Essay: Improving communication at a Research Hospital

Introduction
St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital relies on the dedication of its employees and volunteers to treat patients and assist families while they navigate a very stressful time in their lives. It is imperative for the hospital   s success that all employees and volunteers are aware of the organization   s goals and expectations. Also, employees and volunteers must know the avenues to obtain the information they need and to ask questions, voice concerns, or make suggestions.
The research hospital, based in Memphis, TN, employs 36,000 professionals1 and team members and has hosted 3,455 volunteers in 20162 alone. This internal communications plan will cover the organization   s goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics to enhance the awareness and understanding among all employees and volunteers. St. Jude believes in the importance of communication, not just with our patients and their families, but with our dedicated staff. We want to provide clear and consistent messaging while also providing our staff with ways to provide their feedback.
Goals
St. Jude’s goals are to improve employee and volunteer relations by providing clear messaging of expectations and providing outlets for direction communication between senior leadership and employees.
Grow employee participation on St. Jude’s intranet site to communicate with each other.
Encourage each employee to attend meetings within their department.
Encourage employee readership of St. Jude’s internal newsletter and blog.
Employee and volunteer review of training and procedure manuals.
Objectives
St. Jude uses S.M.A.R.T. objectives that are specific and measurable in order to meet our goals.
Increase employee participation on St. Jude’s intranet site by 25%.
Increase employee attendance to departmental meetings by 100%.
Grow readership of St. Jude’s internal newsletter and blog by 75%.
Increase employee and volunteer review of training and procedure manuals by 100%.
Strategies
St. Jude has developed strategies to achieve objectives by creating various avenues to stay informed whether through the quarterly newsletter, attending the biannual all-hands meeting, or participating in daily group discussions on social media site Slack.
Inform all salaried employees by requiring mandatory attendance for meetings such as biannual all hands, the annual conference, and annual performance reviews.
Inform all salaried employees by attending webinars, stakeholder and team meetings as required.
Inform all employees (salaried, hourly, volunteer) about news/updates shared on social media sites; Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Slack.
Send all employees (salaried, hourly, volunteer) the quarterly internal newsletter
Send all employees (salaried, hourly, volunteer) a link to new blog updates or have employees subscribe via RSS feed.
Educate volunteers about St. Jude’s social media policies through training and procedure manuals. Require employee signature upon completion.
Tactics
The following tactics are intended to help St. Jude deliver on the strategies that have been developed.
Employee video contest about the great things St. Jude’s does for patients and their families. The winning video will be aired at biannual all hands meetings.
Invite employees to lead a brown-bag topic of their choice that is relevant to St. Jude.  A monthly lunch time brown-bag meeting can be conducted via webinar or in person.
Invite employees and volunteers to    like    and follow St. Jude’s social media pages such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Send weekly invites to encourage participation.
Every quarter, encourage all employees to develop their own 30-second elevator pitch, top selections are shared on the internal newsletter or blog.
Have an annual contest for all employees to review and complete the training and procedure manuals. Incentivize with prizes for group that finishes first.
Have all employees complete a survey about working at St. Jude to include questions about work/life balance, educational opportunities, feelings of value and provide a space for employees to provide feedback.  Survey will be conducted during the annual performance evaluations.
Have all volunteers complete a survey at the end of the calendar year to include questions about satisfaction, if more support/training is needed, and provide a space for volunteers to provide feedback.
Audience
The intended audience for this internal plan consists of several segments ranging from senior leadership to volunteers. The first segment consists of senior leadership such as medical professionals that also serve as directors of different departments. The second segment is salaried employees consisting of doctors, nurses, technicians, medical researchers, dieticians, and social workers that work primarily with patients and families. The third segment is hourly employees that consist of food services, janitorial services, and facility maintenance. The fourth segment is volunteers that serve in various capacities throughout the St. Jude’s campus.
Measurement and Evaluation
St. Jude follows the Barcelona Principles for measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of its communications plans. For this internal plan, St. Jude will measure social media impressions, reach, conversations, and communities among the stakeholder or audience.    Quality of the media coverage including tone, credibility and relevance of the medium to the stakeholder or audience, message delivery, inclusion of a 3rd party spokesperson, and prominence of relevance to the medium. Quality can be negative, positive, or neutral.    (International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, 2010).
St. Jude will also measure and evaluate surveys the organization conducts among its employees and volunteers. To accomplish this St. Jude will analyze the    methodology by looking at the sampling frame and size, margin of error, probability or non-probability. Review all questions which should be released as asked (wording and order). Finally, review the statistical methodology by how specific metrics are calculated    (International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, 2010).