How Centra Health connects teams across hospitals, clinics, and communities with Workshop

Supporting clinicians and staff with consistent, reliable internal communication at scale.

Centra Health’s purpose is simple and powerful: Improve the health and quality of life of the communities they serve.

That promise shows up every day for patients, caregivers, and the communities they serve across central and southern Virginia.

With four hospitals, urgent care centers, primary care offices, and specialty clinics spread across a large region, Centra’s teams work in very different environments. Some are bedside, some are behind the scenes and some are in clinics miles apart.

What connects them is shared purpose and the need for communication that’s clear, consistent, and reliable.

For Centra’s communications team, internal messaging isn’t an afterthought, it’s part of how the organization supports its people, and in turn, the communities that rely on them. When information flows clearly, teams can focus on what matters most: patient care.

That belief is what led Centra to take a closer look at how internal communication was working and how it could work better.

The challenge: important messages lacked insight

Centra supports nearly 8,000 employees and providers across highly distributed, frontline-heavy locations. As the sole healthcare system in much of its service area, internal communication is about more than sharing updates, it’s about alignment, trust, and making sure critical information reaches the right people at the right time.

Before Workshop, much of that communication relied on Outlook. Important updates were sent alongside shift swaps, patient alerts, and everyday inbox noise. For frontline teams moving quickly between patients and locations, even high-priority messages could easily be missed.

Once a message was sent, visibility stopped there. The communications team couldn’t see who had opened it, which messages were resonating, or where information went once it was buried in inboxes. Important updates existed, but not always when or where people needed them.

“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” said Lauren Byrum, Communications and Public Relations Specialist at Centra. “We just didn’t have a way to understand what was actually happening once messages went out.”

For a healthcare system this large and complex, that lack of insight made it hard to communicate with confidence.

From curiosity to a clear business case

“We were sending emails, but we didn’t know what was working.”

Lauren noticed the gap early in her career.

“I remember asking about open rates in my first couple of weeks,” she said. “No one had that information.”

As she took on responsibility for day-to-day internal communications, that question kept resurfacing. Messages were going out consistently, but there was little visibility into how they landed — or whether they were reaching the right people.

When it came time to make the case for change, Lauren reframed the conversation.

“We were investing in external channels like social media, but we weren’t investing in internal communications,” she explained. “We have more employees than followers on Instagram. If we want brand advocates, it starts internally.”

That shift helped leadership see internal communications not just as an operational task, but as a strategic channel worth investing in.

With alignment in place, Lauren clarified what the team actually needed: not just a way to send messages, but a way to understand what was working, support manager-led communication, and bring consistency to internal updates without adding complexity. And just as importantly, the solution had to meet IT and security requirements at healthcare scale.

A platform built for internal communications

After evaluating several options and navigating IT and security approvals, Centra made the switch to Workshop.

The decision wasn’t simply about finding a tool, it was about giving internal communications the same level of intention, structure, and visibility as other critical channels across the organization.

With Workshop, Centra centralized internal email communications into a platform designed specifically for employees — helping teams connect, leaders lead, and frontline staff get the information they need to do their jobs.

For Lauren, the shift became real the very first time she sent an internal email from Workshop. (peep her post first send photo!)

“It sounds small, but it was a big moment,” she said. “For the first time, I could actually see what happened after I hit send.”

Instead of wondering whether a message landed or disappeared into inbox noise, Lauren could see opens, clicks, and early engagement within hours. That visibility turned internal communication from a one-way broadcast into a feedback loop.

“It changed how I thought about the work right away,” Lauren explained. “I wasn’t just sending information anymore. I was learning from it.”

Streamlining daily work while raising the bar

Workshop quickly became part of Lauren’s daily workflow. Whether she’s managing recurring updates, ghostwriting for leaders, or supporting major initiatives, the platform is used every day.

More importantly, it changed how the work feels.

With Workshop, the team was able to:

• Create clean, consistent emails that are easy to recognize and read
• Reuse and adapt past messages to move faster without starting from scratch
• Share information more clearly with video embeds and linked resources, instead of bulky attachments
• Keep a searchable record of internal communications, so nothing gets lost
• Reach providers and partners using personal or external email addresses when needed
  

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t open Workshop at least once,” Lauren said.

What once felt manual and repetitive now feels more efficient and intentional. The team spends less time wrestling with logistics and more time focusing on the message, the audience, and the impact.

Data that builds confidence with leadership

As internal communications became more consistent and easier to manage, the team gained something they hadn’t had before: clear insight into how messages were actually landing.

Workshop’s engagement analytics show what’s being opened, what’s getting clicks, and how messages perform across teams and locations. Those insights can be shared with senior leaders when needed, including the VP and CEO workgroup.

That visibility reinforced internal communication as a strategic function — not just a delivery channel — and gave Centra a reliable pulse on employee engagement.

Supporting a complex healthcare audience

With clearer insight into performance, the team could take a more thoughtful approach to who they were reaching and how information showed up for different groups.

Centra Health’s workforce includes employed staff, providers, and medical partners who don’t always rely on their Centra email addresses. Workshop’s manual list-building tools make it easier to reach those audiences when appropriate, without adding extra complexity to the process.

Leadership and manager communication also play a critical role. With analytics, the team can see how leadership messages perform across the organization and where additional reinforcement may be needed which helps managers tailor follow-ups, clarify expectations, and keep important information moving at the team level.

Creating space for creativity and experimentation

Once the fundamentals were in place, the team had room to get creative and try new things.

With clear insight into performance, the team feels more comfortable experimenting with visual layouts, video content, and different formats. They can see what resonates, make small adjustments, and keep improving. Their tip? Try adding a video of your leadership sharing their news rather than an email next time! 

Impact at a glance

• Fully measurable communications with visibility into how every message performs
• Clear, data-backed insight for leadership on internal communication effectiveness
• Faster execution using reusable workflows for recurring messages
• More engaging emails with visual layouts, video, and linked resources
• One searchable system of record for all internal communications
• Engagement insights that inform future planning and prioritization

More insight + more intention = better communication

Today, internal communications at Centra Health are more strategic, more measurable, and easier to manage. The team has moved beyond simply sending emails to understanding how communication supports alignment across a large, distributed healthcare workforce.

Messages are more consistent. Engagement is visible. And decisions about what to send, and when, are made with confidence.

“We finally have data, consistency, and a way to understand how our employees are engaging with what we send,” Lauren said.

With the right foundation in place, Centra Health’s communications team can keep evolving how they connect people across hospitals, clinics, and communities — always in support of the teams delivering care every day.

An internal communications platform for healthcare teams

Workshop’s focus on frontline communication isn’t theoretical. It’s why healthcare organizations like Centra Health rely on it. That same focus has earned Workshop recognition as a G2 Leader for Frontline Worker Communication Platforms in the internal communications category. This recognition reflects real feedback from teams supporting complex, distributed workforces.

If you’re supporting a busy healthcare workforce and looking for a more intentional way to communicate, Workshop can help. It’s an internal communications platform built for clarity, connection, and confidence, even across frontline-heavy teams.

See how Workshop can help your organization!