A lot of organizations focus on the customer experience. Increasingly, we are spending time with organizations focused on employee engagement. It often surfaces beneath the all-encompassing umbrella of “organizational culture.”
Employee engagement and organizational culture are not new ideas at Sheltering Arms Institute. Unlike many of our clients, the brand new rehabilitation hospital (slated to open next summer) gets to build its culture from scratch.
There’s an old phrase we hear a lot – start the way you want to finish. With a commitment to become a destination rehabilitation hospital for the Mid-Atlantic region, the team at Sheltering Arms Institute is thinking a lot these days about creating a hiring process and candidate experience that starts with culture.
Starting with culture means giving prospective employees an experience that makes their values of courage, integrity, positivity, community, discovery, and accessibility visible and tangible during the hiring process. Over the next few months, hundreds of people will apply for positions at the new rehabilitation hospital. What they say about their experience as candidates – and, in many cases, as new employees – matters. A lot.
In the midst of building this hospital, the actual building, SAI is choosing to raise their values, mission, and vision up on the priority list and out into a lived experience. Giving candidates an experience they can reflect is key. How candidates are greeted, what the environment looks like, the questions asked, and the consistency of the interview experiences are all culture touch points that need to be handled in the right way.
SAI’s leadership knows that their new culture will set them apart from other hospitals and they are committed to getting it right from the start.