Many of you know that I previously served as CEO of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of RI (BCBSRI) from 2004 to 2011. What non-Rhode Islanders do not know about are the challenges I inherited from my predecessor which consumed a good portion of my attention during my tenure. I had to clean up a well-publicized political and media mess due to his arrogance and lack of attention to important compliance and ethics details.
In short, he was granted a Board-approved loan, rerouted (I believe by oversight) BCBSRI charitable assets for personal use, and engaged in a variety of other non-criminal, but noteworthy, missteps that made BCBSRI talk show, media, and political fodder.
Moreover, because my predecessor despised physicians (and they, in turn, despised him), the RI Medical Society seized the advantage and took out full-page ads in the Providence Journal excoriating my predecessor and BCBSRI.
All of this lit a media and political firestorm. Talk show hosts fed on us like vultures, and even gave out Board members’ personal telephone numbers, suggesting listeners call and tell them what they thought of BCBSRI. My employees feared wearing their BCBSRI polo shirts in public, and even hesitated to tell people where they worked. Their morale was understandably low – not good for a “service” company.
That was not only bad for business, but became top-of-the-fold news as we quickly gained a reputation for unethical and arrogant behavior. The Governor called the Board of Directors in on his carpet and very publicly scolded them for uncharitable behavior by BCBSRI, which after all was a nonprofit charitable corporation under RI law.
The atmosphere was toxic. And the RI General Assembly passed what was called the “Blue Cross Reform Act” which placed many restrictions on our activities, and created six new Board positions to be appointed by the Governor, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate President.
So when I took over in mid-2004, I had much damage to repair, and my singular focus became restoring our reputation, the reality of ethics and integrity, and the morale of our employees.
I made ethics part of every speech to employees, virtually every piece of employee communications, and at least half of my weekly employee newsletters which were apparently read by 98% of all employees (probably because of the PS’s which started with the Red Sox and 2004 was a wicked good year for our Sox).
At our bi-monthly meet-and-greets with new employees, I’d open with: “You can be proud you are working here because we are an ethical company which does not tolerate dishonesty or cutting corners.” I publicly celebrated the fact that I was reported by an employee to our compliance unit due to a suspected breach of the ethics rules.
While I had not committed the breach, I was treated like any other employee who was similarly reported. I felt proud that whoever reported me, mistaken though they were, was confident enough in the integrity of our system to do so without fear of reprisal.
Hell, I wanted to publicly thank him or her, but I never did find out who it was!
Over time, our focus on ethics worked. No cutting of corners was tolerated. Full compliance was our benchmark, along with a strong reporting system. We became recognized, rather quickly, for having ethics “in our DNA” and later shared our compliance programs with other nonprofits.
Early on, the ethics crisis sucked the air out of our conference and Boardrooms.What time I had left was focused on usual challenges, along with serious issues including an aggressive health insurance commissioner, serious competition coming into the state, mending damaged relationships with the physician community and resolving a federal grand jury investigation concerning the alleged improper influence of elected officials.
This firestorm consumed the better part of my tenure as CEO. And like most CEOs facing similarly intense crises, the wellbeing of our employees, while important, was not at the top of our agendas.
During my tenure, I believe I did a lot to improve employee morale and esprit. I managed by walking around a lot. We had a variety of noon time employee events and celebrations. We created our own beta employee health insurance plan that focused on behavioral and lifestyle change and wellness and a wholly owned Health and Wellness Institute that marketed workplace wellness plans nationwide, with the rather famous Michael Samuelson as its CEO.
But in retrospect, I wish I’d brought a more comprehensive, more strategic focus to employee wellbeing–particularly the mental/emotional side. But because of the in-our-face ethics challenges and the understandable obsession of my Board of Directors with “fixing” them, there was little room (or so I thought at the time) to consider wellbeing as a top strategic priority.
But hindsight is often 20/20, and because of time and distance from my CEO tenure, I’ve thought long and hard about what I might have done better. And from that has come my eBooks and my to-be-published book titled Returns On Wellbeing.
It is the rare CEO that does not inherit or experience an intense crisis. I let mine distract me from the other most important thing I was responsible for–the health and wellbeing of my employees. My CEO experience coupled with a mission to focus on employee wellbeing have compelled me to make it my mission in life to help other CEOs, Boards, and C-Suites make employee wellbeing their top mission-critical priority.
The sort of paradigm and cultural change needed to create a culture of employee wellbeing simply cannot occur without the full, passionate, focused, and persistent involvement of the CEO. I was a CEO, and one has to have been one to understand the full implications of CEOship. It IS different. This is not elitism. It’s fact.
A cynical CEO might ask: “Why is this my responsibility?” Or, “Why can’t employees just do what they should be doing?” Or, “Am I also supposed to cure world hunger and take on the responsibility for employees’ happiness?” “Where does it end?” Or, “If you didn’t do this, why should I?”
These are understandable questions. The short answers are, yes, this is your responsibility for many reasons, the chief of which is that it is a strategic imperative for operational success. It’s also the right thing ethically and morally. And no, employees often need help, and the workplace is the best venue to give and receive such help.
And no, we won’t guarantee an employee’s happiness, but we can maximize the likelihood that employees will view their jobs more positively and perhaps even with greater engagement and enthusiasm, with demonstrably positive results for the organization.
To cynics, or those who wonder why this is in their area of responsibility, consider this bold pronouncement from a Gallup-Sharecare presentation: “People with higher wellbeing perform better and have lower healthcare costs. Having an informed strategy to improve wellbeing is the single most powerful thing you can do to improve organizational and individual performance and lower costs.”
But for any of this to happen with lasting and full effect, a culture of wellbeing requires the passionate and persistent leadership and support of the CEO. Without that, its importance wanes. Employee wellbeing must be one of the organization’s two or three top strategic priorities with the required leadership. That means the CEO has to make this personal.
While I retired with a legacy of having restored BCBSRI’s reputation for ethics and integrity and its morale, I wish I had the additional legacy of having made employee health and wellbeing BCBSRI’s top strategic priority. But you can have that legacy if you want it, and if you have the will to be passionate, persistent, and strategic about wellbeing. And the organizational success can be substantial. And your legacy a fine one.
