Focus on culture, career growth delivers results

Aspen Advisors, a company with 72 employees, has lost a total of five people in the seven years of its existence, four of whom went to the healthcare technology consultancy's clients, for a 2% annual turnover rate, while 48% of promotions in the past year have been filled internally.

“That's a great track record for a company like ours,” says Daniel Herman, founder and managing principal. “We've built a strong culture focused on clients, on healthcare industry leadership, on professional integrity and continued growth. You can take a look at the results.”

The results of this year's Best Places to Work in Healthcare recognition program seem to support Herman's assessment: Aspen Advisors has been selected as the top employer among small companies, those with 25 to 99 employees, and No. 4 on the overall ranking.

Herman says three of the top reasons employees want to join Aspen and stay there are the opportunities for career growth and learning new skills; challenging engagements with clients; and the chance to be “working with the industry's best,” he says. “We've got a diversity of people here, coming from healthcare, clinical, IT, consulting. … The feedback I've been getting from our associates is that, 'I've learned a lot and am working with great people.' ”

Perhaps the centerpiece of the company's career development efforts is an annual, 2½-day retreat, “usually somewhere nice and warm,” where senior industry experts provide employees with “tools and methodologies, skills and trends,” says Shawna Schueller, director of marketing and business development. The company also provides monthly internal education and coaching sessions with staff managers, as well as job rotation opportunities providing them exposure to other managers, she says.

To gauge the impact of those opportunities, each employee has an annual development plan that “sets very specific milestones, measured twice a year,” Schueller says. “You have a sense of how you're progressing along that plan, and you have opportunities to add to that plan, (and) make it more challenging, or make course corrections.”

Lisa Cannon, director of resource management, says Aspen stands out for its twice-a-year employee review, which some companies struggle to do annually. “It reinforces the fact that we're not an organization that sweeps that process under the rug,” she says. “All levels of our organization participate in providing feedback. The associates appreciate the diligence.”

Terri Gocsik, senior manager at Aspen who formerly worked in hospital administration, says that Aspen's flat management structure impressed her when she took the job four years ago. “You could approach anyone,” she says. “Your opinion could be rendered at any time, and the things you offered were taken seriously. Coming from large, bureaucratic institutions, that was very refreshing.”

Now on the leadership track, Gocsik says she appreciates Aspen's emphasis on career growth. Company leaders “looked for assignments geared toward your likes and specialties, but they are also looking for things that challenged you, things they thought you could grow into, things you didn't necessarily see yourself doing,” she says. “I continue to grow; they continue to push me to do more. … They're very supportive in giving me the tools and taking time out of their schedules to have special one-on-one sessions with me to make sure I have what I need to be the best I can be. I see them do that with anyone who shows an interest.”

Aspen works hard to recruit a diverse workforce, 56% of which is female including one-third of the leadership, while the company seeks out people of color through diversity groups on LinkedIn and other social media outlets, as well as minority-oriented subgroups through industry organizations such as the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Schueller says.

Aspen offers an average salary of $130,000 for exempt employees, which the company considers “higher than average” if not necessarily top of the line for its field, and Schueller adds that the company provides a quarterly performance bonus incentive as well as “creative benefits” when employees hit milestone anniversaries with the company: At three years, they receive a $1,000 vacation bonus, while at five years, they become eligible for a four-week sabbatical.

The vacation bonus is an incentive for staffers to take time off and enjoy it, she says, while the sabbatical is sometimes used for professional educational opportunities, and other times for travel—or, for those who spend much of their work life on the road, a break from travel.

While Aspen has a main office in the Denver area, most of the operations staff telecommutes, Schueller says, and the company works with clients to enable some traveling consultants to stay home instead of travel perhaps one week a month. “When the opportunity fits the client situation … we work to provide some flexibility,” she says.

The company has developed a “Culture Club” that identifies issues of concern and implements programs to address them based on feedback from an annual culture survey; this year, for example, the club has focused on helping employees manage their work-life balance and keeping a sense of connectedness toward one another, since they so rarely cross paths, at least physically, Cannon says.

The impact of that has included “gentle nudging to participate in wellness (programs), keeping it fun but also build camaraderie that peaks at the annual retreat,” she says. “They're sharing things at the professional level but also keeping it fun and exciting.” The company gives out awards at the annual retreat for the most creative ideas, Cannon adds.

Ultimately, Schueller says that what keeps Aspen a “best place to work” is its focus on core values. Herman summarizes those values as first, the focus on clients' needs, and then “how do we best organize and best educate our team to be able to serve our clients,” he says. “With respect to that, it's having enough structure where individuals understand how to deliver service.”

“A lot of organizations talk about core values, but they don't actually live them,” Schueller says. “What I've seen at Aspen is that this is an organization that lives and breathes core values. We annually give out awards for each of those core values. It's really ingrained in the fabric of our culture.”

Living and breathing those core values “boils down to respect for each other and respect for our clients,” Cannon says. “You'll see it exemplified at all levels of our organization.”

Ed Finkel is a freelance writer based in Evanston, Ill.