What’s changing in hospital workforce strategy? 4 leaders weigh in

Hospitals and health systems are rethinking workforce strategies amid financial pressures and evolving employee needs. For many, the focus is on long-term sustainability: strengthening culture, upskilling leaders and creating pathways for hard-to-fill roles. 

Here, four leaders share the aspects of their workforce strategy they are rethinking.

Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Alen Brcic. Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Methodist Health System (Dallas): No. 1 is engaging our 700 leaders around a future of work leadership methodology that focuses on driving innovation and agility. 

No. 2 is figuring out how we drive growth in key clinical areas in addition to nursing. If you look at over the last decade, health systems have done a great job developing partnerships and training programs with nursing students and we need to evolve that into ancillary clinical roles.

The third piece that we’re really focused on is to be able to mitigate all the challenges relating to every other headwind coming to us. We’re really focused on workplace experience. Specifically, we know that competition based on dollars — whoever pays the highest — is only short-lived. We are focused on continuing to elevate our remarkable workforce culture that really focuses on how every employee lives out the Methodist’s mission, how they embody what we are trying to do for each other, our patients and communities. Workplace experience directly correlates to patient experience and the highest quality of care for our patients.

Leonard Carter, CHRO of FHN (Freeport, Ill.): We have been utilizing a “flex” status model for full-time and part-time positions since the early 1990s. The basics are the more a staff member wants to pick up in hours, the more benefit offerings are available and cost for health insurance decreases. 

We have noticed a decline in candidates selecting the offerings available. While we had a market competitive edge, we are not seeing the plan benefits now. So we are exploring a new approach to employment status, with associated benefits. Everyone in the region is pretty similar in how they offer employment status and benefits. Do not necessarily want to do “what everyone else does,” if we can do better.

Diane Poirot. CHRO at Northeast Georgia Health System (Gainesville): At NGHS, we are very intentional about our workforce strategies. Our people-value-stream components are attract, engage, develop, inspire and reward, with specific strategies and tactics under each component. We have put focus on external workforce development strategies, but we are also focused on growing the 13,000-plus employees with internal workforce development, creating career ladders and career paths that support growing our own and enabling them to increase skills and compensation as they gain additional opportunities from within. A focus of our performance management is for our employees to tell us where they want to be in one year and three years, working with their leaders to put a plan in place to achieve the goals they’ve set.  

Additionally, we are doubling down on leadership development, from front-line leaders all the way up to the C-suite. All of this work is supported by our core values (respectful compassion, deep interdependence, passion for excellence and responsible stewardship) and culture work. Our new CEO’s vision for our workforce is to create a place that makes it easy for our staff to give the best patient care.

Jeremy Stephens. Executive Vice President and CHRO at Tidelands Health (Georgetown, S.C.): Flexibility is key. We need schedules and policies that accommodate today’s workforce, which can help us attract and retain team members, better support their overall well-being, allow us to staff more efficiently in response to fluctuating demands and reduce overtime costs.

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