Tidelands Health: Employee Recognition Solution

Tidelands Health is the largest healthcare provider in coastal South Carolina, with four hospitals and 60+ outpatient locations. Tidelands Health has more than 2,500 employee, physician, and volunteer partners working to promote wellness, prevent illness, encourage recovery, and restore health.

Terryberry interviewed Jeremy Stephens, Associate VP of Human Resources Operations, to learn how Tidelands Health achieved measurable improvements in employee engagement after implementing the peer recognition program

Tidelands Health had a goal to increase employee engagement. The health system wanted to accomplish this by giving meaningful recognition to its employee partners. Employee Engagement is a core pillar of the Tidelands Health organization. Jeremy Stephens, Associate VP of Human Resources Operations, shared background on the vision of how to achieve this strategic objective: “I’m a firm believer if you have a good employee recognition program, it can help drive overall employee engagement.”

Tidelands Health had been reliant on gift cards for recognition. New IRS guidelines meant the health system needed to change direction. “When you have a culture that wants to do a lot of on-the-spot type recognition, we knew we had to do something different.”

From a focus group of employees, Tidelands Health learned that employees valued recognition gifts that were branded with the health system’s logo. The HR team evaluated giving a one-time recognition gift to all employees. The cost and administrative burden added up quickly, according to Stephens. Leaders soon realized that their budget and the impact on employees could go farther with an ongoing platform for recognition. “We could use that budget in a much more meaningful way to help us drive our engagement numbers and would really be a beneficial mechanism going forward,” Stephens said.

Tidelands Health implemented Terryberry’s peer recognition program throughout the health system in order to provide employees with an ongoing recognition experience.

Using these tools, Tidelands Health was able to consolidate many of its recognition initiatives into one powerful platform. Service awards, performance incentives, and nursing awards, which had previously been issued in the form of taxable bonuses, were converted to the points-based program. Tidelands Health also began using points to drive participation in wellness activities.

Employees collect recognition points over time and can redeem them for their preferred items in the program’s rewards catalog. “Employees being excited about their points and being able to choose something that is important to them contributed to increased satisfaction,” says Stephen.