Unveiling our preliminary culture pillars

Each month, we grow stronger as an institution as we continue to pursue our Brigham Experience: Culture, Diversity & Inclusion work. Most recently, Tim Ewing, PhD, Vice President of Employee Diversity, Inclusion & Experience, unveiled our preliminary Culture Pillars, marking an important milestone on our Brigham Experience roadmap.

As you may recall, these pillars are solutions that will address the opportunities for improvement and development that were identified in our Brigham Experience assessment, which are:

• the need for a more unifying vision and inspiring purpose statement that connects with all members of our workforce
• the elimination of competition where there should be collaboration
• more transparent and forthright communication 
• more diversity in leadership positions
• the creation of a culture of respect and inclusion in every part of our organization
• a shift from a more hierarchical/top-down structure to an empowered, shared decision-making approach

 Respectively, our initial pillars (solutions) are that we:

• unleash the full potential of the whole organization
• welcome all perspectives and are better for it
• create healthy and productive connections
• collaborate outside of siloes to bring out our best
• allow risk and learning from failure to create better outcomes

Throughout March, our culture squad conducted more than 20 Brigham Health focus groups across our campuses, service lines and departments to define and refine these preliminary pillars based on your feedback. Caitlyn Slowe, Web and Multimedia Specialist at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, was one of more than 350 employees to attend one of the focus groups. “It was really interesting to see all the work that’s being done,” she said. “And to know that I was able to lend my voice to the conversation was very rewarding.”