Achieving Our Culture Aspiration

We will lead the way as a model employer with a vibrant culture that is a magnet for extraordinary people who live our values, advance our mission, and fulfill their dreams.

This is our aspiration for the culture we are creating at Cincinnati Children’s. It is foundational to Pursuing Our Potential Together because achieving our other goals—related to Care, Cure and Community—will rely so heavily on its success. As a foundation, our culture is already strong—the product of a compelling vision and mission, core values that guide everything we do, and an extraordinary workforce of caring, talented, committed people. These strengths make us one of the premier pediatric healthcare organizations in the world.

But now we’re dreaming bigger and aspiring higher. To achieve our aspirations, ensuring organizational health through a vibrant culture is key. Getting there is up to us. “There is already tremendous effort underway to advance our culture quickly, including things we can all do to help,” said Nerissa Morris, senior vice president and Chief Human Resources & Diversity Officer. “Ultimately this is about enabling the success of the organization and our employees. It’s not an accident that our aspiration concludes with the words 'fulfill their dreams.' We have to keep our people at the heart of everything we do because our people are what makes our organization successful.”

"It's easy to call yourself a great employer. It's another thing to prove it."

Here’s a look at what is underway to advance and strengthen our culture:

Establishing New Mindsets. Achieving our Culture aspiration requires us to change how we work. We need to evolve, which is why call these our mindset evolutions—new ways of thinking that will be necessary for success because they will ensure a common, collaborative approach to decision-making. Setting Behavioral Expectations. Our Expectations answer the question for every employee: What is expected of me every day to help Cincinnati Children’s succeed? As with our Core Values, living Our Expectations is something each of us can do every day to help achieve our goals. Preparing Our Leaders. Regardless of role or title, we all have leadership responsibility beginning with leading ourselves. Through ongoing programs and workshops—including Culture Labs and Leadership Lifts—leaders at all levels across the organization are enhancing their ability to embrace the mindset evolutions, model leadership best practices, and reinforce Our Expectations while holding others accountable to do the same. Elevating Our People. It’s not enough to write and talk about aspirations and expectations. We must make them part of our daily lives and the processes that support our people. We’re doing that first with Performance Development. In the coming weeks you will hear about how we are enhancing our process to incorporate Our Expectations, make it more flexible and responsive, and enable stronger connections to help you grow. That’s just the beginning. We will continue to integrate Our Expectations into other “people processes” as well,

including Career Development, Employee Recognition, and Workforce Vitality. Enhancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. This is one of our top focus areas for FY21. In July we welcomed our new vice president of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Relations, Bobby Rodriguez, who is working now with leadership to develop an organization-wide strategy. This strategy will build on existing commitments to create a more inclusive environment such as the CEO Action Pledge signed by Michael Fisher in February 2020, our Administrative Fellowship Program, and the Better Together discussion series. Achieving Model Employer Status. It's easy to call yourself a great employer. It’s another thing to prove it. Our employee survey results tell us we are on the right track, and we will continue to measure ourselves this way. We will also seek external certification and acknowledgement. Recently we have been recognized by the Human Rights Campaign as a Top Performer For LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality, and by Forbes as among the Best Employers for Diversity, Best Employers for Women, and Best Employers in Ohio. These rankings are based on employee responses and data, making them reliable measures of our progress.

How You Can Help

The most important thing you can do to strengthen our culture is to live our Core Values and Expectations every day—and hold others accountable to do the same. If you have ideas for improvement in your area, share them with leaders. If you have ideas for organization-wide improvement, share them through Ideas in Action.

Pursuing Our Potential Together

Our four aspirations are:

Care: Provide hope to children and families in Cincinnati and around the world by delivering best-in-class personalized care, outcomes, experience, and value. Cure: Harness the discovery power of our clinical and research teams to prevent, cure, or radically improve the course of pediatric and adolescent mental illness, and one or two additional diseases of high morbidity or mortality. Community: Help Cincinnati’s kids be the healthiest in the nation, by working together with families and the community. Culture: Lead the way as a model employer with a vibrant culture that is a magnet for extraordinary people who live our values, advance our mission, and fulfill their dreams.

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