How internal communicators are getting their leaders on board with AI

In healthcare, adopting AI isn’t just a matter of making workflows more efficient. It’s also a matter of trust. At Baptist Health South Florida, that reality shaped how internal communicators approached artificial intelligence from the start, knowing that missteps could damage confidence with leaders and employees alike and prevent them from getting funding and formal approvals for the right AI tools.

At Ragan’s AI Horizons Conference, Christine de Valle, director of internal communications at Baptist Health South Florida, will share her insights on how communicators can earn the backing of their C-suites when adopting AI into their workflows.

“Very early in the AI craze, it became apparent that artificial intelligence was lending a lot of promise in the world of healthcare, medical diagnosis and our abilities to predict patterns,” de Valle said. “So we as an organization had to very quickly adapt, because it was going to make our work better in what we deliver in our mission of delivering healthcare to the community.”

She said that this sense of promise helped her get the AI conversation going with her leaders.

“This was about responding to something that was clearly going to change how healthcare works and how we deliver on our mission,” de Valle said.

Earning buy-in organically

De Valle told Ragan that her leaders began to see AI bubble up in conversations organically across Baptist Health South Florida. As teams began to experiment in different functions, de Valle realized she had multiple pathways to show leaders that automation could help staffers across the organization. This was key to earning buy-in to help get approvals and funding for expanded AI usage.

“It became very clear to leadership that the supply chain was using it for ordering and ensuring stock levels were correct, and HR was using it to vet candidates,” she said. “The C-suite was hearing it from many sides.”

For communicators, that meant that leaders were already starting to see the value of AI in action. The comms team just needed to reinforce the idea to ensure that her team was able to earn access to paid programs that helped with their specific comms workflows.

De Valle added that the comms team got familiar with AI to ensure they were fluent in the right platforms before making a case to leaders to give them the approvals to fund and put them to work. That early experimentation helped the team speak confidently about AI’s benefits and limitations when the health system’s leaders began asking questions.

“It started with encouragement of exploration on our own team,” she said. “Of course, exploration comes before you have the official tools to work with. Those of us who were early adopters were experimenting personally. We were learning what worked, what didn’t and then sharing those learnings with our peers and leaders.”

Establishing guardrails and proving AI’s value

Without the proper limits and protections in place, it’s tough to convince leaders that AI can be used both safely and effectively on the job. De Valle said that proactively addressing safety and usage concerns with leadership was a key part of securing trust from the C-suite — this was made easier by the creation of an AI council within the marketing and communications department that researched and experimented with tools and shared their findings upward, giving leaders insight into how tools could be used.

“(Executives) knew we were using it responsibly and with intention,” de Valle said. “Nothing goes out without human oversight — and that’s something executives really need to hear. This was never about replacing people, but about augmenting them.”

But anecdotes will only do so much to sway the C-suite — leaders want to see the numbers to prove it. Luckily, de Valle had that covered.

“We did a very early survey of our department to understand what the barriers were and how people felt about AI,” she said. “That gave us a benchmark. In about eight months, we saw a 10-times increase in AI adoption — people moved from lacking confidence to daily use and real integration into their workflows.”

The results gave leaders confidence that the team was ready for formal approval of AI tools. In addition, it helped show the C-suite that investment in licenses and training would be used responsibly.

Being able to point to specific functions that AI helps with on the job is a great way to show the top brass that automation has utility. De Valle said that Baptist Health South Florida’s employee newsletters include a patient praise section that used to be tedious, and AI has made it much more manageable.

“The process used to take hours every week — searching through reviews to find the right ones,” she said. “Now, using custom ChatGPT tools we built internally, we’ve knocked out several hours of work a week. Once leaders see that benefit, it expands their minds to what’s possible.”

Seeing examples like these helped build the necessary trust to give de Valle’s team the approvals and resources to formally and properly integrate AI into their workflows with paid tools.

She added that her comms team now uses AI for much more than just help with drafting, but also with analysis and generating insights. This helps internal communicators get a read on how leadership thinks and positions the team in a more strategic role as C-suite advisors. Still, she cautioned that capable comms pros still need to be at the helm.

“You can even use it to anticipate the kinds of questions your executives or board might ask about the data. But you still have to know what to ask — that’s why the human-centered approach is so important.”

To register for our AI Horizons Conference, click here.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.