BACKGROUND

With a motto of “Advancing Medicine, Enhancing Health,” Bloomington Hospital in south central Indiana is the leading healthcare provider to a 413,000 patient base in 10 counties. Its emphasis on innovation and technology has trickled into all hospital departments, including human resources.

Rick Barton is the Director of Organization Effectiveness at Bloomington. In his role, Barton is responsible for new employee orientation, leadership development, internal consulting on individual and organizational levels as well as maintaining learning infrastructure and performance management. His team relies on valuable information provided by employees to adjust programs and meet the needs of its staff.

THE CHALLENGE

Asking for feedback and opinions during meetings is a high priority for the HR department, especially when managing efficiencies for a hospital system with over 3,000 employees. After several meetings, many participants would later regret not speaking up and offering a thought, for fear of standing out in the crowd by raising a hand or taking a microphone. Barton would consistently hear that employees were not comfortable expressing opinions in front of a large audience, rather silently suffering as “hostages in seats.”

In order to enrich his programs with employee ideas, Barton needed to find a solution that would allow him to gather opinions instantly, accurately and anonymously. After attending an HR technology conference in Chicago, Barton became familiar with the idea of implementing audience response into his meetings. A simple tool to instantly poll audiences and see results, he quickly became enamored with the technology.

THE SOLUTION

Barton explored three different audience response companies before discovering Turning Technologies. Its simple response solutions were appealing, but it was the customer service that was the ultimate deciding factor. As a customer-centric company, Turning was an easy choice, even over the audience response company that was a mere 45 minutes away from Bloomington.

“We were looking for a company that was unified in the way they communicated and provided support,” said Barton. “Many the other companies did not provide that option.”

Barton looked to Turning for a comprehensive solution that allowed for polling in a variety of venues. TurningPoint interactive PowerPoint software was a logical choice for presentations where the results could be displayed on screen. However, for polling in venues not equipped with a computer or projection equipment, Barton selected ResponseCard AnyWhere.

ResponseCard AnyWhere is a handheld receiver with an LCD screen that allows presenters to poll without a computer or projector. For meetings where Barton wanted to gauge the tenor of the room and ask additional spontaneous questions based on participant responses, the ResponseCard AnyWhere was a perfect fit. The results immediately appeared in his hand, and allow him to direct the ensuing discussion.

“It’s small – no more the size of playing cards – lightweight and relatively inexpensive. The system is also easily portable. I can take the device along with 20 or 200 [ResponseCard] keypads without difficulty from one class to the next, all in the same case. The other systems required cables and other hardware that was more challenging to transport,” said Barton.

CONCLUSION

The TurningPoint and ResponseCard AnyWhere systems have been used in various meeting environments, including leadership retreats, management team sessions, focus groups, management group meetings and training classes. TurningPoint audience response technology was especially effective during a meeting with the Bloomington Hospital CEO, members of the executive board, and the CEO from Clarian Health Partners, the healthcare system that is integrating Bloomington into its group of affiliated hospitals. Using audience response allowed the senior team to gauge reactions of its newly acquired employees to specific topics.

“We wanted to help our employees know that they have a voice and we wanted to hear it. We wanted to understand what they were thinking and be able to give them a way that they could communicate without having a spotlight on the individual,” said Barton. “Through our effective questions, we were able to understand basically what their ideas or positions were, or where there was interest. We used it to educate, inform and test out new concepts or philosophies in order to calibrate our programs.”

Barton continues to use TurningPoint and ResponseCard AnyWhere in his programs, especially the software that allows his team to extract information and form significant results using the reporting features. The flexibility that the system provides is a big draw, and one that continues to make an impact at Bloomington Hospital.

For more information about purchasing or renting Turning Technologies’ audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.