Employee engagement is a key factor in employee satisfaction and corporate growth. I am Elizabeth Diefendorf, Director of Training at NantHealth, and I lead the company’s Employee Engagement Committee. The Committee consists of dedicated employees from our offices across the country, remote locations, and Belfast that organize monthly activities and events to enrich our employees’ lives.
The Committee keeps the NantHealth core values – Clarity, Community, Pioneering, Empathy, Collaboration, and Integrity – in mind when coordinating activities that focus on our employees’ emotional and physical well-being. Our company-wide activities include monthly book club and fitness challenges, like push-up contests, enjoying the outdoors while tracking our fitness, and drinking more water.
Before the pandemic, we coordinated local events, such as Phillies games, summer picnics, holiday celebrations, Halloween decorating and costume contests, and even axe throwing. Encouraging our employees to connect in fun ways both inside and outside the office fosters a culture of camaraderie. It allows us to bond with our teammates on a deeper level.
As the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and the company moved entirely to remote work, the team mobilized to keep employees engaged via virtual lunches, virtual yoga, virtual happy hour to stay connected and motivated. This year, the Committee held a “Cutest Pet” contest across all our locations to share pictures of the pets that employees are living and working with and ramped up educational opportunities to provide information and resources to support them and their families during this challenging time. NantHealth encourages employees to learn and develop opportunities through LinkedIn Learning and held incentives to participate in monthly LinkedIn challenges.
A large and vital part of Engagement is our charitable work. For the past few years, employees in the Philadelphia area have participated in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) Parkway Walk and Run and have raised close to $10,000 to help fight childhood cancer. Each year we collect holiday toys for children and regularly collect clothing and food to help the homeless. While we do many of these activities across the company, individual locations also find ways to support locally by sending presents from and providing gift cards to local businesses who can use our support. These activities not only unite our employees; they allow us to share our spirit of community with those in need.
What do our employees think about the work that the Engagement Committee does? They love it, and always give us great feedback and ideas. Some of the feedback is how we keep them plugged in with what is going on and provide them with fun opportunities, and that the team does a great job organizing successful events. Communication, varied activities, gifts, and listening to our fellow employees are important to exceeding expectations.
NantHealth recognizes how integral our employees are to the company’s overall success and supports the Engagement Committee in our activities. Our employees stay engaged with each other outside of the work we do and the meetings we have. Doug Conant from Campbells Soup has been credited with saying, “To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace.” I would agree, and NantHealth leadership provides us with the program support to achieve this.
