Case study: Focusing on employee safety to build trust and drive engagement at Cooper University Health Care

Cooper University Health Care 

Cooper University Health Care, the leading academic health system in South New Jersey, provides access to primary, specialty, tertiary, and urgent care. It employs nearly 14,000 team members, including 1,600 nurses, over 1,000 physicians, and 600 advanced practice providers. 

Challenge

In 2024, two key drivers of engagement centered around perceptions of safety: whether the organization cares about team member safety, and whether team members and management work together to maintain safe conditions.  These items also showed opportunity for improvement, resulting in focused improvement efforts in these areas. During senior leader rounding, topics of employee safety were also consistently brought up. 

Strategy

1. Renewed commitment to High Reliability Organization (HRO) principles

• Conducted a leadership summit with a focus on recommitting to HRO principles and becoming a highly reliable organization. 

• Trained and standardized important HRO elements 

• Starting each meeting with a safety moment  

• Creating psychological safety within and across teams 

• Emphasizing the importance of feedback 

2. Hospital assault response prevention training 

• Training deployed for front-line response to deescalate violent patient interactions and high-risk situations. 

3. Therapeutic violence mitigation 

• For patients at higher risk of agitation or violence, a proactive clinical approach that focuses on prevention measures and a compassionate approach. 

• Behavioral care plans and patient agreements put in place for those at higher risk of agitation or violence. 

4. Personal alert buttons and increased security measures

• All staff members have personal alert buttons they can press when experiencing a threatening/dangerous situation. Security and anyone near are alerted to respond to and be aware of the situation. 

• A weapon detection system was added to Cooper Campus. 

5. Hardwired leader rounding on team members

• Leaders have clear rounding expectations that are tracked and included in their performance evaluations. 

• Rounding includes specific safety-related items.  

The results 

• +0.14 improvement between 2023 and 2025 on perceptions of team members and management working together to ensure safe working conditions. 

• +0.08 improvement within one year on perceptions of the organization caring about team member safety. 

• An overall increase in care plans and patient agreements, coupled with a decrease in violent events reported.