Walking the talk in healthcare: New research urges involvement of care workers in co-creating promises around social sustainability

A new study from CERS - Centre for Relationship Marketing and Service Management at Hanken School of Economics contributes to ongoing conversations around resource allocation and sustainability in healthcare contexts. The scientific article Employee alignment with conscientious brand promises: exploring participatory mechanisms of brand promise co-creation,authored by Helena Liewendahl, Sonja Sarasvuo, Kristina Heinonen, Christian Grönroos and Teresia Stigzelius, has recently been published in the Journal of Brand Management. The research underscores the importance of how healthcare organisations allocate their resources, especially employees’ time, to ensure sufficient care standards and to uphold promises made to clients and families.

The study also engages with broader discourse on sustainability and organisational responsibility, specifically focusing on the social and humane aspects, which are central to the healthcare sector. The researchers warn that unfulfilled commitments in these areas can lead to accusations of "social washing." To avoid this, the study calls on healthcare organisations to resist overpromising and instead ensure employees are given adequate time and resources to enable, make, and keep promises around care.

By working together with managers and employees of an organisation in elderly care, the researchers identified central strategies to bring promises that center around sustainability and responsibility into practice:

“Employees need to understand the promises made by the organisation. This requires clarity around what the promises mean, time and resources to be able to fulfill the promises, and agency for employees to be meaningfully involved in promise management”, explains researcher Sonja Sarasvuo, whose work explores stakeholders' perceptions around organisational brands and promises.

Importantly, the study is among a few to center on employees’ voices in the context of healthcare brands, instead of focusing solely on patients’ or clients’ perspectives. The study highlights the importance of involving employees in promise management, and focuses on ways in which employees and managers co-create sustainable promises to bring them into action:

“There’s a need for space to collaboratively reflect on promises, for instance promises made in the organisation’s overarching strategy and value statements, and implicit promises made in daily care work. In our study, participants collaboratively conducted a resource inventory to have a clearer picture of what resources were available and were needed to bring care promises into action. Care workers also found it helpful to collaboratively create artifacts, such as symbolic objects, which served as reminders of the promises in day-to-day work”, says researcher Helena Liewendahl, whose work explores employee motivation to align with promises and who facilitated the organisation’s promise co-creation process as part of the action research.

For further information, please contact:
Dr. Helena Liewendahl, helena.liewendahl@hanken.fi, +358 40 5812 580
Dr. Sonja Sarasvuo, sonja.sarasvuo@hanken.fi +358 50 63 900