One of the things that we recognized early on when it came to communications was that there were certain things we could operationalize and implement, but when we let forth all the creative resources that are out there – someone created a blog other people put together an editorial team to release a newsletter people created materials to take their own team through it and then they shared those on SharePoint. Everyone else, we make it part of our day job, but it is really something that we do in addition to our jobs. There are perhaps 5 or 6 people out of 285,000 employees who would say culture is their day job. It comes back to simply sharing what is happening to help other people see empowered people taking action.Īdam Cohen: This is a completely voluntary effort. We feel like we’re getting that inspiration out when we share what other ambassadors are doing. In fact, the closing question from the state representative to our sales team was, “How will you make a difference with us as a customer?” Their response was anchored around the five values. A recent example is we won some work in our community and state business and the team attributed the win to living out our values and principles.

We still have monthly calls, and we also have a weekly communication from the culture office that highlights happenings in our business or an article that can bring us back to one of our five values. How do you keep people inspired throughout the organization? What advice can you share for creating a communications strategy around a cultural ambassador program?ĭave Sparkman: It all started with a phone call and a meeting of 10 people and it just continues to evolve. Last month we invited four members of UHG’s team – Dave Sparkman, Adam Cohen, Anne Marie Gavel, and Adam Hjerpe – to present a webinar on how the program has evolved and how they’ve kept employees passionate and engaged these past nine years.īelow the UHG team answers questions from the audience on how to fund such a program and how a company of any size can get started. This is no small feat for the largest healthcare company in the world, with 285,000 employees. It’s the perfect example of how empowerment can drive true culture change.

UnitedHealth Group’s cultural ambassador program – which started with just three people in 2009 – has grown to more than 18,000 employees.

Who owns company culture? Is HR the culture keeper or is it a company’s CEO? And how do the most successful companies go about culture change?

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