Riverside Health is an integrated healthcare system in eastern Virginia with a singular focus: caring for others as they would care for those they love. With more than 9,500 team members, including 800 clinical providers, the organization delivers compassionate, collaborative, and integrated care across an 8,000-square-mile coverage area.
With a vast network that includes five hospitals, more than 100 medical practices, and multiple outpatient and lifelong health services, Riverside understood that a unified system of recognition was essential to ensuring every team member felt equally valued.
While well-intentioned, Riverside Health’s preexisting recognition programs were a patchwork of homegrown solutions that made it difficult to provide a consistent and equitable experience for every employee. These programs were also decentralized, making it difficult for all employees to participate consistently.
Before partnering with C.A. Short, Riverside Health’s recognition programs were a series of siloed efforts. Where some departments leveraged a high-tech intranet solution for recognition, others relied on a more traditional, paper-based system. This created a situation where some employees were easily recognized, while others—particularly those on the road with minimal access to intranetbased systems—found it much harder to participate. This made it challenging for the organization to deliver on an important goal: to ensure every employee has an equal opportunity to feel valued.
Riverside Health’s approach to milestone events also presented an opportunity for improvement. Recognition gifts tended to be generic and often didn’t resonate with an individual’s unique values or preferences. To truly make people feel seen, the organization needed to move toward a system that offered personalized awards that truly celebrated each individual.
Without a centralized platform to manage and track recognition efforts, it was difficult for Riverside Health to see the full picture of its engagement and recognition initiatives. This meant it had no way to gather the data needed to understand what was working, identify areas of improvement, or showcase the results of employees’ hard work to leadership.
Riverside Health sought out a partner with a single, comprehensive platform, that could bring all of the organization’s recognition efforts together under one platform creating a consistent and equitable experience for every employee.
It decided to partner with C.A. Short for a key reason: C.A. Short doesn’t just offer technology—it offers a genuine partnership with capabilities to deliver as many “yeses” as possible to special requests.
The C.A. Short team worked directly with Riverside Health to create a fully RH-branded platform based on the People Are Everything platform. The platform—called CelebrateU— integrated Riverside Health’s culture, language, and specific goals.
The recognition platform was equipped with:
Since CelebrateU’s launch, the results have been tangible and transformative. For the first time, Riverside Health has a clear picture of its recognition efforts with the backing of real-time metrics that allow the organization to provide targeted feedback to leaders and celebrate top users.
The impact on people is even more profound:
This success is demonstrated by key metrics that show a clear return on Riverside Health’s investment in a strong workplace culture:
Going forward, Riverside Health plans to continue expanding its recognition program through the C.A. Short platform with new elements, such as automated eCards for professional recognition weeks.
The organization’s advice for other organizations is to “think big” and look for a partner who provides a comprehensive, all-in-one solution that is large enough to handle their goals, yet flexible enough to be fully customized.
When you invest in a unified, purpose-driven culture, you protect your most critical asset: your people. That’s why it’s important to find a true partnership—not just a vendor. Riverside Health found that in C.A. Short.