In the past, HR was largely considered part of an organization’s administrative wing. However, HR’s role has evolved over the years, expanding to encompass a wide variety of critical processes. The COVID-19 pandemic served as a catalyst for even more substantial changes in the healthcare HR field. Today, HR has rose to become the conscience and heartbeat that holds the healthcare industry together. HR’s ability to hire and train the right people, manage variable shifts and pay schedules, understand regulatory and legal compliance, and improve patient satisfaction make the department invaluable. Join our panel as they discuss the complexities faced by HR leaders in healthcare.

Providence is one of the largest not-for-profit healthcare systems in the United States. Innovation is critical for them to meet the talent needs of its 117,000 caregivers. Join Mark Smith of Providence and Janie Petrosino of IBM for a fireside chat sharing examples of Providence’s approach to optimizing its recruitment model, leveraging technology to provide insights, managing workforce demands, and driving a great experience for its candidate and caregiver population.

Cathy Fraser (she/her/hers), the Chief People Officer of WelbeHealth, will share Welbe’s commitment to healthy teams and the resulting positive impact on culture and performance. There’s no debate that teams are the way of contemporary work. More challenging is the question of how to form and sustain such teams? At Welbe, the healthy team program was first embraced by the senior team, then rolled out throughout the organization with intentionality and discipline to healthy team behaviors. This includes continuous reflection on the five elements of a healthy team, time for quarterly feedback, and clear purpose in our meetings. Most recently we’ve introduced agile into our teams; putting iterative problem solving and design into our healthy team tool kit. How can you adopt these team practices that will start your own journey? With courage, community and commitment!

In the ever-evolving healthcare industry, attracting and retaining top talent is crucial for delivering quality patient care. LevelUP and Salem Health provide a case study delving into the impact of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) on their talent acquisition strategy. They will walk through their journey and explore the innovative solutions and data-driven insights enabled Salem to solve its talent challenges. Hear real-life scenarios, best practices, and key takeaways from this compelling RPO journey.

Whether you lead HR Shared Services, are looking to integrate HR into a shared services model, or operate as a business partner, you will be able to gain valuable insights in this session. Learn how one of the largest, not for-profit healthcare systems in the nation overcame various issues during the COVID pandemic, including the war on talent and labor shortages to support the operations and service patients.

• Gain a good understanding of the opportunities, challenges, and considerations for establishing and evolving HRSS and how to flex the model and adapt to business conditions
• Learn to articulate how HR shared services can deliver value beyond consolidation and cost reduction – leveraging data to tell the story
• Position HR for success by being agile and in alignment with the business
• Adding value through being a strategic HR Business Partner
• Gain insights through discussing a real-world case study from an HR perspective

You’ll walk away from this session with a firm grasp of the HR Shared Service landscape, and practical learnings to bring back and apply in your organization.

This session discusses HR leaders’ new challenges and defines an expansive, performance-based talent acquisition approach that can drive effective change in talent management, including:

• Flexible solutions for today’s workforce challenges
• Cost-savings recruitment strategies that can help favorably impact your organization’s bottom line
• Choosing an RPO organization with speed, flexibility, agility, and quality service

Long-standing labor challenges of employee burnout and staff turnover have steadily grown even as the COVID-19 pandemic has eased its burden on hospital systems nationwide. Then came the trending labor issues of the great resignation, remote work, quiet quitting and other external factors impacting workforces. Additionally, 2021 saw the steepest decline in registered nurses in four decades. To address these workforce challenges, Memorial Hermann has taken an intentional strategic approach through its Human Capital Strategy. This strategy, called Well Together, is based on three pillars: culture, best in talent and employee experience. Based on an intentional total systems approach, Memorial Hermann is building a culture that advances health and personalizes care. The system’s talent framework lays out a plan to infuse, develop and optimize talent while focusing on the “Moments that Matter” to create an employee experience that connects, encourages, supports, values and inspires. To inform and shape the human capital strategy, several personas were created to provide a more personalized response to the needs of the workforce. This session will provide first-hand knowledge of the development and implementation of this human capital strategy and how it is being used to attract, develop and retain the best people in health care.

Session Focus:

• Development and implementation of the three pillars of the Well Together Human Capital Strategy
• Five tactics to shape a hospital system’s culture through a total systems approach; hire and onboard, lead and teach, communicate to reinforce, reward and recognize and how to measure and hold accountable while upholding the culture
• Intentionally planning for the workforce of the future, seeking new and innovative ways to identify, attract, grow and retain talent
• Approach to creating personas: Supporting talent through personalized journeys that help them achieve career and personal aspirations

Staffing and retention is one of the most essential factors regarding the efficiency and “health” of any Healthcare System. Finding and quickly hiring candidates has become more important and challenging than ever before. However, the ability to retain candidates, have them meet orientation dates and to stay in compliance with state/federal and municipal requirements can be extremely tricky. Here is your chance to join us in discussing the onboarding process of background screening; providing helpful tools and legal updates for speeding up the hiring process, while making sure to keep in compliance with consumer reporting laws.

Learning Objectives:

• How to reduce time to hire pertaining to background screening
• Best Practices for screening to reduce hiring risk
• Understanding of recent litigation/class action lawsuits against employers and how to avoid the pitfalls
• Understanding of current Federal (FCRA) and state guidelines/legislation
• Learning Ban the Box, Clean Slate, Salary Verification Restrictions and Drug Testing trends

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic took place, it was no secret that the healthcare industry faced enormous nursing shortages, a challenge organizations and staffing companies have been struggling to solve. The coronavirus crisis put a new focus on the acute need for recruiting nurses. In some cases, the need was so great that nurses came out of retirement to fill the gaps. Nurses are the backbone of any medical facility and the effects of nurse engagement and staffing on patient safety and experience are widely documented. Our panel will discuss recruitment strategies that can help hospitals, senior care facilities and other healthcare providers hire nurses quickly in any job market. They will also share ideas to increase nurse engagement and retention.

Key Areas Discussed:

• Nurse employer branding: getting nurses excited about working for you
• Managing contingent nursing labor
• Creating a formal nurse engagement strategy
• Developing nurse leaders

In a recent open forum, the executive team was asked, “We seem to be bleeding talent. What are we doing to retain employees?” It’s a question that’s difficult to answer because it speaks to a high turnover problem many organizations are facing today. After years of helping clients answer these questions, our research shows that to retain top performers, leaders need to build genuine relationships with talented teams and invest in them.

Join this session to learn about the “Three Keys to Keeping Turnover in Check and Retaining Top Performers”:

• Top performers need relationships with people who see them as people – not just producers.
• Top performers need talented leaders and teams to thrive.
• Top performers need managers who invest in their professional growth.

Today, human resources leaders face the challenges of healthcare itself. There is pressure on reimbursements by regulatory entities and insurance payers.  The workforce for doctors, nurses and allied health professionals is shrinking due to both burnout and dissatisfaction with changes in healthcare. Labor costs are rising due to the shrinking labor pool. An aging population is raising demand for services. 

It could be described as a "perfect storm", but HR teams are creating, innovating and improvising solutions to meet these challenges.  Hear about programs that are functioning in the real world that may be adaptable to your organization. 

Healthcare institutions are on a constant journey to develop people and culture centric organizations where employees feel like they are working together to provide exceptional care, without exception and through the lens of health equity. Dr. Tonya Jackman Hampton, will join members of HRO Today and share her expertise on what it takes to attract, recruit and retain employees in this demanding healthcare market.

Key Questions Addressed:

• How is or does your organization leveraging it’s EVP or brand to attract, recruit, and retain employees.
• What lessons have you learned as you’ve communicated and integrated your EVP into your People strategy?
• What other practices or strategies have you found helpful to attract and retain talent

Rosa is the former Tufts Medicine CDEIO and has been a Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Learning officer since 2006 including one of the first in healthcare and also a Chief People Officer.  Join us to learn the journey of building these new functions focusing on both workforce and customers serving from 12,000 to 43,000 employees, up to 5,000 Physicians, 8,000 Nurses and providing services to up to 1 million patients and creating a new model to partner with diverse leaders across MA   The work of DEI continuous to evolve from training and programs to changing the system applying a systemness’ management philosophy, making Equity the primary goal, leveraging technology, and building leaders with an equity lens owning and accountable of the work for a greater impact.   Now more than ever partnering with communities we serve to prepare diverse workforce is critical, in short term to close shortages and long term to build the new generation of healthcare providers. In addition, partnering across health systems, community centers, government and cross sector is the best way to change legislation and policies for sustainability through the creation of the health equity compact.

Learning Objectives:
•Learn the evolution of DEI, health equity strategies as vehicles for cultural transformation leveraging intersectionality
•Understand and define Equity, equitable experiences through an integrated dashboard to measure progress in closing the gaps of health disparities and inequities that our employees experience re-defining HR policies.
•Provide evidence based best practices and tools to envision your learning strategy beyond unconscious bias, racism and addressing microaggressions to increase employee engagement
•Learn how to assess leader’s readiness to execute, related competencies and lead DEI strategies with an equity lens.
•Share across state strategies to accelerate the work of health equity in government, academia and health systems and community centers.

Top healthcare candidates have many options when it comes to employers and can easily research the experiences of employees in your organization on various career sites. In fact, a survey conducted by LinkedIn found that 75 percent of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before applying for a job. What’s more, a study conducted by Healthcare Recruiters International found that over 90 percent of candidates think employer branding is an essential recruiting resource. Prospective healthcare employees are similar to patients in that both select the healthcare provider they feel most comfortable with. Your employer brand strategy should help make a candidate’s choice easier and provide assurance that he or she has chosen the right workplace. Our panel will discuss strategies to ensure you have an impactful employer brand.

Key takeaways include:
• Developing a solid employer brand
• Managing candidate experience
• Attracting diverse talent

Getting your engagement strategy right means knowing your workforce and diving deeper to understand their motivations, needs, and aspirations both personally and professionally. This knowledge allows you to bring cultural initiatives to life and drive action through organizational anchors like values and principles. The link to performance comes through our managers who are the mirror and representation of a company’s culture to their employees. Very few people would dispute the demands of today’s working environment have left managers feeling unprepared and in need of support to drive results and provide a sense of purpose, flexibility, and growth opportunity for their teams. This session will focus on some simple steps you can take to understand your workforce, bring cultural initiatives to life through your values and principles, and help managers succeed and drive performance through their people.

Key Questions Answered:
• What does your workforce look like and why is that important?
• How can you bring to life company values and principles?
• How can you help managers succeed when experiencing competing expectations from both senior leadership and their employees?