The Heart of Leadership — How Putting Teammates First Uplifts Everyone

In this episode of Home is Where the Health is, Chief People Officer Priscila Mattingly shares her journey to Compassus, insights on building a supportive culture and how teammate-focused initiatives are driving engagement and recognition as one of Newsweek’s Greatest Workplaces for 2025.

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:02):
Ashton, Hi everyone.
I'm Ashton Jones, and this ishome. Is where the health is.
This podcast brings you thelatest news on progress and
innovation in the home basedhealthcare space, in association
with compasses. At the end ofthe day, every person deserves
to be cared for with compassion,whether they're dealing with a
serious illness, recovering froman injury, or nearing the end of

(00:24):
life, and in the place they callhome, no less. That's why this
podcast features differentsubject matter experts as we
dive deep into how their work isimproving home based healthcare
for patients. In today'sepisode, we're catching up with
Priscilla Mattingly, ChiefPeople Officer at compasses.
We'll discuss what it means tosupport and uplift your

(00:46):
teammates and how to integratecultures across partnerships.
We'll hear about Priscilla'sjourney to becoming Chief People
Officer and what her motivationwas for joining compasses.
There's all that and more comingup on Home is where the health
is.

(01:07):
Hi everyone, welcome back toHome is where the health is.
Thank you to everyone who'stuned in to our second season as
we explore new topics,partnerships, products and more.
Today, it's my pleasure tointroduce our guest, Priscilla
Mattingly, Chief People Officerat compasses. Priscilla, thank
you so much for being here. Oh,thank you for having me. And

(01:29):
Hello, beautiful people. Alwayslove that. That's my favorite.
Well, before we get into ourtopics, we want to start by
sharing a little bit more aboutyou our guest. So who are you,
professionally and personally?
Tell us, what should theaudience know about you?
Well, the first thing that Iusually say about myself is the

(01:51):
funny accents from Brazil,because I've heard all sorts of
different things, and people askme if I'm from Boston, Russia
and anywhere else in between. Iimmigrated to the US 21 years
ago, and when I did, I came tothe United States to learn
English. And so I startedlooking for alternatives for my
career, and sort of stumble uponHr through what I call the back

(02:15):
door of HR, which is training. Istarted doing training early in
my career in the food serviceindustry, and that's how my love
for HR started, and that's how Istarted my career. Wow, that's
awesome. Well, that kind ofintersected into my next
question, which was about yourprofessional journey, but I
guess I'll ask, how did you endup at compasses? I started in

(02:35):
the food industry. I actuallyworked for Pizza Hut, and then
after that, I went to other foodindustry places. And then in
2020 I got a call to go lead aHR team in a healthcare
organization, and it wasactually in skilled nursing
facilities, and it was a greatopportunity, but it was also in

(02:57):
the middle of covid So I was ina new industry, in a new city. I
had to move to a different cityat that time in the middle of
covid, which was absolutelyunprecedented. And so we had to
create all sorts of new things,as we all know, from the HR
perspective as well from theclinical perspective. And so to
be a part of a team that'sreally trying to make a
difference in the communitieswhere we operate, it's amazing

(03:20):
to me. And so that's why Ijoined. I thought it was really
interesting how you were talkingabout how you didn't come from
healthcare, but you were alwayskind of drawn to the space. So
what was it about healthcarethat was enticing to you,
especially if you hadn't workedin healthcare yet, from a people
perspective, which, by the way,people is how we call all things
HR at campus, I always believethat if you are working in an

(03:45):
organization where the missionand purpose, it's really
connected to the core of beinghuman,
it is a lot easier to have aworkforce that is engaged and
connected to that. In HR, wetalk a lot about connecting
people to the mission andpurpose. I always wanted to try

(04:08):
that value proposition ofengagement and connection to
mission, vision and purpose inan industry that had a higher
calling, and I was never goingto be a doctor myself, so I
thought getting to healthcarewould be an interesting way to
make that connection in the HRarea. I want to go back to
something you just mentioned,which was the HR versus people.

(04:31):
So I do remember a few yearsback when you started, and we
used to call it human resources,and then we made the switch to
the people department, and thatwas an initiative that you
really drove. So what was themotivation behind that decision?
The first thing is, when you saypeople instead of HR, you cause
the workforce to really thinkabout what we do in a more human

(04:54):
way when we really have theopportunity to implement the
right to.
Some of the right processes, theright practices, to have an HR
organization that isreally focused in the culture of
the workforce and in making surethat we have the right
environment so people canflourish in their careers, then
it's much more than what peopleusually think about HR. And so I

(05:16):
really want to help ourcaregivers, our team members
everywhere, to understand thatwe are here to take care of them
the same way that they care forour patients. And so it was a
lot easier to make thatconnection by being the people
team or the people department orthe people people, as sometimes

(05:37):
we say, than by being the HR. Sohow would you describe your
people, team and your team'smission here at compasses? So
our mission is to reproduce toour team members and caregivers
what they do to their patientsand their families and so if you

(05:57):
think about just about everysingle thing we have in place to
describe our relationship andthe service we provide to
patients and their families andto partners. For that matter,
it is also applicable to ourrelationship with our team
members. You know, think aboutour care delivery model, and we

(06:20):
talk about right mad, righttime. Well for us in the people
team, the version of that isright training, right time,
right we are trying to createthe same level of culture and
relationship and service that weare asking our team members to
do out there, because if theycan experience that for
themselves in their careers,then they can reproduce that

(06:42):
same feeling and that same levelof service to their patients and
their families. So that's reallyour mission is to be the
internal driver of that sameculture that we are asking our
team members to represent outthere.
You really can think of our teamas a six pillar sort of a team.
We do everything from therecruitment process to training

(07:06):
onboarding, and we have a lot ofinitiatives that are around
retention of the workforce andlistening strategies,
understanding what the workforceneeds and wants, all the way to
benefits and compensation, sortof the back of the house. And
then we also have a Systemsteam. So our function is really
divided into six pillars thatreally help the full life cycle

(07:29):
of the team member, from thethings that they see, like
recruitment and training to lotsof things that they don't see
that are happening behind thescenes, like selecting and
designing their benefits everyyear.
So next, I want to shift ourconversation to our second
topic, which is around pulsesurveys and employee engagement.
So as a company, compasses justwrapped up the annual your voice

(07:53):
survey, and I thought you couldwalk us through what that survey
is and the intent of it. So thisis a super exciting time of the
year for us at compasses, wehave a robust listening strategy
with lots of different surveysand focus groups, and there are
lots of different pointsthroughout the year and the
employment time of our teammembers, where we are asking

(08:14):
very specific questions in orderto improve their experience as a
team member. But this is the onetime a year where we survey just
about everyone. If you have beenhere for more than 90 days, you
get the survey, and it's acomprehensive survey, and it
really creates our map for thefollowing year. It is with the
results of this survey that wedo all of our planning for

(08:35):
benefits, for compensation, fornew programs, and so the
feedback that we received fromour team members is super
important in creating that map.
Sometimes people think, well,one more survey, but really, if
you think about that surveybeing the starter of the
blueprint for what we'll do inthe following year, that
couldn't be more important towhat we do.

(08:57):
So I actually have a sneak peekof some of the your voice survey
results, and I wanted to bring afew of these up, the first one
being overall engagement, whichis in the mid 80s. So that's
awesome. 86.1%we also have intent to stay at
least one year at the company,climbing to 83.7%

(09:18):
that's also amazing. And thenpersonal accomplishment has been
improving as well. So those arethree areas that I think are
really key. But what stands outto you the most? Yeah, this is
super exciting. Those resultsare really impressive, and they
reflect the hard work we havebeen doing over the last 18
months. What I am really excitedis the fact that for the last

(09:40):
few years, really, since covid,our team members have been
talking about work life balanceas a point of dissatisfaction,
and I think that that has beenthe post pandemic epidemic in
the healthcare workforce, right,not feeling like they can
achieve some level of work lifebalance. Well, this year, for
the first.
First time our work life balancescores have improved, and so we

(10:04):
did a lot of work over the last18 months on evaluating the
different jobs and what they aredoing and how they doing, using
technology to make the jobs ofour team members easier and to
get them to do really what putsthem at the top of their license
right, which is spend more timewith patients and their families
and less time doingadministrative, burdensome

(10:25):
tasks, and so that we are justin the beginning of that
journey, but you can see how thevery early stages of using
technology to make our jobseasier has really helped, and so
it's a great early indicationthat we are on the right path.
I'm glad that you brought up thework life balance, because I did
have that on my list as one ofthe key points to go over. But

(10:49):
then in tandem, also wanted totalk about benefit satisfaction,
which jumped 4.7 points. So thatis very significant. Can you
talk about some of theinvestments that we made, like
you said, in benefits,flexibility, well being that are
really driving thoseimprovements. It's been a great
journey. Last year we saw amassive improvement of over 10

(11:13):
points. So you can see that weare really on the upswing here
with our benefits and whatreally made a difference? If
there's one thing I can sayabout how our people team has
developed and put things intoaction over the last two years,
is about being very targeted,about our approach. We did a lot
of analysis on Who are weserving, what is important for

(11:36):
the population we are serving.
People need different things,right? So if you are just a
single person, you needsomething that's different than
a single mom with three kids,and you may need something
different than a family of seventhat they're two working parents
and they both have insurance,and you get to choose which one
your kids are going to go in. Sothere's a lot of different
needs, and we had the ability tolook at our data and figure out

(11:57):
how we could create plans thatreally help that and so we are
really trying to create valuefor each one of our team
members.
We're going to take a quickbreak from our main discussion
to share a story with you. Andthe reason we want to spend time
on a single story is becausewhen you're looking at the big

(12:17):
picture, you can forget aboutall the people who are impacted
by this work, and at the end ofthe day, it's all about touching
lives. So I asked Priscilla tocome prepared with a story to
share with all of you, somethingthat's impacted her, both
professionally and personally.
And so Priscilla, as Iunderstand, your story is really
about leadership and howeverybody needs that one person
who's going to believe in themand their potential before even

(12:40):
they do. So can you tell us alittle bit more about this story
and your experience? Yeah, sure.
Happy to you know that story wetalked a little bit earlier
about my background and how Icame to the US, and I was an
immigrant, I didn't speakEnglish, and was very much
stripped off my professionalidentity, because I wasn't good

(13:02):
at the main thing that was myprofession in Brazil, and so I
did a lot of odd jobs in thebeginning of my career here, and
it was really because of oneperson, a great leader, but also
a great mentor who saw somepotential in me and took me
under his wings to learn moreabout the business while I was

(13:24):
still learning English. So, youknow, someone who was willing to
work with someone that needed adictionary for most of the
conversations, and really taughtme the business I was back then
in the food business, andbelieved that I could be a great
trainer, and then after that, agreat manager of multi million
dollar businesses that I neverthought I would do in my 20s,

(13:45):
and then that was what gave memy path into HR. So as we talk
about our leadership programsand our mentorship programs and
preceptors, they are soimportant to someone's career,
way beyond our years together inany one particular employment.
To this day, I think about howthat leader changed the

(14:09):
trajectory of my career andreally put me in a path that
changed my life. And so I knowthat as a business, we are
taking care of people incritical times of their lives,
and that is so meaningful, andwe talk about those stories
often, well, behind the scenes,the leaders of our organization

(14:29):
are also impacting people'slives, but our team members,
right? They have the ability toreally help their team members
grow over time and have amazingcareers if they dedicate the
time to it. You know, leadershipis about dedicating the right
amount of time to lead yourpeople where you need to go,
where they want to go, wherethey have the ability to go. And

(14:51):
so I think about that often. Ithink about that when we are
developing leadership programs,and I think about the humongous
responsibility of leaders.
To help their people throughtheir career path. So this
mentor that you're talking aboutwho really believed in you and
changed the trajectory of yourcareer, did you ever get the
opportunity to go back and talkto them about that experience

(15:13):
and how impactful they were foryou? Yes, I did at some point
almost 10 years later from whenthat mentor really helped me,
someone told me that person washaving a real hard time
personally, and I thought thiswould be a great time for him to
know what a difference he madein my life. And so, yeah, I

(15:34):
wrote him a very long lettertalking about what a difference
and what an impact he had madein my life 10 years later. And I
think that that's important. Ithink that too many times life
goes on and we fail to reflectand thank the people who have
helped us, and even sometimescorrect some of the records
right. Because during the path,you're going to make some

(15:54):
mistakes too. And so I thinkgoing back and having that
opportunity to thank people andto set some records straight,
it's a great opportunity.
So I want to return to our maindiscussion and talk more about
employee investment, becausethere's so much growth happening
at compasses right now, and theorganization was actually

(16:15):
recognized recently as one ofNewsweek's greatest workplaces
for 2025 really exciting news.
This was based on some differentcompany reviews, employee
interviews, publicly accessibledata, and an analysis of over
120key performance indicators. So
what are some of the factorsthat you believe led to us
getting that recognition?

(16:37):
Everything leads back to ourlistening strategies, right? Our
ability toask the workforce, in a very
genuine way, how do you feelabout working here? What can be
better and what's working too?
That is one question thatoftentimes companies and team
members forget to talk aboutenough, because if we don't know

(16:58):
what's working, we won'tcontinue investing in those
things, and so having theability to have so many of our
team members participating inour surveys, giving us genuine
feedback, and not just surveys.
Look this year, even our CEOstarted a forum, meeting with
leaders from every single one ofour programs and asking, then,
what can we do to make yourlives easier. What is working?

(17:20):
What's not working? So manyactions came out of that, but it
also opened a big avenue forcommunication that we didn't
have before, so knowing exactlywhere the pain points were,
hearing from our team membersdirectly via compass
conversations, how we calledthat forum with leaders, or our
surveys or our town halls, andthen taking action on those

(17:45):
things, having action plans thatwe are holding ourselves
accountable to, has really madea difference in employee
satisfaction, in our retentionand just how engaged our team
members are, because there is anew level of trust that if I
give feedback on something,either things will change, or if

(18:05):
they won't change, at least I'llhave an answer. We also created
an advisory board this year withmembers of our front lines, and
they are having conversationswith our coos
and also giving direct feedback.
So there's many ways in which weare listening to our team
members and taking action onthose things and things that
that has contributedtremendously for our success

(18:27):
last year.
I think there's also this otherarea that we can talk about as
well, which is professionaldevelopment and some of the
pathways that you've beenworking on. I know we have
career ladders that are bigdrivers of retention, and also
these new leadership trainingsfor some of the field leaders

(18:47):
out there. So is there anythingthat you can tell us about those
programs and how successfulthey've been? Yeah, so it's no
secret that everyone wants towork at a place where they have
a great leader, great teammembers that they connect with
the mission, vision and valueand that they are receiving
development. I'll start with thecareer ladder. It is an amazing

(19:10):
program, and kudos to ourclinical excellence team, who
really conceived this program,thought about every single
detail and created a programthat our team members are so
happy with. They haveactivities, they can do
projects, they can sign up forexternal education that they
could take in order to continuegrowing in their career. And as

(19:31):
they achieve those things, theyaccumulate points, and they move
from level one to two to threeand four according to how many
points they accumulate, and thatalso translates in some
difference in pay. It has reallybeen a great point of
satisfaction to our workforce.
And so we knew that we needed torevamp our leadership program,

(19:52):
and so we now have a newleadership program that's called
leading with heart and.
That leadership program hasdifferent levels. So the first
level of that leadership programis called guiding with heart,
and it's a 12 module programthat happens over the course of
a year. So every month, we havea new class, and people can join
at any point. So we have nothingkeeping people from being a part

(20:16):
of the leadership program. Butthe real secret of that program,
and why it's being so wellreceived is that, yes, we are
talking about big leadershipconcepts like understanding your
team, understanding yourself,building trust, but we are
making that very applicable toour business, because what we
heard before, and then we goagainst that, you know,

(20:37):
listening strategy thing. Sowhat we heard from listening our
team members from previousleadership programs is that they
love the experience of being inthat two or three day class, but
they went back home and theyreally didn't know how to apply
that. And so I truly believethat leadership development
happens over time. And so that'sanother reason, too, why we have

(21:00):
this being a 12 month programwith one module a month, so
people have the opportunity tolearn something go back, apply,
come back, have discussionsabout it, learn something else,
apply again. You know thisnotion that you can learn
leadership in two days and goback and be like a better leader
for it? It's just very difficultto achieve, so we are working

(21:21):
really hard on that leadershipprogram. There's a lot more to
come. I think it's also reallyimportant that we bring up all
of these new cultures andteammates that we're
integrating. So compasses hasall these joint venture
partnerships going on right now.
We just welcome some newteammates from Providence, and
you have different people,different thoughts, ideas,

(21:43):
cultures. How do you go aboutblending those cultures and
their values and work styleswhile making sure that we keep
the compass culture strong andinclusive?
Well, I mean, think about it.
When I started in 2023 we were alittle under 5000 team members,
and today, here we are past halfpoint of 2025, and we have more

(22:05):
than double our team membercount. That's been an
interesting experience. Yeah,for sure, most of the growth
through partnerships. And so wehad large groups of team members
joining us, and they had withthem this other identity, right?
They came from a hospital systemwith their own set of mission,
vision, values and ways tooperate. And so, yeah, it's been

(22:29):
tricky, but the way we haveencountered some success. What
we found through doing thisprocess a few times is that one
the more you communicate earlyin the process, the easier it
gets. People want to feel,especially when they are going
through change, they want tofeel like they are in the know.

(22:50):
And having that total loss ofcontrol to what is happening in
your life by your employment.
Changing from one employer toanother can be a very scary
place, and so it's reallyimportant to communicate often
and early. And we learn thatvery early in our joint venture

(23:10):
process. We also learn thathaving a strategy that's more
about CO creating what is theculture of the future works much
better than just trying to teacheverybody that can pass this
way. When you put together twobig groups of people, the result
will never be just one cultureor the other. And so it's

(23:32):
important to understand andaccept that the new culture will
be a co creation process. Theyhave so much to contribute to
what we do and how we do butalso creates more points of
connection for us. And so thathas been really important in
that process of creating a newculture through the process of
joint venture and growing somuch so fast. It's been an

(23:55):
interesting process, and we'rejust at the beginning, but we
are by no means perfect at it,but there's a lot of work ahead.
What do you think makescompasses a really uniquely
rewarding place to work comparedto other organizations, maybe in
healthcare or maybe specificallyin the home based care space?
Well, I think it starts with ourname. We you know, compassion is

(24:16):
at the core of what we do andhow we do and I think about
compassion, being not justfeeling for others, but feeling
for others with the desire totake action. So I think our team
members really feel a calling todo just that, to go into action

(24:37):
when people are in some of thehardest times of their lives and
they really just don't know whatto expect or what you do, and
having this clarity to be thatperson in such a difficult
moment of people's lives, Ithink, gives purpose to so many
of us, even if you were notdirectly taking care of a

(24:58):
patient. He.
Are the home office. We know weare here to support people who
are doing this work every day,and that really gives a ton of
meaning to how we do and what wedo. And I think that that does
make us a different employerthan not only companies outside
of healthcare, but alsocompanies in healthcare, because

(25:20):
we never lose sight of howimportant that is. You know, the
fact that we have our carestories that we talk about in
almost every single one of ourcalls, right? We started calls
with a moment of reflection, andoftentimes a moment of
reflection also brings back whatwe do and how we do and so
keeping that ahead of us and topof mind, has been a big

(25:43):
differentiator to how we goabout doing what we do.
Yeah? And as someone behind thescenes, I definitely see that
working on those care storiesand getting to see the amazing
work that other people do, youfeel very grateful to be a part
of that. Yeah, and it's a musthave to work here waterproof
mascara.

(26:06):
So if you could leave ouraudience with one major takeaway
from today's conversation, whatwould it be? Well, that's a good
one. I would say that one majortakeaway is what has guided me
and my career, that when you aredoing something that you really
love and you are truly connectedwith, life is much better. Yeah,

(26:32):
it's not perfect. It's neverperfect. But I see being in HR
or in the people team a lot oftimes, people spend way too many
years of their careers doingthings that they are not
passionate about, and life is somuch harder when that's the path
we take. We spend a lot of timeat work. We dedicate the vast
majority of our waking hours tothis thing that we call work.

(26:55):
And so it better be somethingthat truly brings you
satisfaction. And so I wouldencourage everyone to often do a
little gut check. Am I doingsomething that I'm passionate
enough about? And yes, we allhave things that we're going to
do that we don't love that much,but the more you can infuse of
what you love and what you do,the better your life will be,

(27:18):
and it will make the lives ofyour team members much better
too, because you're a muchbetter team member by being a
happier one. So that's my bigtakeaway for my entire career.
Well, that brings us to the endof this episode of Home is where
the health is. Priscilla, thankyou again for joining us and for
sharing your insights and yourheart with our listeners, to

(27:42):
everyone tuning in, we hope thisepisode gave you a closer look
at the kind of CompassionateLeadership and people focused
work that define compasses. Ifyou liked today's episode and
you're listening on a streamingservice, go ahead and give us a
like and a follow, and be sureto tune in next time for another
in depth discussion on progressand innovation in the home based

(28:02):
healthcare space with one of ourexperts. Until then. This is
Ashton Jones with Home is wherethe health is. Thanks for
listening. Ashton.