Selecting a talent management suite: Our experience at Hospital Sisters Health System

Hospital Sisters Health System is a multi-institutional health care system comprised of 14 hospitals and an integrated physician network across Illinois and Wisconsin.

With 15,000 employees spread out across 200 locations, it was time to find HR software that would enable us to align and improve our talent management processes. From the beginning, the effort was a collaboration between the HR and IT teams.

The need
We had a number of different talent management systems, many still manual and paper-based, others run by HR software from several different vendors. In fact, there were 15 separate operating environments with dissimilar policies and rules. Employees weren't always being evaluated consistently, and didn't always see the connections between organizational goals, their work, and the compensation they received.

We wanted to make sure all stakeholder voices were heard during the process of selecting a talent management suite. To get the employee perspective, we issued a system-wide employee engagement survey, which came back with low grades for talent development, aligned rewards system, succession planning and change-readiness.

The low level of engagement made it clear that something needed to be done to align and streamline our talent management processes if we were going to move forward as an organization. In addition, we needed a system that would help drive the behavioral competencies of our employees to embody our core values of respect, care, competence and joy – every day.

The goals

We began with a high-level steering committee consisting of the executive team at the system level and our chief people officer. The working team expanded to include directors of people services from different locations across our organization. Based on what we knew already, the input from employees, and consideration of our organizational priorities, we established major goals in selecting the talent management suite, including:

- One, consistent performance evaluation process across all HSHS facilities
- All information concerning employee performance evaluations and resulting data available in one place, with the ability to identify top performers and link to employee development
- Facilitate finding, developing and retaining future leaders
- Reduce complexity and administrative burden
- Engage employees

The success factors

We were tempted to choose what might have been the simplest solution, going with our HRIS vendor. But we knew that developing and retaining future leaders was a business priority. We knew to achieve that, we needed a robust talent management suite that enabled us to look across our organization and identify top performers, then manage their development and succession planning. The HRIS vendor couldn't deliver on that, so, we knew we had to select a vendor with an HR software suite that was top notch in talent management for the all stages of the workforce life cycle.

We found the collaboration between HR and IT to be absolutely essential throughout the whole process. HR brought the talent management strategy, aligned with the business strategy. IT brought the systems expertise in selecting and implementing a large-scale technology initiative. We made sure to include the voices of employees, both as users of the systems and as the talent impacted by the processes.

One of the reasons we went with our final vendor choice was the high level of customer support they offered throughout the design, implementation and post-implementation process. A talent management suite is only good if it is used consistently, so we made sure to have a designated administrator at each facility to address any challenges, liaise with the vendor and make sure users had the support they needed. This has worked well in getting people to use the system because now we're close to 100 percent completion rate on annual performance evaluations.

We wanted to go slow so we didn't overwhelm everyone with too many changes at once. As we move along, we are refining the process and broadening it to link all the talent management processes together. For example, we can link performance data to learning and development tools and track progress. This is helpful especially for positions that require accreditation – we can look out and see whether those employees are completing the training they require.

The results

The process of selecting and implementing a state-of-the-art talent management suite has enabled us to unify, refine and streamline our processes. We now have a fully automated performance evaluation process that begins with goal-setting targets and aligns employee performance with organizational goals. Employees can see how their work contributes to their own success and that of HSHS as a whole.

Further, employees are clear on how our core values translate to expectations of day-to-day performance and impact their compensation. Managers have easily accessible tools to evaluate, coach and have meaningful performance and development discussions with their employees.

At the organizational level, we now have reliable and consistent data to answer key questions about the workforce, perform analytics and make informed decisions about compensation, development, recruitment and succession. And all it took was some careful planning and collaboration between our HR and IT team.

Alicia Hannah is a Senior Technical Analyst at Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS), a healthcare organization with 15,000 full-time employees spread out across 200 locations in Wisconsin and Illinois. These healthcare facilities include academic hospitals, critical access facilities and small clinics.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.

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