Retaining IT talent is at the top of many health CIOs' minds as they work to compete with other health systems and tech companies during the "Great Resignation."
Carrie Damon, senior vice president and CIO of Centennial, Colo.-based Centura Health, stopped by the "Becker's Hospital Review" podcast to discuss how to retain and manage talent.
Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full podcast here.
Question: What are some of the issues that you are spending most of your time on today, and what is really on the front of your mind?
Carrie Damon: I am going to give you a very non-technical answer. The issues that I spend most of my time today are related to people and how we deliver our services, which I know is a common theme for many organizations. I spend a lot of time on recruiting, retaining and developing a diverse talent to support our IT strategy. From a recruitment perspective, we are making some pretty significant changes and moving to the cloud, strengthening ourcybersecurity program and really changing how we deliver services with agile and other ways of working. There is a big focus on issues in terms of how we recruit. We are all competing for the same talent. And so really working on how we can differentiate ourselves with our mission, our culture, and really the opportunity to drive change as a part of some of the large transformational programs.
From a retention standpoint, I have an incredible team. They are very mission focused and they have been incredibly dedicated during the pandemic. But they are tired, and retention is something that I continue to focus on, [and] the focus there has been on really creating better career-pathing opportunities and encouraging flexibility. We are the first function to implement a long-term remote working strategy in our organization. Then really taking the time to listen to my associates and hearing their feedback and making impactful changes. I do focus groups with about 500 associates and I do focus group sessions every six months and just listen and make changes based on their feedback, and then really continue to develop a diverse workforce. That has really been a combination of developing and upscaling our own talent and also being focused on recruiting diverse candidates.