How Wellstar met a critical goal on time

How it started

Every year, Wellstar Health System—Georgia’s largest healthcare provider—strives to ensure that a minimum of 90% of its 25,000 team members are in compliance with its flu vaccine policy. Two weeks before a critical deadline, however, only 54% were in compliance, which would prohibit thousands of team members from working. Facilities would be short-staffed, putting a significant strain on the remaining team members. The organization would have incurred potentially up to $500,000 in labor costs to fill the gap with up to 1,000 travel nurses. And the communities Wellstar serves would likely experience reduced appointment availability and longer wait times—putting the health and lives of many at risk.

Reaching employees during this time was crucial—and challenging—given the majority of Wellstar employees are frontline workers. Wellstar collaborated with Jarrad Inc., a specialized healthcare consulting firm, to leverage the Firstup platform to reach every worker.

Where they landed

Wellstar launched a two-week campaign backed by the power of Firstup. The intelligent communication platform leveraged employee attributes based on HRIS and behavioral data to send hyper-personalized communications to their workforce.

Within two weeks, the company surged to 99% compliance, securing its facilities, protecting its workforce, and fortifying community well-being.

“With Firstup, we were able to reach those who still had action items without spamming compliant team members,” Grace Carlson Internal Communications Specialist at Wellstar, said. “Promoting awareness among team members and providing leaders with resources to support non-compliant team members through the process was key to our success.”