Boots on the Ground: How One Marketing Team Has Been Coping with COVID

Pam Landis, vice president of digital engagement, Hackensack Meridian Health

COVID-19 has challenged the American health system. As the disease spread across the country infecting more than a million people, hospitals jumped into action to save lives and minimize the virus’ spread.

Part of that lifesaving care has been happening outside of the hospital grounds — it’s happening in the homes of the marketing and communication team members.

“At the beginning of March, plans for Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) employees to work from home were being put together,” says Pam Landis, vice president of digital engagement at Hackensack Meridian Health, a New Jersey-based 17-hospital system with more than 340 ambulatory clinics.

“We virtualized our call centers. For team members who did not have home equipment that could access our network infrastructure, we invested in thousands of Google Chromebooks to make sure people can do their work.”

In addition to creating information sites for the public and employees, Landis’ team also began using Microsoft Teams, a communication platform that has chat and video meeting functions, to keep in contact with colleagues.

“This has been a way for us to easily keep in touch with people who are now geographically dispersed. So teams throughout HMH are using Microsoft Teams to instant-message, send files, and meet,” she says. “Those three things — communicating to the public, communicating to team members, and communicating within teams — have been so important for us.”

Landis says that after putting up essential information about the virus and how it impacts hospital operations, her team shifted to focus on their digital campaign strategy.

Learn more: How COVID-19 Impacts Digital Marketing Operations at Hackensack Meridian Health

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