No normal 9–5

Northwell Health is the biggest private healthcare provider in New York state, with just over 66,000 employees. And it’s growing fast, advertising over 10,000 roles every year. But these jobs aren’t for everyone. The company needs exceptionally compassionate and dedicated people to work in demanding and often emotional environments. Northwell Health is not for the faint-hearted, it takes a special kind of person to do what they do.

When we were asked to create an employee value proposition (EVP), the aim was to deliver a culture worth shouting about. We wanted to create a ‘Best Place to Work’ culture and environment, strengthen the Northwell Brand, and achieve the 90th percentile in workforce engagement by 2020. All this to ensure Northwell Health retains and attracts the very best talent, by giving people a genuinely great employee experience, from hire to retire.

Made for the people,
by the people

We spoke to 2,000 people from across the business in 74 workshops, to find out what it’s really like to work at Northwell Health. They talked candidly about the tough times and the good days, and how they wanted their work experience to be. Their voices gave us the insight that shaped our EVP strategy and creative. We went back to those same people to test – and re-test – our solutions. They told us loud and clear, they were Made for this.

Made for this became the employee promise. It’s not a normal 9–5. You have to be made for Northwell Health to deliver an extraordinary experience for patients and customers every moment of every day.

Made for this is now embedded across every employee touchpoint, it’s not just a campaign. 450 employee facilitators – or culture leaders – have been trained to deliver an immersive ‘experience in a box’ right across the organisation. That means everyone, from clinicians to recruiters to administrators, have had the chance to have great cultural conversations about what Made for this means for them, and how to apply it to their day-to-day roles.

The success of the launch meant there was a huge appetite from all areas of the business to embed the desired culture. It became the internal communications platform. It became the voice of the people and the way Northwell Health communicated with their employees. We ran immersive training experiences around the creative and tone of voice guidelines to further bring Made for this to life.

Because Made for this was built by employees and their authentic stories, it has the potential to engage and resonate with them for many years to come – even the new internal fonts were created from actual employee handwriting.

We’re shifting and celebrating company culture, making it an even more supportive and rewarding place to work. In just a year, we’ve managed to touch, and start to impact, every major employee experience, but this is just the beginning.