Page 143 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

130B RE-ENGAGE

Q: How do you make sure you are selecting and promoting the
right people into supervisory positions?
Lang: We like to promote from within, but we try to get a good mix
of inside and outside hires because we need new and fresh views.
We make sure we conduct behavioral interviews with candidates for
all management positions, both internal and external. We also have
a development program for emerging leaders we call “Launching
Leaders.”
Beyerman: The emerging leader selection means so much to the people
who are selected. For example, I just spoke to the charge nurse in
maternity whose manager saw innate leadership ability in her and
nominated her for the “Launching Leaders” training. She was telling
me how much it meant to her to get to know other informal leaders
from throughout the hospital during the classes, how it expanded her
perspective, and how much pure fun it was for her to be learning and
growing.

Q: What do you do to make sure managers stay engaged as
employees?
Lang: We do a lot to develop them through training and conferences.
We encourage their involvement in decisions that affect them and
their people. We also have a human resources advisory board of 20
multidisciplinary leaders that serves as a means through which em-
ployees’ concerns can be represented and voiced. No HR policy gets
changed without going to the HR advisory board.
Beyerman: Some organizations talk about “pushing decision making
down to the lowest level,” which we think is the right idea, but we
prefer to use the language “pushing the decision forward to the front
line,” where nurses and direct service workers can influence daily deci-
sions. That way, we don’t need to invoke the idea of a hierarchy with
people on the bottom. Our staff know that if they have a worthy idea,
they can run with it. We had a nurse who thought that patients were
having to fast too long prior to surgery. She felt so strongly about this
that she asked for permission to do some research and make a presen-
tation to the anesthesiology department that included recommenda-