Training Top 125 Best Practice: Optum’s White Glove Compassion Program

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The 16-week holistic skill development program was designed, in part, to differentiate Optum in the marketplace for consistently providing both clinical and service excellence.
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Edited by Lorri Freifeld

Health/medical services company Optum initially developed its White Glove Compassion Program—a 16-week holistic skill development program—for several primary business units within Population Health Solutions (PHS): Commercial Inbound, Commercial Outbound, Medicare, Medicaid, External, and Women’s Health (approximately 6,000 staff and leaders). Since the first two PHS deployment waves, other interested business units include Behavioral Health and OptumServe.

The White Glove Compassion Program was designed to close the discrepancy between how Optum is seen externally and how the organization views its performance internally, as well as to differentiate it in the marketplace for consistently providing both clinical and service excellence.

Program Details

The White Glove Compassion Program includes two complementary components:

1. Training

  • Features six foundational microlearning courses to introduce and reinforce Optum’s HEART culture of service principles.
  • Includes one White Glove Service Workshop that enables broader visibility to program-level data (e.g., Consumer Net Promoter Scores, Strategic Drivers, Verbatims, Pain Points, Focused Optimization Path Drivers, Recommendations) and empowers front-line staff to take appropriate continuous improvement actions at the individual and team levels.

2. Call Listening/Coaching Sessions

  • Includes two manager-led call listening/coaching sessions using the HEART Coaching Form and best practices.
  • Concludes with White Glove credentialing based on three call listening/coaching opportunities using the program’s standard Call Quality Audit.

Celebratory recognition, short learning-based boosters, and communications follow credentialing as the short-term reinforcement strategy. Longer-term, individuals must be re-credentialed annually or earlier should they have quality audit scores that flag out of threshold for two consecutive months.

Results

Approximately 1,700 individuals have completed the White Glove Compassion Program. Those from the Healthcare Advisor team who were involved in the HEART training pilot are demonstrating quality audit scores of 90 percent. In comparison, staff who are not yet trained are achieving a 72 percent audit score rating.

As it relates to Net Promoter Scores, HEART trained staff are scoring 10 points higher than non-trained staff.