Advocate Health Exceeds 75th Percentile Benchmark in Key Employee Engagement Measures

The Opportunity

Early 2024 presented Advocate Health with the opportunity to enhance its teammate feedback system. With two distinct survey approaches in place, leadership recognized the potential to create a more streamlined, unified understanding of engagement across the organization. This initiative held particular significance as engagement metrics directly influenced leadership evaluations.

The path forward centered on developing an approach that would maximize participation while gathering meaningful insights to guide organizational improvement. With teammate experience as a cornerstone of their strategy, they sought to create a system that would resonate with their diverse workforce while delivering actionable data.

The Solution

Advocate Health pioneered an anniversary-based survey approach, focusing on six essential questions that matter most to teammates. This strategic simplification, implemented through the Perceptyx platform, created a continuous feedback loop that captured insights at a key moment that matters in each employee's journey, their annual work anniversary.

To ensure maximum impact, Advocate Health established a Teammate Experience Center of Excellence with managers aligned to each of their five markets. This structure enabled customized support while maintaining enterprise-wide consistency. The organization launched several signature programs, including Engagement Roundtables for leaders, Leader Rounding, Executive Leader Rounding and a Teammate Engagement Taskforce, empowering employees to participate in local listening and improvement initiatives.

A standout example emerged from their Wisconsin market, where targeted initiatives at Manitowoc County Hospital demonstrated the power of their new approach. Through focused leader rounding and generational awareness training, the facility progressed from baseline performance to nearly reaching stretch goals.

The Impact

By year-end 2024, Advocate Health had achieved an 85.8% recommendation rate as a great place to work, while 82.3% of teammates would recommend their direct leaders in their workforce of over 162,000 teammates.

Leader trust ratings showed considerable strength, rising to 82% — surpassing the previous year's performance. The organization exceeded the 75th percentile healthcare benchmark in three key areas, while maintaining above-average performance across all six survey dimensions.

Local success stories reinforced the effectiveness of their approach. The Wisconsin division's focus on psychological safety and generational differences in the workplace yielded significant improvements. By identifying high performers and sharing best practices, they created a model for engagement that could be replicated across the organization.