As SAC Health grows, its People Success team is using Lattice to build the people systems needed for scale. After launching Lattice through a hands-on “Growth Lab,” they introduced 1:1s and Feedback, reached 70% participation in its Engagement Survey, and used employee input to reshape Performance Reviews into two-way “Performance Enhancement Conversations.” Now, with Lattice Grow and Lattice Goals & OKRs, they are creating a stronger foundation for employee voice, career development, and operational visibility across its fast-growing healthcare workforce.
Lattice is helping with documentation and telling a really good data story for where we need to expand and grow, and who needs more help and support.
At SAC Health, growth is rooted in service.
SAC Health’s story began with a simple act of community care.
Over 60 years ago, a small group of medical students at Loma Linda University began volunteering time outside of their residencies to provide free care in the San Bernardino, CA community. What started with three people serving patients in churches, cafeterias, basements, and other borrowed spaces gradually became something larger: a nonprofit healthcare organization built around access, compassion, and service. Today, SAC Health is the largest specialty-based and teaching Federally Qualified Health Center in the United States.
The majority of SAC Health’s employees are in clinical roles. Out of more than 900 employees, about 600 work as nurses, medical assistants, and other patient-facing positions.
“The emphasis is really on the patient, but we want to make this a great place to work as well,” Allen says.
And being a great place to work matters in healthcare, where retention is a constant concern because employees can often find high-paying opportunities with other nearby healthcare systems. SAC Health’s answer is to compete not only on the basics of employment, but on purpose, work environment, development, and connection.
As the U.S. winner of Lattice’s 2026 Talent Advancement Award, SAC Health provides a shining example of how to invest in meaningful career growth and long-term talent development to build the next generation of leaders.
Launching Lattice with a hands-on “Growth Lab”
To kick off the Lattice rollout, SAC Health’s People Success team created an in-person launch experience designed to build curiosity and comfort. There was even a DJ booth, prizes, and swag.
They called it the Growth Lab.
In a large banquet room at the top of SAC Health’s building, the team set up laptops and iPads at stations where employees could try 1:1s and Feedback and preview Performance Reviews. There were infographics explaining what effective 1:1s look like, one way everyone could learn SAC Health’s philosophy behind each practice. The launch was intentionally experiential, and the goal was to ensure adoption was grounded in meaning.
After the Growth Lab, they rolled out Lattice in stages. During the first week, employees received bite-sized training videos created by SAC Health’s Lattice trainer, Kevin, starting with basics like logging in and setting up profiles, then moving into actions like scheduling 1:1s.
The approach gave managers and employees small, clear next steps instead of asking them to absorb everything at once.
From employee feedback to forward-looking growth conversations
Once employees had begun using Lattice for 1:1s and Feedback, SAC Health launched Lattice Engagement, and their Engagement Survey reached 70% participation. The results revealed a clear opportunity: employees wanted their ideas and voices heard more.
The People Success team acted on that insight by connecting engagement action planning directly to performance conversations as part of a campaign called “Growing Forward.” The campaign reframed feedback and development in terms of the future.
At SAC Health, Performance Reviews are now called Performance Enhancement Conversations, or “PECs” (pronounced pecks), for short. The company wanted to move away from a top-down review of the past and move toward a two-way conversation about contribution, support, and growth.
“The conversation is very minimal about what you did the last six months. We celebrate that,” Allen says. “But it’s really looking forward to, alright, what are we going after in the next six months?”
The employee voice is now a formal part of that process. Through Self-evaluations, employees can tell their own story and identify how their manager can better support them.
“Before, it had just been the manager telling you how you did or what you were going to do,” Allen says. “Now it’s a two-way dialogue.”
The next step after SAC Health’s Performance Enhancement Conversations is growth planning. The sequence is intentional: after employees and managers discuss what lies ahead over the next six months, employees will be empowered to document their own growth plans based on what they want to accomplish. In Lattice Grow, Allen renamed Individual Development Plans to “Growth Plans” to better align with SAC Health’s language and culture by promoting a sense of empowerment.
“So many of these things, when it comes to development and your growth, are about empowerment,” Allen says. “You are enabled, and you have the tools now.”
Turning everyday conversations into a documented data story
For Allen, one of the biggest opportunities has been documentation, a way to make visible the conversations, accomplishments, and trends that can otherwise get lost in the pace of clinical work.
Allen gave the example of a leader who might see patient volume double while the team size stays the same. When those trends are captured in Lattice, HR and leadership can use those documented trends and conversations to better understand where teams may need additional support, staffing, or resources.
“Lattice is helping with documentation and telling a really good data story for where we need to expand and grow, and who needs more help and support,” Allen says. “But it’s also getting our team to actually have more meaningful dialogue with each other.”
When SAC Health needed a people platform that could support both the human side of work and the operational realities of a growing healthcare system, Lattice became that connective layer.
The same system that helps leaders document what is happening across the organization also helps employees and managers have better conversations about performance, growth, and support.
A stronger people foundation for SAC Health’s next stage
SAC Health’s journey is still unfolding, but the foundation is already clear.
The organization has introduced 1:1s and Feedback, launched an Engagement Survey with 70% participation among eligible employees, added Self-evaluations to elevate employee voice, reframed Performance Reviews as forward-looking Performance Enhancement Conversations, prepped growth plans, and is moving toward Goals & OKRs to connect teams to strategy.
For SAC Health, those programs all ladder up to the same goal: creating a workplace where employees can serve patients, grow their careers, and stay connected to the organization’s mission as the system expands.
All of that is important because SAC Health is growing quickly. Allen says the organization has eleven clinics and expects to add more in the coming months. As that growth continues, the People Success team is helping leaders build the habits, documentation, and shared language needed to scale without losing sight of the people doing the work.
And for an organization built on compassionate care, that is the point: supporting the people who support the community.
Key Takeaways
- A mission-driven healthcare organization needs people programs that scale. As SAC Health grows across clinics and teams, Lattice is helping the People Success team build repeatable practices for feedback, performance, development, and alignment.
- Employee voice became a catalyst for change. After reaching 70% participation in its Engagement Survey, SAC Health used employee feedback to make performance conversations more two-way, adding Self-evaluations and creating more space for employees to share what they need.
- Performance Reviews became forward-looking growth conversations. By reframing reviews as Performance Enhancement Conversations, SAC Health shifted the focus from evaluating the past to discussing contribution, support, goals, and what comes next.
- Growth planning is being built around empowerment. SAC Health renamed Individual Development Plans to Growth Plans in Lattice, reinforcing the idea that employees should own documenting and pursuing their own development.
- Lattice helps turn everyday conversations into a clearer data story. By capturing 1:1s, feedback, updates, performance conversations, and growth plans in one place, SAC Health can better understand where teams need more support as the organization expands.
