eHealth Articles & White Papers

Cuts Happen: Strategies for Dealing with Layoffs and Slashed Budgets

Ben Dillon - Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

The current down economy is hitting healthcare at a level not seen in decades, and as an industry, we are seeing budget and staffing pullbacks in response. Your organization may be making sacrifices, or perhaps you're concerned that more bad news is imminent.

When it's your staff and budget that hits the proverbial chopping block, the only option is to have a plan for responding, communicating, and making changes that will allow your department to move forward.

Strategy for dealing with cuts

Let's assume you have the ability to determine how cuts are applied to your department. In this case, the best approach is to define a new vision for your department and decide what you will and won't be responsible for. After you have a vision, you can identify the best mix of resources to serve the new approach.

When faced with cuts, there can be no sacred cows. In some cases this can be a great opportunity to jettison the low-value "deadweight work" that you continue to do just because you've always done it in the past. Reevaluate everything you're doing from an eHealth perspective and ask yourself these questions:

• What items should we be doing in the future?
• Are there less expensive ways to do some of these initiatives in the future?
• How can we leverage the tools and staff available to maximize impact?

You should also re-prioritize your work around your organization's strategic goals. Build a plan that aligns your resource allocations with the organization's most important initiatives. Make sure to identify which initiatives should receive top priority and plan to devote more resources to those priorities.

To accomplish this, you will need to have contingency options available for those areas that don't clear the bar for significant resource allocation. It's important to communicate the new rules of the game clearly and directly throughout your organization.

Strategy for maximizing the Web's impact after cost cutting

Without a plan, you'll simply do less of what you're doing now. In most cases, the big, important projects will fall by the wayside while quick-hit, immediate (and typically lower value) items continue to dominate. A few simple elements will help you to make the most of the resources you have.

Focusing means saying no

As you prioritize, you will define the initiatives you want to accomplish. In doing so, you will also define those initiatives you don't plan to accomplish. To successfully execute the priorities you've identified, you must determine parameters for what you're not going to do and communicate that clearly to your internal clients. Don't leave the job of communicating your priorities to your front-line staff members, who are generally not empowered to turn work away.

Do fewer things better

It's easy to make people happy by doing something for them even if it's ineffective. In the long run, however, this undermines the premise that the work you're doing is valuable. Instead, focus on areas where you can have impact, do fewer projects overall, do them well and deliver measurable value. That approach reinforces the idea that if you had more resources, you could do great work in more areas than you're doing today.

Make the most of the investments you've already made

• Identify the tools you've purchased but aren't using - I once heard a presentation which stated that the typical organization is only using 30 percent of the functionality that they've purchased. With this in mind, are there tools that you've already paid for (and are probably still paying to license) that you haven't implemented or aren't fully utilizing?
• Focus on content - We tend to focus our energies on campaigns and functionality, and not on reference content. You know, the stuff you had an intern write three years ago that comprises your primary messaging on why people should choose your services. You're probably overdue to review and clean up your site content. Perhaps a budget crunch buys you the breathing room you need to focus on content and not implementing new projects.
• Implement SEO techniques - As you update page content on your site, enhance your search engine optimization techniques. Since you're working with those pages anyway, you should make the effort to improve their ability to drive more traffic to your site. It will improve your efforts as well as page scanability and comprehension for readers.
• Distribute authoring - The majority of hospitals have a content management system, but they often make little or no use of the ability to use many content contributors. Build a program for training and supporting content contributors. This reduces your workload and provides a better answer for those departments that you won't be aggressively supporting due to an increased focus of your team resources.
• Coordinate online and offline programs - Bringing online and offline programs together to support one another can make both channels more effective and improve your ability to measure what's working. Make sure your offline marketing initiatives drive people to microsites or landing pages that provide online options for conversion. And check out our library to find other resources on coordinating online and offline marketing.

Guard your department

Do all of the things that you should have been doing to guard your department from cuts in the first place.

Stay relevant

To stay relevant you will need to integrate your online operations tightly with the business of your organization. If you're operating independently, or in an agency-style relationship, it is time to stop. Coordinate with departments, align with strategic priorities, and be a partner in the success of their priorities. In doing so, you will build a broad base of support. The ideal way to do this is through the creation of a Web governance process.