Founded in 2017 with the merger of Palmetto Health and the Greenville Health System, Prisma Health seeks to create a better state of health for South Carolinians as the state’s largest private, non-profit healthcare system, and second-largest private company. Wanting to obtain a comprehensive understanding of its people to help them thrive and to drive better patient outcomes, Prisma Health partnered with Perceptyx in 2019.
What the Data Can Tell Us
John Ware, HRIS and workforce analyst at Prisma Health, knows that any thorough understanding of an organization this size — nearly 29,000 team members, including 1,815 employed physicians — starts and ends with data. “We have used Perceptyx for our annual team member survey since the merger that created Prisma,” said Ware. “The platform is at its best when it helps us to compare information year over year a little bit more dynamically than its competitors can. We can also compare our data against the healthcare benchmark database that Perceptyx maintains.”
There’s a strong relationship between patient experience and team member engagement, one that Perceptyx has helped Ware and his team explore. “The studies are decisive on the link between team member experience and patient experience. We also compare these metrics with turnover, vacancy rates, and overtime to help our HR teams and leaders see where to focus development activities,” said Ware.
Making Sure Everyone Is Heard
To obtain the most accurate data possible, Prisma Health has worked to expand participation in its annual engagement survey. “Like many healthcare organizations during the pandemic, we saw a decrease in some of our scores and it’s helpful as we emerge from it to have a full picture of the state of employee engagement,” said Ware.
One way of boosting participation involved the designation of approximately 200 team members as Survey Ambassadors who were given access to the Perceptyx platform during survey administration. With this access, they could monitor response rates and encourage participation. They also received training about employee listening and were invited to additional sessions to learn more about engagement.
“The Survey Ambassadors became strategic partners in the work and took their roles seriously,” said Ware. “Of all the interventions we did, this one had the most effect on the response rate. Team members expect leaders to be champions of the survey. Having other peers also champion the process adds legitimacy to the survey. For the ambassadors, it was fun and competitive. They rolled with it and got our response rate to 85%, which was a big jump from the low 70s, where it had been last year.”
Driving Improvement Across the Organization
In order to direct action to the right areas for improving team members’ engagement and patient outcomes, Prisma Health focuses on the top drivers of engagement. Over the last two years, a new focus area has emerged as having a strong impact on engagement: wellness. Armed with this new insight, leaders have worked to improve wellness throughout the organization.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is another focus area for action. “Almost every area of the survey saw improvement last year. DEI questions saw double-digit improvements in team member perceptions. Our team has done considerable work to focus on DEI in the last year, providing a lot of education to leaders, and it is encouraging to see growth.”
The Power of Perceptyx's Platform
Being empowered to answer specific business questions through the Perceptyx platform is what truly differentiates this listening partnership. “As a data geek, I really favor what Perceptyx offers with the platform because it allows me to slice, splice, and cut information very rapidly depending on what I've fed into the system,” said Ware.
When asked to summarize his impressions of the partnership, John Ware emphasized that Perceptyx offers the best of both worlds: flexible, robust technology coupled with the deep domain expertise.
Read the full story to learn more about how Prisma Health has partnered with Perceptyx to embed employee listening into its organizational culture.