Josh Lahav, vice president of cancer center operations at Philadelphia-based Fox Chase Cancer Center, believes culture isn’t a background consideration — it’s a frontline operational strategy. In the wake of COVID-19, Mr. Lahav recognized that while much of the industry’s attention turned to staffing shortages and burnout, an equally pressing challenge was quietly taking shape: How do you rebuild a cohesive, high-performing culture after one of the most disruptive periods in healthcare history?
At Fox Chase, the answer came in the form of CHEER — cultivating high employee engagement and retention — a committee with broad organizational representation and executive backing, focused on engagement, recognition and, yes, having fun at work. The results speak for themselves: impressively low turnover, strong engagement scores, and a leader who left Fox Chase, spent five years elsewhere and came back — something he says he’s never done for any other employer.
Years removed from the height of the pandemic, Mr. Lahav believes many healthcare organizations are still operating with what he calls “cultural residue” — fragmented teams, normalized stress responses, and habits that formed under extraordinary pressure but never quite went away.
“The pandemic created this intense sense of mission and team alignment,” Mr. Lahav said. “There was clarity of purpose in the face of uncertainty. But when that acute period passed, a lot of organizations didn’t intentionally address what was left behind.”
While workforce burnout and staffing shortages continue to dominate the industry conversation, Mr. Lahav maintains that the harder, quieter work of cultural rebuilding has gone underappreciated. And he’s direct about what it takes: presence, transparency, consistent communication and an unwavering focus on the why behind the work.
“You have to commit the time to it,” he said. “Saying it is one thing. Doing it with intention is another.”
At Fox Chase, that intention has a formal structure. CHEER operates with wide organizational representation and direct executive support, and it focuses on three distinct pillars: employee engagement, employee recognition and workplace events.
The engagement arm has developed best practices and playbooks, and works directly with new managers to set them up for success in driving team engagement from day one. The recognition committee has built systems that empower staff at every level — from on-the-spot acknowledgment to nominations for internal and external awards. And the events group has made it a standard to host one all-staff event per month, ranging from chili cook-offs and Halloween costume contests to Super Bowl parties and a Family Feud competition that Mr. Lahav describes as the crown jewel of the Fox Chase social calendar.
“We like to say fun is an F-word we want to incorporate into our lexicon of work,” Mr. Lahav said. “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
The flagship annual event goes well beyond casual celebrations — Mr. Lahav describes thousands of dollars in prizes, games, competitions and an atmosphere where every employee leaves with something in hand, whether that’s a bicycle, a television, or a bag of groceries.
The operational payoff is tangible. Fox Chase maintains what Mr. Lahav describes as an impressively low turnover rate and does not face the significant vacancy challenges that burden many peer institutions — a meaningful distinction in a labor market that continues to strain health systems nationwide.
“We’re still recruiting radiologists like everyone else,” Mr. Lahav acknowledged. “But our operational excellence is dependent on our culture. We’re pretty committed to that.”
His own career trajectory underscores the point. Mr. Lahav sees his personal experience of returning to Fox Chase after working elsewhere for five years as a reflection of something real and durable about the organization’s identity.
And while strong engagement scores offer one measure of success, Mr. Lahav is quick to point to the less quantifiable proof: people who stay, people who return, and teams that show up with a shared sense of purpose.
For him, rebuilding culture in the post-pandemic era isn’t optional — it’s a leadership imperative that the industry has been slow to fully embrace.
“We as leaders have the opportunity and responsibility to rebuild these high-performing cultures,” he said. “Emphasize clarity of purpose. Emphasize accountability. And do it with a large dose of trust.”
He also draws a direct line between cultural investment and strategic execution, invoking a well-worn but still resonant management principle: culture eats strategy. In his view, the organizations that treat engagement, recognition and belonging as upstream investments — rather than afterthoughts — will be the ones best positioned to perform over the long term.
“The proof is in the pudding for us,” he said. “We have fun, and we make sure people feel the love.”
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