INTRODUCTION
Reputation management is the process of shaping perception, both internal and external, of an organization. How important is it? A Deloitte study showed that reputation damage was the No. 1 risk concern for business executives around the world.
In the spectrum of public relations, reputation management takes place before crisis communications because it provides crisis resilience. In other words, when your organization has a sterling reputation, it is often given the benefit of doubt in times of trouble.
Many other benefits, including delivering a competitive advantage, come with a well-executed campaign. However, before you implement a reputation management plan at your hospital, you need to make sure senior leadership is aboard. Here’s how to acquire buy-in from the CEO to launch your reputation management campaign.
SHOW THEM THE NUMBERS
A study by an IP merchant bank revealed that in 2015, 16 percent of the market capitalization of the S&P 500 came from “tangible assets” (meaning, stockholders’ equity) while a whopping 84 percent came from “intangible assets” (meaning, reputation, IP and staff know-how).
According to the aforementioned Deloitte study, executives in life sciences and healthcare experienced these impacts after a negative reputation event:
- Loss of brand value: This can make it difficult to attract patients and talent, and it can lead to a more difficult recovery from a future crisis.
- Regulatory investigation: Consequences can include penalties, loss of accreditation and loss of Medicare reimbursement.
- Loss of customers: Hospitals are already facing reduced reimbursements from payers, higher drug costs and higher labor costs. Losing patients will only compound the problem.
If your hospital has experienced past incidents or knows of other health systems that have that led to any of these consequences, you should present them to the CEO. Otherwise, use this general data to make your point. Your mission is to explain that the hospital’s reputation directly corresponds to its financial and operating health.
RUN A PILOT PROGRAM
In some cases, you may need more tangible proof. At this point, you will need to run a pilot program in which you test a prediction, gather results and then scale those results to show how the entire organization would benefit.
For example, let’s say one of your hospital’s goals is to improve employee retention. You then run a reputation management pilot program with nurses (a subset of the entire organization). Your key messages could be:
- Nurse managers are visible, accessible and responsive to their staff
- Nurse managers show respect and empathy toward their staff
You then execute a mini-reputation management campaign based on the prediction that nurses who believe these statements to be true will rate the hospital higher on Glassdoor (a study shows that a one-star increase leads to a four-percentage-point higher chance that employees would stay).
After the pilot program, connect the dots from the results of the prediction to define results for the whole hospital. For example, even a four percent improvement in the odds that the nurses will stay can translate into dozens of retained employees at a 1,000-person healthcare organization. Studies have shown that the replacement cost is $15,000 for each employee earning a median salary of $45,000 a year.
Finally, publish the results of the reputation management pilot program internally as a case study to not only earn your CEO’s go-ahead but also to gain broad acceptance throughout the organization. The latter point will be important as you build cross-disciplinary teams.