Hospital and health system human resources leaders are shifting their mindset to meet the needs of today’s — and tomorrow’s — workforce.
It takes intentionality to ensure organizations are prepared to adapt accordingly amid technology and industry changes. Yet only 9% of human resources functions are achieving functional excellence, a 2023 Gartner report found.
WittKieffer, a global executive search and leadership advisory firm, suggests in its own report released in March that this signals untapped potential in HR’s strategic role.
For a mindset shift, Daniel Young, senior partner at the firm, suggested that HR leaders create programs, rewards, incentives, development opportunities and compensation plans that create flexibility for the unique needs of employees.
Hospital and health system HR leaders told Becker’s they are focused on this and other approaches. They shared the biggest mindset shifts they believe HR leaders need to make to future-proof healthcare talent strategy.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Lisa Abbott. Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital: HR leaders must be agile, creative and forward-thinking. Gone are the days of “doing what we have always done.” We must think about the multi-generational workforce in a post-COVID, remote/hybrid environment and address the demands for inclusion, flexibility and work-life integration in a way that reflects our understanding of what is most meaningful depending on time of life and career. I firmly believe that workers want as much flexibility as we can afford. Hard? Yes. Impossible? We must make it possible.
Alyssa Bennett. Chief Human Resources Officer at Valley Health Partners (Allentown, Pa.): The best way to future-proof healthcare talent strategy is to hire for mission alignment, and then be ready to train for skill. Your best colleagues are the ones that live and breathe your mission — whole-person care matters, access should be easy, building trust with patients is of utmost importance. Hire those people! Then have internal training programs, partnerships with schools, and rich tuition and continuing education benefits ready to support building the technical skill that is needed. It’s an upfront investment for sure, but it pays off with plentiful pipelines of loyal and talented colleagues.
John Galley. Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at UPMC (Pittsburgh): I would say that HR leaders can learn from retail buying experiences. Retailers know their customers and make it very easy for them to make purchases, serving up what they are interested in before they even look for it. As HR leaders, we need our technology to take similar strides to create unique and tailored interactions for our employees, our candidates, and even students and prospective applicants. Given the competitive markets in healthcare, we need to understand what our “clients” are looking for and create meaningful and helpful experiences and tools to help them quickly navigate and obtain what they are looking for. In essence, we need to delight and surprise them with support at every stage, from sourcing talent to retiring talent.
Tom McCauley. Chief Human Resources Officer at Aspen (Colo.) Valley Health: I believe the future will be sourcing more talent through atypical channels. We already source some of our talent through something other than your typical four years of higher education, but I hope we’ll see more of our talent pools developed directly from our high schools, community colleges (both associate’s and bachelor’s degrees), and certificate-based programs.
There is amazing talent out there who may be struggling to find where their calling is or who may be ready for a change, so let’s make it easier for them. I’m a true believer that aptitude and attitude get you 80% of the way there, because you can be taught the rest.
I’d love to see more of what we’ve seen proven out in the tech sector, and that is a “trade school” flavor of intensive education (clinical competencies instead of new coding languages). Cut the fluff and teach them what they need to know to break in or break over to a new career.
Think of a boot camp concept and ask the question: How can we cram 18 months of education into an intensive, six-day-a-week program that gets them ready in six months? I think ideas like that could really impact diagnostic imaging, for example. That’s such an amazing career path — if we can make it easier to enter that space.
Once you get people in and if they like what they’re doing, you can supplement their base set of skills using tuition reimbursement to pour gas on their new passion and make it easy to grow their skill set from X-ray into CT, MRI, mammography-specific.
I’d love to see more energy put toward innovative training options like that. When the talent pipeline is more predictable and stable, the talent strategy will be more achievable.
Russ Showers. Vice President of Human Resources Strategic Initiatives and operations at Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore): HR leaders play a critical role in shifting their organizations from a traditional “job history” mindset to a more dynamic, skills-based approach. Embracing this mindset helps health systems expand their talent pipelines — both internally and externally — by focusing on what individuals can do, rather than solely where they’ve been.
Adopting a skills-based strategy not only strengthens your ability to match the right skills to the right roles, but it also unlocks meaningful career development opportunities for your workforce. This approach lays the foundation for building clear, flexible career paths, and justifies stronger investment in career development programs — knowing it will lead to a quality return on investment.
Michael Wukitsch, PhD. Chief People Officer at Lee Health (Fort Myers, Fla.): Productivity and talent development — augmented by AI and technology — will be key to future-proofing healthcare talent strategy. As HR leaders, we need to embrace the potential of AI and technology to transform workforce productivity through job content, workflow and structural innovation. By reducing or eliminating less productive tasks and streamlining workflow, positions are freed up to focus on the highest value-added work. Higher value-added work typically leads to expanded development opportunities and greater engagement for the individual, while the organization benefits from a higher return on workforce investment and lower overall expenses. This transition will require significant analysis and thoughtful prioritization.
