — she owned the narrative,” Khan noted. This cascading transparency became a cultural anchor, with Khan adding: “We stopped chasing perfection. Pick one needle-mover — for us, it was communication — and be a broken record about it.”
Onvida’s Action Planning Idea Exchange Forums became a cornerstone of its strategy. After initial resistance — “95% of leaders submitted plans, but they were hollow” — Khan’s team spotlighted innovators. “We invited leaders who’d moved metrics without fancy titles or budgets. One manager solved a scheduling crisis by crowdsourcing shift swaps — no top-down mandate.”
At the inaugural forum, leaders shared blunt lessons:
Khan recalled a nursing leader’s breakthrough: “She admitted, ‘I kept waiting for HR to tell me what to do. Now I ask my team: What’s one thing we can change this month?’ That’s the shift, going from compliance to co-ownership.”
Onvida’s survey and business outcomes reflect its cultural pivot:
Khan highlighted a frontline win: “During rounds, a night-shift worker mentioned microwave shortages. The next day, the president ordered three. Small? Yes. But it signaled: We’re listening.”
Khan outlined Onvida’s next steps for future state success:
Khan’s closing charge captured the essence of Onvida’s success, which other healthcare organizations can follow if they’re willing to do the work: “Engagement isn’t another task — it’s the plate everything else sits on. We didn’t climb from the bottom by chasing benchmarks. We got curious, got bold, and let data tell the story our way.”
Here are some of Khan and Onvida’s keys to listening excellence:
To view Israa Khan's full presentation on transforming employee engagement from compliance to culture, access the on-demand recording.