How a Hospital’s Tech Team Cut Assessments from 80 Hours to 30 Minutes with Insightful

CHALLENGE

Win the IT Talent Battle and Ditch the 80-Hour Assessment Drain

Oklahoma Heart Hospital’s CIO Dave Miles manages a team of talented IT professionals, experienced in both clinical systems administration as well as network and infrastructure architecture. His team’s coveted skills meant he often found himself competing to keep his own people. 

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With promotional levels and pay raises in place, the long-term compensation package was attractive. Still, employees longed for a hybrid model that included work flexibility, not just financial incentive. His team felt happier working from home; fewer distractions, zero commutes, and more opportunities for deep focus time. 

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Yet OHH remained technically unprepared for the transition to remote working. They had no insight into productivity. They were using a cobbled-together process of network access reports and AD logon files to track team workloads. 

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In one case, it took management 80 hours to conduct an assessment of a single employee to determine if they were overloaded. And even then, the picture about productivity and workload was incomplete. 

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It was an unsophisticated guess if team members were overwhelmed, underproductive, or just temporarily bogged down by a particular project. They were also in the dark on their software and licensing investments; unclear which tools were being underutilized or ignored entirely. OHH needed a solution to connect their top technological competencies to performance assessment. 

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SOLUTION

Shift from Gut Feelings to Verified Data

With a common goal of transparency and transitioning to an effective hybrid work model, OHH rolled out Insightful. 

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It was especially important for Miles to tackle the challenges his team was facing with empathy and clear expectations. Insightful was not a "gotcha" time and attendance tool, but rather a bridge to confidently transition a productive in-office team to a successful hybrid experience.

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Insightful’s actionable precision enabled fundamental operational changes in three key areas: 

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• Shifting management's assessment of productivity from gut feelings to verified data 
• Identifying and providing mentorship to replicate habits of top performers 
• Accurately capturing software stack usage

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Data from Insightful uncovered overwhelmed employees who needed support. In one such instance, data revealed a surprising drop in productivity from a top-performing colleague who was silently struggling in their personal life. With consent, other colleagues were made aware of the need and picked up tasks, coordinated meal trains, and donated PTO to their teammate in need. 

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Miles cites this experience as deeply reflective of how the OHH IT culture pulls through challenges despite physical separation. 

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Yet from a broader operational standpoint, Insightful’s value was even clearer. For one, Insightful’s workforce analytics data provided definitive proof that employees got more work done at home. 

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Productivity reports revealed rockstars among new hires. Insightful data was able to quickly capture workplace habits of these top performers. Through mentorship and training, OHH was able to coach other team members to replicate the same habits, increasing output while saving the team from adding two additional full-time seats. 

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Additionally, Insightful revealed exactly how much OHH’s team was using key software tools, enabling OHH to right size their software stack and eliminate unnecessary licenses. 

RESULTS

Team Retention, Rightsized IT Stack, and a Fraction of Assessment Time

As a direct result of working with Insightful, OHH has: 

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• Cut productivity evaluations from 80 hours to 30 minutes
• Retained top talent through the successful transition to hybrid work
• Recovered software licensing costs and rightsized their software portfolio 
• Developed a “culture of shared responsibility”

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They've achieved all this with full buy-in from the team. Insightful is viewed as a key part of enabling effective production as a hybrid unit. Employees know what's expected of them and the value they contribute is evident, not assumed. 

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On both an individual basis and at scale, Insightful data has fundamentally changed the way OHH operates. Individual employee productivity assessments can be done in minutes. Insightful acts as an early warning system for workforce performance, allowing leaders to correct productivity drops before they translate into bottom-line financial impact. Vice versa, leaders can also recognize outstanding efficiency and best in class workflows to help other team members make changes that enable better throughput.