How a Creative Communications Program Can Build Morale

In 2022, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mount Nittany Health faced a significant challenge.

The local, community-governed health system, which was founded in 1902 as an eight-bed infirmary and now has 19 locations across six counties in central Pennsylvania, was heading into negotiations with employee unions on a new three-year contract. Because of the pandemic, employee morale is “at an all-time low” and “connections among … employees have weakened,” according to Danielle Stemple, a communications strategist with Mount Nittany Health.

“There’s restructuring, there’s burnout and there’s a ‘Great Resignation’ happening across the United States,” she recalls. “We were about to embark on some significant infrastructure projects that required employee support.”

To address these issues, the health system charged its relatively new marketing and communications team with building a sense of community within the staff and boosting employee morale. Mount Nittany Health really needed complete staff buy-in as it completed construction on a 10-story patient tower with 168 private rooms, opened a new outpatient center, and entered the same-day service market with no appointments.

“As masking was lifted and our COVID-19 infections fell, many of the organizational priorities that were paused during the pandemic resumed, and we needed a fresh start for our employees and our community,” says Tania Luciow, a public relations and corporate communications strategist with Mount Nittany Health. “We needed to pivot our communications strategy especially externally that had been so focused on the pandemic back to our brand and our organization.”

Luciow and Stemple shared how they and their colleagues in internal and external communications reinvigorated the health system’s corporate culture by enhancing the content on their intranet platform, through a positive earned media campaign and employee recognition programs, while also implementing various systemwide celebrations. Their efforts not only boosted employee satisfaction but also had a positive impact on health care quality and recruitment.

Team Building and Social Connections

Team building and social connection have been a key component of Mount Nittany’s success in boosting morale, thanks to a creative internal communications plan.  

“Building strong relationships between colleagues through communication outside of work helps to foster a supportive and positive work environment inside of work,” Stemple explains. To do that, the team started by “making our communications personal.”

To start, she and her team considered the first questions people often ask each other when they first meet: Where do you live? What do you do for fun? Do you have a family? Do you have any pets?

And, thus, “Pet Party Fridays” were born and quickly became “everyone’s favorite day of the week,” Stemple says.

Each Friday, health-system staff have a party on its intranet system Connect, in which employees are introduced “to the pets of Mount Nittany Health,” she adds.

“It is a fun way for our team members to learn about their co-workers through their pets,” Stemple notes.

Since its inception in fall of 2022, Pet Party Fridays have been one of the highest-performing posts on Connect, averaging 1,300 views each week. 

The program also inspired Mount Nittany Health’s Volunteer Pet Therapy Program, which since October 2023 has grown from three dogs to eight, all of whom work closely with patients and staff in the health system. Over the same period, the health system has added eight new volunteers to its Blue Cape Brigade, which works with full-time staff to provide emotional support for patients.

The pet therapy program “has been wildly successful in improving morale amongst employees and enhancing the patient experience,” Stemple says. “It’s been life-changing for inpatients in our health system.”

Similarly, the marketing and communications team created “Team Member Monday,” a weekly series in which employees share their interests and hobbies with colleagues. These outside-of-work activities have ranged from photography and music to extreme sports to baking (Figure).

“A lot of employees will nominate each other” to present during Team Member Monday, Stemple notes. “And it’s just really meaningful to shine a light on their accomplishments outside of the health system.”

Celebrating Successes on the Job

Since 2022, Mount Nittany Health has also been using its Connect intranet to honor employees who have gone “above and beyond” for patients and/or colleagues, according to Stemple. Employees nominate fellow staff members who have provided outstanding patient care and extraordinary service, and these colleagues are recognized in posts on Connect and acknowledged by the health-system leadership team at daily patient safety huddles.

“Honoring our employees gives them a sense of pride and accomplishment,” Stemple explains. “It’s really important for employees to know how valued they are.”

As an example, she cites a post recognizing two emergency medicine providers at Mount Nittany Health who each achieved a 21-minute “door-to-needle” time in administering thrombolytic treatment, compared with the national benchmark of 60 minutes. A local news channel actually picked up the story after word spread of the Connect post, Stemple says.

At the same time, the marketing and communications team streamlined the health system’s Employee of the Month program, which had been receiving only one or two nominations each month “because the process was so cumbersome,” Stemple recalls. Starting in 2023, the process was simplified through the creation of an intranet-based “embedded smart sheet where employees could more easily nominate” colleagues. The program now garners dozens of nominees each month.

“Not only do we honor the person who is named Employee of the Month; we also recognize each nominee and include a quote or two from their nomination,” Stemple explains. “This type of recognition underscores how essential each employee is and what a powerful difference they make in our health system.”

Employee Education

Mount Nittany has also used its intranet as an educational tool. Partnering with the health system’s security team, marketing and communications created educational content on topics such as shooter drills, “Amber Alerts,” surveillance systems, and more, many of which use “fun, engaging” videos to impart important messages, according to Luciow.

“[These] are very important, timely things that we need to get out” to as wide an audience as possible, she explains. The multimedia component of the program has increased traffic to the posts “and helped get the message across.”

Creating Opportunities for Interaction

Finally, the health system has leveraged the Connect intranets’ two-way communications capabilities to engage employees in operations and decision-making, reinforcing “that their opinions matter” and fostering “a sense of ownership and belonging, which in turn enhances morale,” Stemple says.  

An example of this has been Mount Nittany Health’s Employee Pulse Survey, which is designed to gather team member feedback on issues facing the organization. Since moving the survey to the intranet, response rates have increased 10% to an average of 63%.

In addition to these “serious” surveys, the intranet platform has been used to host “fun quizzes” with prizes for employees, such as a “pool” during last season’s NFL playoffs, a “morale-boosting” initiative that saw more than 1,600 votes cast.

All of these programs have led to Mount Nittany Health seeing engagement on its intranet platform double since 2022, generate nearly 300 positive stories in the local news media, and experience a rise in employee engagement, the latter of which is significant because the health system believes “happy employees mean happy patients,” Stemple says.

Of note, those nearly 300 positive media stories had a measured ad equivalency of a $3.5 million spend, according to Luciow.

“We are the type of health system where you are going to see your doctor at the grocery store, so community is important to us,” she says.

“We’re not a huge organization and don’t have a sky’s-the-limit budget,” Stemple adds. “We’ve been able to do all of this with a relatively small budget.”