Royal Ambulance prioritizes connection and community to support workplace culture.

Connecting frontline teams can be a heavy lift regardless of the organization, but connecting frontline teams in a 24/7, always on, geographically distributed setting during a pandemic is one for the books.

Partnering with Hospitals, Health Systems, Skilled Nursing Facilities and more, Royal Ambulance facilitates nearly 10,000 trips per month across the Bay Area. The team of 600+ provides critical infrastructure needed to move patients in and out of healthcare facilities throughout the region. These patient transport services are essential in ensuring that hospitals and healthcare partners across Northern California have access to reliable, professional ambulance support whenever and wherever they need it.

As one of the leading Bay Area ambulance services, Royal Ambulance plays an essential role in ensuring timely patient transport, supporting emergency medical services (EMS), and maintaining reliable connections between healthcare facilities. By offering trusted EMS solutions and medical transportation services, Royal Ambulance continues to set the standard for quality and care in the Bay Area’s healthcare system.

You’ve probably seen recent headlines about the current state of healthcare and specifically the EMS industry. They read: “The Great Resignation this”, “Burn Out that” “Short Staffed again” and so on, pointing to the fact that healthcare is in an undeniable moment of crisis. But as our industry navigates the stressors of the moment, we know that it is critical that we hold fast to our investments in team culture. By focusing on EMS team culture, Royal Ambulance helps address challenges in the healthcare industry while delivering consistent and dependable patient care throughout Northern California. Strong internal communication and community engagement remain at the core of Royal Ambulance’s mission, empowering EMS professionals to deliver compassionate, high-quality care to every patient.

Long before the pandemic, Royal was taking thoughtful steps to challenge traditional workplace boundaries by fostering an engaged and connected culture from the frontline to the C-Suite. Bringing in Workplace by META (then Facebook) in 2015, Royal sought opportunities to make investments in the team via enhanced connectivity, creating support networks across the organization. This forward-thinking approach has positioned Royal Ambulance as an innovator in employee engagement within the EMS and ambulance transportation industry. This commitment to innovation has also elevated Royal’s reputation as a healthcare transportation company that values not just efficiency, but also the well-being and motivation of its frontline responders.

“We found that meeting our team where they want to be, was the most effective way to encourage engagement and build a supportive culture. Our young and connected team spends their time on social media, so we brought them together on a social media platform.” says Eve Grau, VP of Human Resources at Royal Ambulance.

By fostering these digital communities, Royal has cultivated a culture of transparency, collaboration, and mutual support—values that directly impact the quality of patient transport services provided across the Bay Area.

Early last year, after reviewing thousands of accounts for standout engagement on their platform, Workplace reached out to Royal Ambulance and Virgin Atlantic to be featured in their report: “The 2021 Frontline Barometer” on their blog “Deskless not Voiceless”. As a visual storytelling partner we aligned on a direction, creating a Hollywood caliber short film (primed with a little extra drama) to compliment the findings of the research. The piece features real Royal team members and highlights the human connection between patients, team members and leadership. The recognition reinforced Royal’s reputation as a trusted Bay Area ambulance company that prioritizes both its team and the patients it serves.

“We’ve adopted a new primary customer philosophy,” says Steve Grau, CEO of Royal. “Our team members are our number one customer - full stop. Without them we can’t provide the services that our patients and hospital partners need.”

This philosophy aligns perfectly with Royal’s goal of maintaining exceptional emergency medical transportation standards, as empowered and appreciated employees naturally deliver superior patient care.

The breakthrough moment was realizing that an elevated team member experience could not be supported by top to bottom and bottom to top communication, it had to be a collective effort; creating a community for everyone in between. By investing in its EMS professionals, Royal Ambulance strengthens its ability to deliver outstanding medical transportation services, ensuring safe and efficient patient transfers across the Bay Area. This dedication to employee engagement and continuous improvement helps Royal Ambulance remain one of the most respected providers of ambulance services in Northern California.

With our definition of success rooted in the success of our team members, we quickly understood that by bringing our team together, we could empower both community and communication. To do this successfully, we performed journey mapping exercises and understood the moments that matter in team member’s experiences, then utilized Workplace to elevate those key moments in their journey. Through this human-centered approach, Royal Ambulance continues to nurture a workplace where teamwork, communication, and excellence drive the delivery of every patient transport service.

Seven years following the implementation, our community is alive and well, operating within a host of channels and community forums that support everything from the practical, like shift changes and company updates, to stories about life saving interventions and the impacts that team members have on their patients. This thriving internal culture directly translates to reliable ambulance transportation services, improved patient outcomes, and stronger relationships with hospitals and healthcare providers. As a result, Royal Ambulance has become synonymous with trusted EMS team culture, setting a benchmark for other Bay Area ambulance services aiming to build strong, people-first organizations.

If you take one thing away from this article, remember that communication is key when you focus on your team. Your people are the ones who will help you through difficult times, they are your number one customer, set them up for success, and they will collectively bring your organization success. This belief fuels Royal Ambulance’s continued success as a leading provider of patient transport and emergency medical services throughout Northern California.

Royal Ambulance will continue leading the way in patient transportation and EMS solutions by investing in people, prioritizing communication, and providing high-quality ambulance services across the Bay Area.

With innovation, compassion, and teamwork at its core, Royal Ambulance remains dedicated to elevating the standard of healthcare transportation for every hospital, patient, and community it serves.

Royal Ambulance Workplace Culture

*Data collected for the Deskless not Voiceless blog was gathered outside of the Royal Ambulance workforce.