Solving Digital Pain Points of Health System Staff:

Scattered information. Outdated technologies. Cumbersome workflows. Mount Sinai’s more than 48,000 employees share many of the same frustrations when it comes to workplace technology.

Recognizing this, the Digital Experience Team (part of Digital and Technology Partners or DTP)  partnered with the team overseeing Your Voice Counts, a sweeping annual survey that collected anonymous feedback from thousands of employees across the Health System. Their goal: understand the needs of employees and uncover their biggest digital challenges.

“Solving these challenges is about addressing something very important to our staff—Mount Sinai supporting them as they balance their work and personal lives by improving efficiency and providing information quicker. This makes work smoother for employees, and in turn, can prevent patients from experiencing delays,” explains Mariana Pugliese, MHA, Senior Manager for Your Voice Counts.

This cross-departmental collaboration drew upon different areas of expertise, and is a testament to the One Mount Sinai mission. It is an effort to think and act like one Health System to provide a better experience for Mount Sinai’s people and better care for patients, optimize operations, and share clinical innovations and research discoveries with the world.

The Digital Experience Team, including Eric Kim, Senior Director, Digital Experience; Arianna Goldman, Product Manager; Maria Bailon, MPH, PMP, Program Coordinator; and Robbie Freeman, DNP, RN, Vice President and Chief Digital Transformation Officer, provided user research, human-centered design, and technology innovation expertise. The Your Voice Counts team, including Ms. Pugliese, contributed deep knowledge of employee needs and data from the surveys conducted in April 2023 and September-October 2024.

“Feedback from thousands of employees is extremely valuable, and it is something Mariana’s team had already gathered,” Ms. Goldman says. “Our research team was able to take the anonymous feedback from the survey to inform interviews with 128 employees across roles and departments—physicians, nurses, security guards, food and nutrition staff, physician assistants, social workers, transporters, and biomedical technicians, among others—to better understand the common challenges they faced with workplace technology.” 

Instead of looking at individual technologies, the interviews focused on how employees use digital tools throughout their workday (not just those related to patient care): how they access information, use workplace applications, navigate policies, or request DTP support. Common challenges, or “pain points”, emerged, such as scattered information, outdated technologies, cumbersome workflows, and more.

In the next phase of the project, the team will prioritize what digital challenges to focus on first, and then take steps to address them. “The success of this collaborative effort reinforces a simple yet powerful principle: the best digital experiences begin by listening to the people who use them every day,” Ms. Goldman says.