“As a company, [AdventHealth has] strengthened our ability to forecast talent needs, build talent pipelines to meet forecasted needs, and focus on high engagement and turnover,” Ms. Azevedo told Becker’s.
On Feb. 11, AdventHealth shared that its workforce has grown from 70,000 to 100,000 team members over the last four years as it has opened or acquired additional hospitals, freestanding emergency departments and primary care locations. More than half of AdventHealth’s employees have been with the organization for longer than a decade.
Workforce planning and collaboration
Ms. Azevedo attributed the milestone to two primary factors: strategic workforce planning and a strong employer brand.
“All of our executives have turnover as a component of our incentive plans, which is not unusual — I understand that,” said Ms. Azevedo.
But “what is unique, in my opinion, is focused joint accountability for our success. Typically, you see HR being the ones driving recruitment and retention. In our organization, ensuring that everyone had these three major core operations areas of focus for people gave us the ability to partner in a way that we weren’t able to do before.”
For example, business teams partnered with human resources to understand and anticipate the health system’s future workforce needs. The health system then held various career events to create a pipeline of talent into AdventHealth.
“For one of our talent pipeline events, we created an interactive digital experience for young people, ages 9 to 13, and we had 24,000 people attend,” Ms. Azevedo said. “You can’t do that as an HR team alone. We had clinical team members, IT, marketing, and several other teams contributing.”
As part of the collaboration between HR and operational leaders, AdventHealth embeds a forecasted number of hires needed — broken down by job type — into a “monthly people close.”
“Very much like the finance team does a financial close, we have a monthly people close,” Ms. Azevedo said. “Every facility meets with their leaders, and they go through, ‘OK, what was the forecast? Did you meet the forecast for hires, or did you have a gap? And what was the gap?’ And then there’s action planning for each core operation element.”
Building a strong employer brand
In addition to collaboration, she attributed the 100,000 milestone to creating an employer brand. The efforts began about six years ago, when the organization created six unique team member promises that Ms. Azevedo said became part of AdventHealth’s commitment or employer brand as an organization.
Those six promises are: family from day one, competitive pay, choice of benefits, lighted career path, informed and heard, and holistic leader. Different aspects of those promises are implemented annually.
“Everything from family from day one, making sure that every team member has access to the systems and tools,” Ms. Azevedo said. “And, in addition to receiving a welcome gift, they have a front-load [a portion] of their PTO so that if you start, for example, the week before Thanksgiving, you’re not going to have a short check.”
All of the efforts aim to intentionally create a brand and promises alongside the brand.
“What is unique about what we created — it wasn’t enough to just listen to the employees and implement the changes, investments and improvements that we made,” Ms. Azevedo said. “We are so intentional about creating our consumer brand — what would it be like if we were just as intentional about creating an employer brand with the same focus?”
AdventHealth launched its first employer brand commercial four years ago, first internally and then externally. The 30-second spot garnered 57 million views within the first six months.
Since then, unique employment applications have doubled to the health system, Ms. Azevedo said.
“Going forward, our marketing and HR teams partner annually to build a people brand positioning that comes alongside our consumer focus,” she said.
The health system does commercials a couple of times a year, with new ones consistently being launched. Ms. Azevedo said this allows the organization to not only implement the six promises, but tell the health system’s story through brand spots. And over the last five years, AdventHealth has consistently hired more than 20,000 people annually.
“It’s not enough to listen to team members and make improvements,” Ms. Azevedo said. “It’s important to tell that story in a compelling way, and we believe that was a key factor in helping us balance out and create that brand — externally and internally — within our own organization.”
What’s next?
Looking ahead, AdventHealth is focused on improving its current workforce’s experience through Workday software. It also remains focused on its mission and purpose.
“We believe that we’ve done the foundational elements that our team members valued so highly and have shared with us,” said Ms. Azevedo.
“Going forward, we will strengthen our resolve in focusing on purpose and helping our teams connect their day-to-day work with our mission and purpose — to make people feel whole.”
