Harnessing Employee Marketing Power

Beginning in 1999, Yale-New Haven Hospital launched a program to educate and train its employees on their role as marketers. The internal marketing program consisted of a number of activities with the broad strategies of increasing employee training/awareness of their marketing role and appropriate behaviors, and expanding communication regarding YNHH programs and services. Employee training consisted of implementing a 20-minute marketing presentation to each new employee during orientation. The second strategy revolved around helping employes learn as much as they could about all the hospital's programs and patient care services. The hospital's experience shows that employee-influenced admission can be increased by educating employees, describing how employees can help influence others, and emphasizing how they help deliver a satisfactory experience to patients.