Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Executives outside healthcare are taking pay cuts.


What we’re hearing: Executives at brands from Delta to Disney are being recognized for taking salary pay cuts or omitting them altogether as their companies deal with COVID-19. Noticeably absent from this conversation until yesterday were healthcare companies. Beth Israel Lahey and HCA led the way for health systems with announcements of 50% and 100% CEO pay cuts, respectively, for the coming few months. We’re likely to see more of this activity, given early murmurings of more federal funding becoming available to health systems, if they’re willing to agree to limits on compensation for highly paid employees.

Communications takeaway: As health systems are forced to ask their workforce to take pay cuts and consider furloughs, a critical part of their message should be, “we’re all in this together.” If a health system’s leadership is making any concessions — financial or otherwise — delivering an announcement to that effect may serve as an opportunity to build trust and credibility. And it must either be done first or simultaneously with other financial cutting measures. Media and social conversations are starting to portray an adversarial relationship between providers on the front lines and hospital leadership, and sharing how executives and corporate employees are practicing solidarity helps mitigate that perception and show that we truly are in it together.

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