Steve Jobs once said, “It’s not the tools you have faith in – tools are just tools – they work, or they don’t work. It’s the people you have faith in or not.” North Carolina’s Capstone Health Alliance had this notion in mind when it developed ten points for establishing an office culture that encourages team work for improving the services they offer to clientele.

Kristin Scott, Director of Member Services & Corporate Culture at Capstone Health Alliance, recently sat down with HealthCare Business News to discuss the fundamentals for creating this type of office environment, and the advantages it offers to its employees, clientele, and as a whole, the business.

HCB News: The first thing that strikes me is that you have a role at Capstone that many companies do not have. Can you tell me a bit about your day-to-day obligations as director of member services and corporate culture, and also how your background prepared you for the position?

Kristin Scott: I have been blessed to have an eclectic background that could not have prepared me more thoroughly for this role. My undergraduate degree is in Sociology and I have a Master of Arts in Counselor Education. I put myself through graduate school working as a medical recruiter and have always had a strong interest in organizational development and solution focused therapy. Working as a Career Counselor at the University of Tennessee, practicing as a psychotherapist, and recruiting have all prepared me for this position.

My responsibilities here at Capstone are two-fold.

I work in the member services side, where my focus is to identify areas for continued improvement. Uncovering an opportunity for improvement is most often found through member surveys and one-on-one interviews. I may explore a new initiative that will bring value to our members or look at ways to enhance a current member service. A few years ago, we had members identify the need for more education around supply chain topics. So, Capstone created a member-led council to develop an education platform focused on priority learning objectives relevant to our members. Now in it’s second year, the Capstone Learning Academy provides access to educational topics through online learning modules, with a quiz to measure learning and certificate of completion to celebrate a participant’s commitment. This ultimately results in growth for our members individually as well as organizationally.

The other side of my job falls in the human resources, corporate culture space. Corporate culture is often described as an organization's goals, strategies, structure, and the way a workplace interacts with customers, coworkers, and the community. Capstone’s corporate culture has been named This is Us. It the “nature” of our organization and what we expect from one another as team members.

More Voices