StateServ is the nation’s largest DME management solution for the post-acute care industry, serving more than 135,000 patients every day. Since 2019, they’ve relied on Cooleaf to keep employees engaged, connected, and appreciated.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, StateServ’s workforce included patient-facing essential workers and a professional staff working from home. By focusing on their core values, with a message of compassion and togetherness, StateServ effectively united their team under difficult circumstances and kept employee morale high.

Boosting Employee Engagement and Recognition

Patti Mordecai, Director of Human Resources, used Cooleaf at a previous company. She believed that Cooleaf’s engagement programming and values-focused recognition would be meaningful for StateServ’s distributed team. Cooleaf’s unique approach to virtual programming and in-the-moment recognition became a crucial part of their employee engagement strategy when the pandemic hit.

Cynthia Kenny, Chief Human Resources Officer, said “Cooleaf has been a valuable tool to support and facilitate cultural integration efforts and create one social platform for employees.  We have leveraged it to encourage community, bolster our recognition programs, and reinforce safety and D&I initiatives. With the onset of COVID, 50% of our employee base went remote.  We have over 550 employees in nearly 20 states. Staying connected, engaged and empathetic of what each of us was experiencing was never more critical…Cooleaf enabled that.” 

Better Together

For many years, StateServ’s slogan has been “Better Together,” and it had never rang quite as true once COVID-19 hit. In addition to supporting their customers, StateServ prioritized safety among their essential workers by implementing HealthCheck to screen employees for potential COVID-19 symptoms. They also provided their partners, friends, and families with free COVID care kits while partnering with other organizations within the healthcare industry to share their guidance and expertise.

Internally, they leveraged Cooleaf to foster a sense of community between their employees. By “challenging” employees to complete fun activities like sharing photos of their home office, scheduling a “virtual coffee chat” with a coworker, or taking a “face mask selfie,” they maintained a strong culture while many of their employees were working remotely. 

“Our employees absolutely appreciated the flexibility of working from home. It has worked very well for our organization, and our team members have stepped up and stayed productive,” said Patti.

Sharing COVID-19 Resources and Information

As the vaccine rollout started to speed up, StateServ began to share educational resources and COVID-19 vaccine information with their employees. Since their employees are distributed across the country, the company needed to be able to share up-to-date resources and important information about vaccine eligibility. To do this, they relied on email newsletters, their internal HR software, and Cooleaf.

“Without Cooleaf, we don’t have an effective means of reaching every employee,” said Zachary Carpenter, Director of Marketing, “Many of our employees are with patients most of the day—they don’t work at a desk, so they aren’t able to check their email regularly. Having the Cooleaf mobile app has served us very well, particularly for communicating information about employee vaccination.”

Celebrating COVID-19 Vaccination

Once vaccination eligibility had expanded to all their employees, the focus of StateServ’s “Better Together” motto shifted from resilience and support to hope and celebration. Since the COVID-19 vaccination led to the reopening of many healthcare facilities across the country, it meant many of StateServ’s patients could interact with their families again, and the StateServ leadership team aimed to bring that same celebratory atmosphere to their employees.

“We wanted to send a strong message of encouraging vaccination to our employees,” said Patti. “So we used Cooleaf to create virtual activities that encouraged and celebrated vaccination.”

Drawing from Cooleaf’s challenge library, StateServ launched a virtual event where employees could share comments about their experience getting vaccinated. The virtual event encourages employees to share a selfie with their band-aid, a picture of their “I was vaccinated” sticker, or even just an emoji that expresses how they feel. The vaccination encouragement program will run until the end of July, giving employees time to get vaccinated.

By enabling employees to share these messages and be rewarded publicly, StateServ is able to create a positive atmosphere around the COVID-19 vaccination on their team, and more importantly celebrate what it can lead to. “Our employees love Cooleaf,” Patti said. “It has served us extremely well throughout the pandemic.”

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