Tune in now to the latest Moments Move Us episode with Rhonda Brandon, SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer at Duke University Health System 🎧
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New Podcast Episode:
Rise & Lead with Rhonda Brandon
Let’s get together, yeah, yeah, yeah! This month at Wambi, we are focusing on celebrating our healthcare communities. Building and cultivating community in the workplace during a pandemic requires thoughtful planning. But extra effort doesn’t mean a heavier lift—it’s an opportunity to connect in meaningful ways despite being physically distant from one another, or even on opposite shifts. We listened to our partners at various hospitals around the USA talk about the critical need for genuine connection and from that need, put together a list of fun, playful ideas to connect virtually with your team members. You can use these ideas one-off for “after hours” socializing or as themes for weekly watercoolers. Or, go big and design a fully virtual online retreat using a number of these events in your agenda.
All you need is decent wifi and a preferred video conferencing platform with screensharing like Zoom, Google Meets, or Microsoft Teams. Now, here are 10 meaningful ways to connect virtually with your colleagues!
Open mic fans rejoice! Find out who has talent in this karaoke-off. Before your karaoke night, designate an emcee who will collect the names of the songs each person volunteers to sing. You can create a themed karaoke night (eg. movie theme songs, 80s pop, summer hits) or have everyone go with their tried-and-true favorites. If you are singing a song, queue it up on your phone by finding the song on Youtube using the search query: “Song Name + Singer/Band + Karaoke”. See this video for reference. Now make sure your audio is on its highest volume so your colleagues can hear the background music. Do not screenshare the lyrics as it creates an audio lag.
Tip: You can track these songs via a google spreadsheet that you can share collaboratively with your team.
Book or film clubs are a great way to bring together the cultural mavens on your teams for a routine meeting. Whether you’re hosting a book club or film club, the formula is simple: agree on a book or film and have everyone in the club read or watch the film of choice by a specific date. If you are hosting a book club, give a 2-week runway for all members to order their book or borrow it from their local libraries. For those hosting a film club, make sure the chosen film is on platforms that your group can access (eg. Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, ). You can find discussion questions online for most films and books, but feel free to have an informal discussion.
Tip: Utilizing the polls feature on Zoom is also a great way to drive engagement in book and film clubs!
Food is one of the surefire ways to bring people together. If you’re missing those lunchbreaks or happy hours with colleagues, try your hand at learning new recipes together. Cooking sessions can be very informal by choosing an easy recipe to all create through Bon Appetit’s Basically resources. Or you can pay for a private class through hospitality services-turned-culinary purveyors like Airbnb Food & Drink Experiences, Online Cooking Classes with Culture Trip, and Traveling Spoon. The perks of a formal experience is that you will have either have a teacher sharing a recipe from an overseas location, or even a professional chef leading the efforts. You can find even more cooking classes at your local city’s Center for Adult Education.
Tip: Make sure you choose a budget-friendly recipe with easy-to-find ingredients.
A number of games have transitioned into the virtual space including cult classics like Taboo and CodeNames that you can play for free. For those looking for a test of wits, try the Player vs. Player Classic mode for any of Kahoot’s free learning-based games or Geoguessr, where you guess the location of different photos using Google’s satellite feature on maps. If you and your team members like Pictionary, try this copycat game Skribbler.io that lets you draw color pictures in real-time. If you have a little bit of a budget, invest in The Jackbox Party Pack on Steam ($25), a bundle of multiplayer games that let you connect virtually.
Tip: Make sure your phone is fully charged since a few of the games use your phone as a remote control.
Experience the world’s most celebrated masterpieces from the comfort of our own home. As a group, check into a stream together and give commentary on different pieces of art. Have fun with it and try to find different art pieces that speak to you individually so you can learn something new about a colleague’s artistic preferences as you connect virtually.
Tip: You can even take virtual tours of national parks around the USA.
With the added barriers of masks, shields, and enhanced safety practices, getting to know new team members can prove tricky. Introducing cultural practices into online get–togethers is an innovative way to celebrate diversity and promote inclusion, while connecting on a personal level. Bringing cultural traditions into your workplace can range from a craft day to mealtime togetherness. You can do a Kitsugi home improvement workshop, repairing broken bowls with imitation gold through the Japanese art form of Kitsugi. For birthdays, instead of having cake, spoil celebrants with a bowl of longevity noodles, a Chinese birthday tradition. At Wambi, we have adopted the Swedish practice of Fika, a social coffee break where we leave work behind and have more personal, intimate conversations. The fun rule of Fika is coffee (or tea) and a pastry are highly recommended to accompany the good conservations.
Tip: Here are even more resources to learn about various cultural traditions around the world.
Personality tests are not only a great way to get to know your colleagues but also to build self-awareness and become a better team player. Completing personality tests as a team strengthens culture as it allows you to identify strengths and way to better yourself in areas of communication, work management, behavior, and collaboration. Here are some of our favorite tests, including the one we use in-house:
Gentle Reminder: Use these assessments to bring your team together and not to pigeonhole or form misconceptions of others.
Healthcare workers are living up to more rigorous expectations than ever right now, and with vacations out of the question there’s little room for escape. Using the Google Maps free tool with its real-time location sharing, invite your team members to embark on a mental escape by sharing their personal stories through pictures. Determine a storytelling topic, for example, “Where I Was Born, A Memorable Vacation, or An Unforgettable Meal” and invite colleagues as collaborators on the map. They can answer the prompt by “pinning” their locations on the map and attaching a photo(s). When everyone has answered the question sufficiently, take turns telling 2-minute stories of the provided topic as a meaningful way to connect virtually.
Tip: The photos you attach to the map will be public unless you set your map to ‘Private’ and viewable only by collaborators.
There’s nothing like a heart-pumping activity to release stress and build resilience! But we all know that sometimes, we need some accountability when it comes to exercise. Schedule a private workout class for you and your teammates. Youtube is a great resource for free fitness classes. For those looking for a 15-minute meditative stretch to help with mobility and relaxation, try Mady Morrison’s video. For a more intense full body workout without equipment, try a 10-minute or 15-minute HiiT workout by Chloe Ting. And if you’re ready to invest some time to cardio, here’s a 30-minute workout by PopSugar fitness with both modified and advanced workouts. Wambi has invited Zumba instructor Dean Seda to lead workout classes for our organization. Contact him on Instagram for private classes or join his weekly Zoom classes on Tuesday and Thursday night at 6PM EST.
Tip: You will need a yoga mat for all these workouts as there are standing and mat exercises.
Wambi’s real-time recognition and cultural transformation solution takes the work out of connecting with your team! Just encourage your team to login daily to view patient recognition, join in celebrations, lift up their colleagues, receive awards, and even compete in fun challenges.
Tip: Learn more by requesting a quick demo here.
Group journaling is a great activity for virtual hangouts and we have just the thing for you. Our Gratitude Workbook features mindfulness prompts to help guide your practice of daily gratitude. This collection of bite-sized exercises is fully editable so share out the resource with your team members and choose a journal prompt to do collectively as a team. At the end of each exercise, encourage everyone to share their answers to foster connectedness. Download it for free today!
Written by Dr. Bonnie Clipper, DNP, MA, MBA, RN, CENP, FACHE, Chief Clinical Officer at Wambi
Shaping culture and outcomes in healthcare takes time and effort–there is no shortcut! Organizational change comes from strategy that involves everything from patient experience and staff engagement to offering meaningful recognition and building resilience in your teams. However, a 43-bed surgical unit in a Magnet-designated, acute care hospital discovered a novel approach to make this an easier feat: using the Wambi platform.
Upper Chesapeake Medical Center obtains real-time recognition and feedback from patients and their families through Wambi to gather insightful patient experience data prior to the HCAHPS surveys. This allows leaders to share timely recognition with their team members as well as identify and address opportunities for improvement in the moment. This creates a dual cultural shift.
Since data is harvested in real-time from patients and their families, UCH leaders can monitor trends and immediately facilitate the behavior changes needed to turn a downward data trend in the right direction. This type of visibility and chance at course correction is a powerful new opportunity for strong performance on the HCAHPS survey, while also helping to shape culture.
A patient shared this message in Wambi about a member of the UCH care staff:
“I listened as he talked to my roommate who is very confused. He calmed her down and treated her as if she were his own mother. Truly a fine young man who does a great job.”
This comment was instantly viewed by UCH leadership and was immediately shared with the staff member as acknowledgement of a job well done. Comments like these can provide clues to leaders as to whether care and service are on track. Plus, when positive comments are shared with the team members who provided the care, it is a big morale boost. “It makes us feel really good and puts some pep in our step,” said one team member. This is where the second shift is felt as the organization moves from a culture of pointing out what’s wrong, after-the-fact, to celebrating what’s exceptional, in-the-moment.
Sharing patient gratitude directly with care providers provides positive reinforcement of their good behavior; doing so regularly creates a positive feedback loop that can have a dramatic impact on the patient experience. At UCH, patient comments such as “she went out of her way to explain things to me and my wife,” or “He took his time with me and was very attentive” are regularly captured in Wambi and shared by leaders with their care teams.
For Upper Chesapeake, HCAHPS domains such “Communication with Nurses” and “Responsiveness of Staff” went up by 12.3% and 26.5% respectively and team members reported feeling more valued in their work.
These findings establish the predictive power of real-time patient feedback on the overall human experience in healthcare.
Cassandra Crowe-Jackson is the Chief Experience Officer at Sharp HealthCare with over 20 years of leadership experience in the industry. She is passionate about human connection and its power to create meaningful impact.
In this episode, Cassandra shares her best practices for daily meaningful connection with team members, as well as ways to make the most out of virtual connection.
1. Increase Your Visibility Supporting Quote Cassandra Crowe-Jackson: “We’ve been talking about leadership visibility, because even our leaders, our executive team, we’ve been told you’re working from home from now on. So how is it that you’re going to be able to connect with your team, especially, you know, in a 24/7environment? So, you know, we do have our entity or facility leadership or the CEOs and the executive teams rounding just to say to that team, ‘Thank you. I know you’re here.’ Our CEO, as a matter of fact, did midnight rounds at one of our facilities that are more heavily impacted because you think about those nurses and doctors that are working that weekend night shift. They aren’t getting a lot of human connection.”
2. Incorporate Personal Check-in’s Supporting Quote Cassandra Crowe-Jackson: “I’ve had to have a ton of virtual meetings. So when I start my virtual meetings and begin, you know, I always try to find the one question about you. It will be something more of my icebreaker in terms of, ‘What was the best thing that happened to you yesterday?’ Because that kind of stops people for a moment. Because they’re prepared to tell me all about their work and their role and what they can do to help me or what I could do to help them, but when I have taken that pulse and that beat, just to say, ‘What was the best thing that happened to you?’ Or, “What made your day?’ Or, ‘What were three things you were most grateful for yesterday?’ It kind of says, stop a moment and let’s connect here as humans first, and then we can talk business.”
3. Look for the Silver Lining Supporting Quote Cassandra Crowe-Jackson: “Now for every hour of time, you log in that says you exercise, you are contributing one meal. So they’re taking that to mean five hours of walking is one meal for four people or something like that. So it’s again saying, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing, stay healthy, but while you’re staying healthy, you’re going to be helping people eat.’ San Diego has a lot of homelessness and a lot of hungry people, as does everyone in the country, and I can see feedback in the chats about, you know, what people are doing and how they feel connected to purpose still to our, our vision and our mission.”
In collaboration with Wambi, the Gut + Science Podcast Healthcare Series hosted by Nikki Lewellen, Director of Partnerships at Wambi, highlights accomplished, people-first healthcare CEOs (and executives) that share their powerful mindsets, experiences and tools that have helped them succeed. The show encompasses all areas of human capital at work and the successful best practices that breed healthy, engaged organizations.
Moderating our first executive leadership panel of the year was CEO and Co-Founder of Wambi, Rebecca Metter. Rebecca drove an engaging discussion to uncover major themes and pivots taken in light of COVID-19 and the new processes, habits, and mindsets that will positively impact the healthcare experience in the new year. As experts on establishing outstanding care experiences, our panelists shared stories and best practices that illuminated just how critical human connection is, and will continue to be, against the backdrop of our challenging climate. As an added bonus, we heard their unique perspectives on diversity and female leadership in a high-energy conversation that brought a fresh point-of-view to the latest learnings and innovation in healthcare experience.
As CEO and Cofounder of Wambi, Rebecca Metter is focused on strengthening Wambi’s core business by combining compassion, gratitude, and recognition with leading-edge innovation. This applies to how Wambi serves its clients as well as its internal team. Rebecca wholeheartedly believes that the culture at Wambi is a reflection of the impact Wambi seeks to make on the world. Through driving toward actualizing the mission through living the Wambi values, Rebecca has led the expansion of Wambi from a home-grown solution to a nationally recognized change-maker in healthcare.
Rebecca draws on her experience from multiple disciplines, including sales, technology, marketing, and law, which provide her with the unique insight necessary to build a global technology enterprise. Her passion for business and technology have been cultivated over the course of her career with LexisNexis. where she spent eight years in a variety of roles, winning numerous awards, which culminated in leading sales for the Managed Technology Services division. Rebecca is a national speaker on millennial engagement, gamification, and recognition. She has been featured by Thrive Global sharing the importance of mindfulness in the workplace – an area Rebecca is passionate about. Rebecca grew up in Lower Merion Township, just outside Philadelphia, PA. She attended New York University and received a Bachelor of Science magna cum laude and a Juris Doctor from Rutgers University School of Law.
Wambi focuses on addressing the patient and team member experience together. One of the many things Wambi does is collect real-time patient feedback that allows leaders to quickly act on trends, recognize folks, and change direction, if necessary. Download our latest case study to learn how the utilization of Wambi served as early an indicator of improvement in HCAHPS results.