What’s quality got to do with it?

At Big Health, quality is critical to our mission of helping millions back to good mental health.

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At Big Health, quality is critical to our mission of helping millions back to good mental health. Since our products are digital therapeutics – software designed to prevent, manage, or treat health conditions – there are regulatory bodies and auditors that monitor our business and development practices. It’s their job to ensure that we make effective, high-quality products that help patients and avoid inflicting harm.

As part of meeting regulatory requirements, we have something called a “quality policy.” These are common in the medical space; their purpose is to set the bar for the safety and effectiveness of a company’s products. It’s hard to think of something more important, and yet quality policies are typically dry and uninspiring – in fact, they’re often lifted verbatim from the regulatory language, as a way of checking a mandated box. Since we truly care about delivering quality in support of our users, we wanted to reinvent the quality policy, and create something that was adopted readily across the company, into the very fabric of our culture.

“Since we truly care about delivering quality in support of our users, we wanted to reinvent the quality policy, and create something that was adopted readily across the company, into the very fabric of our culture.”

This was no small task. But we’re not ones to shy away from a challenge. We believe tricky problems are best solved with applied creativity (we believe it so much that we wrote it right into one of our core values). In practice, that means we use our ingenuity when facing complex situations. For example, how to deliver expert sleep help based on cognitive behavioral techniques to tired, stressed-out people. We tapped into this same ingenuity when revising our quality policy.

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Finding the words

The first step in this process was rewriting the policy itself. After defining the requirements – for example, non-negotiable phrases such as “compliant and effective” – we began reviewing other ways in which Big Health had communicated serious things in creative ways.

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We chose to begin the new policy with language reflecting Big Health’s mission. Although nobody needs to recite the policy from memory, we still wanted people to be able to easily recall its spirit. Leaning on the mission that Big Health employees already know and love was a fast way to build that connection.

“Although nobody needs to recite the policy from memory, we still wanted people to be able to easily recall its spirit.”

In another effort to make the policy memorable, we gave the new policy bit of a brand: Quality People. It’s a fun double entendre, in that it’s both a badge of honor – you’re a person of quality – but it’s also a declaration that obsession with quality is built into our very identities.

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Turning a policy into a design

Next up was finding creative ways to embed the new policy into every team member’s daily routine. Since much of our team works from home, we created a set of stickers and certificates to help everyone keep quality top of mind. One of the stickers contains the actual policy, and is meant to go right on everyone’s laptop. This enables employees to proudly point it out and say “Here it is!” if they’re ever asked during an audit.

We also wanted to display the new policy proudly in the office. The easy solution would have been to toss the text onto a blue laminated poster for the kitchen. But that wouldn’t cut it: We wanted something with more impact and vibrancy to reflect our sense of pride in the products we make, and the quality they’re produced with.

We explored many options, like massive (yet impractical) murals, and ultimately landed on a Big Health version of a heraldic banner. It’s a bold piece that makes our policy feel official and revered. We worked with the team at Oxford Pennant to build a custom felt banner, complete with gold fringe, as a prominent display piece for the office.

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A new policy that fits Big Health’s mission

Although this project began with the goal of bringing Big Health’s values into a new quality policy, what resulted instead was a policy that almost acts like a brand new value. Requests for a new “Quality Person” emoji in Slack popped up, as well as one unnamed Big Healther declaring they would “schoolyard brawl to get my hands on one of those stickers.” While we can’t condone playground violence, the level of engagement with our quality policy is proof of something important: By blending our dedication to quality with our spirit of ingenuity, we can produce results that hit the mark in a way that’s true to who we are as a company.

If you’re a Quality Person too, come join us. We’re hiring.