February 27, 2025 • 57 mins
Dive into an eye-opening conversation about transforming talent acquisition in the healthcare sector. Leaders from Human, a specialized RPO, share their insights on bridging the gap between immediate staffing needs and strategic long-term hiring solutions. Featuring Bob, the former head of HR at the University of Chicago Medicine, the discussion offers a candid look at overcoming staffing crises while building valuable partnerships that influence hiring success.
Difficulty in hiring healthcare staff is a pressing issue that challenges many organizations. We aimed to highlight innovative solutions that can help overcome staffing hurdles while focusing on strategic long-term planning.
How to Begin
- Understand Your Reality
- Know Your Numbers
- Define Your Needs
- Know Your Gaps - Then Define Priorities
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
For those of you not familiar with Human, we started
Human as a standalone RPObusiness in late 2016.
Prior to that, we were part ofa larger travel nursing business
.
We recognized an opportunity totransition into value-add
relationships, not just be thenecessary evil that traveling
(00:21):
was, and so we took what was avery small portion of that
business, sold that business offand really spent all of our
time and energy over the lasteight years trying to bring our
RPO solution to life.
We primarily spent our time inhealthcare even today.
We started this business, soall of our customers are in
(00:44):
healthcare even today.
We started this business, soall of our customers are in
healthcare.
Now about 65% of our partnersare in the healthcare space.
We've been able to translatethe work that we do in hospitals
and the non-clinical side intocommercial areas and into
enterprise large organizations,so that's been an exciting new
feat for us.
But, as you can tell by ourstats, we hire a lot in health
(01:06):
care.
So last year we madeapproximately 42,000 hires on
behalf of our partners and abouthalf of those are RAs.
That is the primary reasonhealth care organizations reach
out to us.
It's always our starting pointhow can you help me with RNs and
then the intention over time isto partner and expand that
relationship to provide furthersupport for their clinical and
(01:28):
non-clinical needs.
We're really proud of the workthat we do.
We have some KPIs that we holdourselves to really high level
of standard.
The idea, as you partner withus, is that we have this
baseline of standard and we workwith your system to achieve
those same levels of successstandard and we work with your
system to achieve those samelevels of success.
(01:48):
We are really proud of thepartners that we work with.
12 of our partners have beenwith us for more than six years
and Bob represents one of thosegroups.
We just completed our mostrecent survey and received a 9.8
NPS for over 36 uniqueorganizations.
That ranked us so very proud ofthose results.
So why do people call us?
So?
We get called for two reasons.
(02:09):
The first reason is someone hasan immediate issue that they
are trying to overcome.
We see this a lot coming out ofCOVID and the pandemic and we
have health systems andfinancial crises because of the
premium labor expenses that theyendured during that time period
.
So a lot of times the phonecalls we need your help to
(02:31):
reduce premium labor or we havea vacancy issue, whatever is
going on that has made their jobopening search, and so we can
come in and help augment yourexisting talent acquisition
function.
I'll show you about some of theways that we go about that, but
we are always trying to take therelationship beyond the HR
(02:52):
relationship, so similar to whatwas being discussed in the
prior panel, and how can wealign the work that you're doing
with your financial incentivesas an organization partner with
your CFO, and then take it astep further, and how we partner
with your COO or youroperations function to really
institutionalize what is goingon.
So that way it is no longersomething that HR alone is
(03:15):
pushing, but it really becomes abusiness-wide initiative.
We track these stats incrediblyclosely.
This is just in the last fewyears these are four of our
largest partners that all thesenumbers have been verified by
their CFOs and what we were ableto save them so that savings
does include the full cost ofour program as well has been
(03:37):
factored into that.
So that's one reason peoplepartner with us.
The other reason people partnerwith us is they're in seats like
yours, really trying to thinklong term and strategically
about how they can transform howtheir talent acquisition,
function works.
These are usually individualsthat have 10-year plans, are
(03:59):
looking at their upcomingturnover, retention challenges,
aging, population and businessdevelopment plans.
This is our most excitingpartners to be in.
It's really where we think wecan be the most beneficial.
We get to truly helprevolutionize what is happening
in your organization.
(04:20):
Again, we'll talk a little bitabout how we do that in a second
, but Bob is going to tell hisstory about our partnership and
why he originally engaged us andwhat the results were as a part
of that, and his vision, whichdates back well ahead of the
pandemic, and how he wanted toget ahead of what was going on
(04:40):
with staffing.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So just a little bit more about myself.
I know I introduced myself asthe former head of human
resources for the University ofChicago Medicine.
Actually, my background overthe course of what was 42 years
spanned a variety of industries.
Most of my background in HR hasbeen for for-profit
(05:06):
organizations, any industrieslike financial services,
manufacturing, consumer goods,life sciences, private equity so
I had a lot of experienceoutside of non-profit.
This was the first opportunitythat I came across towards the
end of my career.
I'd have to say that it wasprobably I am envious of many of
(05:28):
you who have been in this fieldfor many, many decades.
In some cases, for as long as Ican remember, nobody in
healthcare would really talk toyou unless you were from
healthcare.
It was a very insular industryand I was fortunate to come
across a CEO who thought verydifferently, had lots of
(05:49):
experience, of course, in healthcare, but saw the value of
people outside of health careand for certain, you know, I
wasn't doing any surgeries oranything but things like supply
chain and HR and those kinds ofthings Things like supply chain
and HR and those kinds of things.
So I was able to bring much ofwhat I learned over the years to
(06:11):
health care.
So when I think back at thepartnership, having been there
10 years, the two things thatSarah describes is the reasons
why people do business with themI think I fall into both of
those categories.
Frankly, it started out with aproblem.
(06:31):
I was with the organizationmaybe two years and things were
apparently they were goingsomewhat well.
I thought.
I looked at lots of thedashboards and numbers until one
day I got a call from the headof our ambulatory operations,
(06:53):
who I had a very goodrelationship with but was very
direct and said to me oh Bob,you're killing me with the
staffing and I'm like you knowwhat are you talking about?
I get all of these greatreports.
She said well, we don't havestaff for the clinics, and so
that was sort of a wake-up callfor me, knowing that I needed to
(07:16):
do something pretty dramatic.
And so when I thought about thecurrent state of our talent
acquisition and gave a lot ofthought to that, it was pretty
primitive in many ways.
So, for example, the idea ofrecruiting at University of
Chicago Medicine was recruiterscarrying, you know maybe 100 or
(07:40):
so recs.
We used CareerBuilder as ourmain source and our recruiters
would pull resumes fromCareerBuilder, pile them up,
walk into a hiring manager'soffice and say who would you
like me to call it?
And so they were almost givinga sort of a homework assignment
to the hiring managers, whowould go home, like a teacher
(08:03):
often does, and grades tests.
They would sit home and theywould review resume after resume
and come in and they were verymuch a part of the process.
So when I decided we needed todo something different, I was
aware of RPOs I never had workedwith them before, but it was
aware, certainly, of what theydo and I spent a lot of time
(08:28):
researching a variety ofdifferent companies big ones,
small ones and I sort ofaccidentally came across
Youman's website one afternoonand I was intrigued by the
quality of the website,particularly things that they
talked about, like the cultureof their organization.
So they made it fast forward.
(08:50):
They made it as part of the cutof companies that we asked to
speak with and from that pointforward, you know, I was still
very hesitant.
I was not necessarily I wouldcharacterize myself as not
necessarily a believer and I wasnervous as hell because here I
am turning over the, you know,the responsibility of bringing
(09:13):
talent into the organization asthe CHRO, and what if that thing
sort of crashed in Burke?
So I wanted to take baby stepsand so the first description
that Sarah said about solving aproblem I needed to solve the
ambulatory problem.
And so we had 50 jobs open and,after going through the due
(09:38):
diligence of all these companies, having visited their
facilities down in Florida whichto this day I think it was sort
of staged in terms of how theyset things up, because people
were just like smiling from earto ear.
They were so engaged and theculture just sort of hits you as
(10:00):
soon as you walk through thebuilding.
As soon as you walked throughthe building, but that sort of
not only was it true, it sort ofmanifested itself over time in
the team that they pulledtogether for us and many of
those people who are stillservicing the University of
Chicago Medicine are still onthat account.
So there's a lot of consistencyin terms of the team.
(10:22):
So we decided to partner withthem 50 jobs and I think the
first weekend that they put outsome sort of a blast, there was
thousands, maybe 3,000applicants for those 50 jobs and
the understanding when wepartnered with them was that we
(10:42):
would take baby steps, we wouldprove ourselves that we could do
this.
I get more comfortable with whothey are and how they operate.
But if they delivered, we wouldexpand the partnership over
time.
And so the first 50 jobs, theynailed it.
(11:04):
And then I had a decision tomake.
I had a decision who?
I sat with the CEO at the timeand said, okay, so now we want
to expand the partnership.
Do we go big or do we play itsafe?
Do we give them the largestbusiness unit, if you will, of
our patient care services or dowe play it safe and do a smaller
(11:26):
unit?
And, of course, the CEO saidlet's go big.
And so we moved on to patientcare services.
They started to do a lot of theclinical roles.
Then we moved on toadministrative jobs and just
kept growing the business.
We then brought on onboarding.
They did our onboarding or aredoing the onboarding them.
(11:49):
They've done some leadershiproles, director level roles.
They've also done someexecutive roles.
Now, throughout this partnershipand I use the term partnership
because that's really what itwas it wasn't a vendor
relationship.
To me, there's a big differencebetween having a vendor work
(12:11):
for you versus having a partnerPartners.
We all know both our personallives and professional lives are
people who think of yourselfbefore they think of themselves,
of you before they think ofthemselves, and that's been the
relationship with Hewitt.
It's how do we solve problemstogether.
I always felt that my issues,my problems, were their problems
(12:35):
, and it takes a lot of work tobuild that partnership.
It takes a willingness fromboth parties, but that's what
has evolved over the years.
And so, you know, fast forward,nine years later, they're still
at it.
They're posting tremendousnumbers and they've got a cross
(12:57):
system in place, which we neverhad, and we eventually changed
out our recruiters For them.
They became an extension of ourteam.
They would come to Chicago,we'd have our business review
meetings, we'd go to White Soxgames.
(13:28):
We treated them just like, youknow, our employees well into
the partnership, and so, unlikemany of my peers who lost a lot
of sleep during that period, Islept better, always had one eye
open, never took my eye off theball, but I knew that we had
the processes in place, we had aconsistent team of people and
(13:53):
they continued to post, you know, large numbers.
They were hiring almost 5,000people when I left, and it took
a little longer for them to dothat because we were all sort of
fishing out of the same pond.
But you know we made it througha lot better, I think, than
many of my peers.
(14:13):
So it's again one of the bestdecisions I made.
And the other thing I'd justleave you with is the hiring
managers.
For me was the sort of thebellwether.
That's what I kept very close,paid very close attention to,
was the hiring managers andtheir level of satisfaction with
(14:36):
the process and with therecruiters.
And whenever there was an issueand very rarely was there, most
(14:59):
of the issues were when you hadthe audacity to promote people
and take them, move them along.
The hiring managers are likewhat am I going to do, you know?
But the fact of the matter is,you know, it's been, it's been a
great relationship and you knowsome people go full bore right
out of the gate.
We did the approach that Idescribed and it worked well for
us.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Thank you Great.
Yeah, and listen.
We love partnerships like thisbecause, ultimately, what we're
trying to accomplish is whatyou're trying to accomplish,
right.
We are trying to createsystematic, sustainable
workforce solutions.
The healthcare industry hascome a long way, but boy does it
have a long way to go, as weknow, and I think part of what
(15:34):
we try to bring into this issort of a consumer mindset, and
so some of what we're going totalk about you've heard in the
earlier sessions.
There's going to be some themeshere, but all of these areas,
if you were to ask me sort ofwhat does your program look like
, it basically looked exactlylike this of how we get started.
(15:54):
But the reality is, each of youcan access in this way today
and a lot of times when peopleare partnering with us, I think
they think I have this magicwand that just produces
miraculous candidates out ofnowhere.
In actuality, we just have avery systemized process.
(16:14):
We have uncovered everyopportunity to stop the bleed.
So where are we losing people?
Where is fall-off happening?
Where can we refine experience?
And by taking that approachover and over again and not
letting the subjective get inthe way of the objective are how
we put up these numbers and howwe get our partners from being
(16:38):
in a constant state ofreactionary crisis type of
response into proactive,strategic thinking.
So the first thing is you haveto understand your reality.
We'll talk about that a littlebit.
Have to understand your realityWe'll talk about that a little
bit.
It's interesting to me some ofthe conversations out in the
(17:00):
market today.
How many of you feel like lastyear you could breathe a sigh of
relief in hiring right Show ofhands?
Was last year better for youthan prior years?
All right, let's look at somenumbers and show why that
concerns me.
Right, you also need to knowyour personal numbers.
We all have these incredibleworkday isoms, amazing ATS
systems.
(17:20):
There's so much data in there.
Do we know what to do with thatdata and how to take action
from it?
You need to define your needsand so what is it that you need
to do in the next year toovercome whatever your
challenges?
Your vacancy rate how many FTEsdo you need by the end of the
year?
Do you know how to do that work?
(17:40):
Do you know how to calculatethose numbers?
Do you know how to do it overfive years and 10 years?
That's, honestly the firstthing that we do in our
partnerships is tell you howmany annual hires you're going
to need.
And then the last thing, reallyknow your gaps.
So we'll look at something on atalent acquisition maturity
model.
I have a QR code available youguys can scan into all this
stuff and take it all home withyou.
(18:02):
But it's interesting to me howmany times I'm in a conversation
about innovation, becausethat's a strategic priority for
your business, but we don't havestandardization first, and so
it's very difficult to innovateif there is not a standard way
of behaving.
And I think one of thechallenges we have in HR within
(18:25):
these health systems is thesebusinesses have these robust
plans for introducing AI andintroducing technology.
Well, it's really easy to do inpatient services, where all the
money goes and all theinvestments have been for 20
years to be able to improve thatexperience.
But we know what your fundinglooks like, right.
We know that the same time andattention hasn't been spent and
(18:48):
investments haven't been made inthe HR, so you're starting from
behind.
So how are you holding the samestandards as your counterparts
in other areas?
How can we get you there andmake your business case for
proving what has to happen first?
So we're not going to go throughall of this data, but when I
talk about understanding yourreality, I mean actually do the
math on the data.
(19:09):
So when we look at somethinglike our in turnover year over
year, I am so glad everyone'sbreathing a sigh of relief.
It's great we're not posting27% turnover like we were a
couple years ago at a nationallevel.
Great we're down to 18%.
The amount of ties have been aconversation this year that were
(19:31):
at pre-pandemic levels.
Do the map on 18% versus 15.9%across the amount of individuals
that make up that group?
It is hundreds of thousands, iswhat it starts to add up to
Vacancy rate we have.
I mean, some of these.
2024 is still a projection, ithasn't fully been analyzed yet,
(19:54):
but I think we know it's goingto be less than last year.
Some people are saying it'sgoing to be 8%, but 8%, 9%.
Why do we want to start with avacancy issue?
Why aren't we solving it beforewe know that we're going to
continue to have increased joborders, et cetera.
Going to continue to haveincreased job orders, et cetera.
Drilling into what each of thesenumbers mean, not just for your
system but for your market, foryour region, those are really
(20:18):
important, because I think somany times we think percentages
and they seem better, but areyou equating it to the actual
volume and quantity behind it?
And then the other thing that Ithink is something real for us
all to look at right now is alot of position control was put
into place last two years.
We all played a numbers game.
(20:39):
Great, I think the exercise ofevaluating job openings is huge
and something that should alwayshappen.
How is it that the active jobopenings for RNs only represent
half of the vacancy population?
So when we're thinking aboutjob openings, yes, they've come
down, yes, we have satisfiedsome of the short-term demands
(21:02):
that we have, but we're stillnot even hiring and even
marketing half of what ouractual needs are.
The most important thing for meon understanding reality is
then how do you know what yourtrue baseline is so that five
years from now, when you'rehearing stats about additional
needs, when you're sitting therewith your CFO and they're
talking about the expansionplans, you're like now I have
(21:24):
another 2,000 FTEs to accountfor it, 50% of this unit's going
to retire you have a realisticbaseline to work from and then
you can add on those futurestats that you know are
inevitable to fall into yourworkforce needs.
There is a ton of competitionfor RNs.
(21:45):
We know that.
It's actually interesting whenyou look at some of the
healthcare reports that we'llsend out RNs everyone.
I think we are feeling a littlerelief in the RA world.
We will, for the first time, Ithink, in 30 years, have a bit
of a surplus for a very shortperiod of time, and that is not
true in all regions.
So those of you that look veryconcerned you should be, because
(22:05):
it's not true in your regionright Northeast, do not get
excited.
It is not happening in yourarea.
But globally, we're in aposition where the schools have
done their job right.
We have regenerated thispopulation.
What are not listed here areimaging issues, our pharmacy
issues, our tech issues, all theissues we all know that are
(22:26):
going on, and so I think that'spart of the dialogue that we
need to be in and part of whatwe need to be talking about,
just like Bob said, like whatare those hot pocket areas that
maybe have not historicallyreceived the attention they
should, that the shortages areabout to grow, and how do you
really drill into that?
And that's where just reallyunderstanding your data and that
competitive landscape at eachindividual job level becomes
(22:49):
important.
Can you change yourrequirements for your pharmacy
techs, like, let's do some ofthat work now to make sure that
we don't have a bottleneck and ashortage issue in a couple of
years?
The other thing I just want toshow this.
So these are actually realsystems we work with.
I have some real data.
Everything in here is real datafrom our BI platform that we
(23:10):
pull together.
We pull market information allthe time.
For some partners it's daily,based on where we're at in the
partnership, but at leastquarterly we're looking at what
is the competitive landscape anda lot of times what I like to
do this is teed up for a veryspecific conversation with a
friend of ours in Rochester.
But I like to pull markets andI like to pull both comparable
(23:33):
markets or markets that youthink are thriving, and we try
to look at the data andunderstand what are the
similarities, what are thenuances, what are the important
factors for you to consider?
So I would also encourage youlook beyond your own market.
Cincinnati has a very similardemographic profile to
Jacksonville, florida Slightlydifferent overall population
(23:54):
size, but the demographic mixand the competition for
healthcare is very similar.
So one of our partners based inCincinnati.
That's the first thing we did.
It's how we knew to scope thedeal.
We had been working inJacksonville for Baptist Health
System for a decade.
I knew those numbers like theback of my hand.
I was able to instantly connect.
This is what we need toconsider there and as a result,
(24:17):
we decided you know, we've beenin that partnership for four
years and we're hiring over6,000 people a year when before
they could barely break 3,000.
And so knowing your data, butfinding relative markets and
then creating a relationshipwith someone on that market, I
think all of that is somethingwe can work on now in this
little bit of a period ofbreathing time that we feel that
we have Knowing your numbers.
(24:39):
So there's a lot of data hereand we're not going to review
all this specifically, but Iactually have homework for you
all that I would encourage youto do.
If you can't sit down and fillout your grid, I'll call it on
your critical KPIs for yourrecruitment function.
Maybe not you, maybe yourdirector or TA, right?
(24:59):
If you can't do that veryquickly, we're not tracking the
right things, and the reason Isay that is these KPIs and these
efficiency metrics inform us asto where we're losing people.
Where's the bleed?
How do we stop the bleed?
You can do it unit by unit,manager by manager.
You have all this amazing datain your system, readily
(25:20):
available to you.
If you haven't already investedin Power BI, that's how we call
all our data together now.
But the workday and the systemsare great.
The reporting is cumbersome, soif there's some way to put some
analytics on top of it for itto do the hard work for you.
But knowing your numbersinstantly tells you what is off
(25:41):
right, what has changed, whathas become a negative and how am
I going to go laser focused tosolve that very specific problem
.
This is a subset of a lot of theinformation that we look at
whether it's time to fill orefficiencies.
We take this back and look atthe stages, the recruitment
process.
If you don't have your time andstage activated workday, please
(26:01):
go activate it.
It tells you how long acandidate sat in each stage.
We then triage that and thatreally starts to put together
your full playbook for you.
This is now my priority.
To go, software it's black andwhite, right, defining your
needs.
So this is one of my favoritethings that we cracked the nut
on a few years ago.
(26:21):
We're constantly in discussionsaround talking with health
systems that really did not knowhow to calculate what their
annual hiring needs were, and wewere being asked can you please
scope out this major deal?
Oh, by the way, put a cost perhire backstop in it.
Tell us exactly how many peopleyou're going to hire.
But our partners couldn'tfigure that out either.
(26:42):
They would know vacancy FTEcount.
So we started doing this.
We came up with a very, very,very simple formula that I will
tell you is very accurate.
We use this in every engagementfor pricing a deal, starting a
deal, and it's part of ourannual forecasting partnership
reviews, and it's this simpleTake the year what's your
(27:05):
average time to fill?
That's how many times a yearyour job's going to turn.
So that's how many times youcan expect that same job opening
to reproduce.
You take your number of jobopenings that's active at that
time, times the turn that's howmany hires we're going to make.
Okay, the way that you can makesure that that number is
(27:25):
accurate is then measure itagainst your turnover number.
It should jive, and the onlytime that we see that not be
accurate is if your time to fillis so long that we actually
need to calculate over a14-month period of time instead
of a 12-month period of time,just to account for that.
Happy to do some of this withyou, but it's fun, just play
around with it, and I thinkyou'd be interested to see how
(27:50):
accurate it is for the largerpicture when you get granular
per unit.
There's a lot of nuances there,especially if we have ratio
changes happening new towers,all the things that we work
through but it's a really greatplace to start to know.
Next year, I have to hire 2,000people, right.
And then the last thing, andthis is the last thing I'll talk
on before we open up forquestions Again it's really
(28:13):
difficult to innovate and be putin that position next to your
peer that gets all the fundingand all the attention not
innovation, patient safetywithout truly having the right
foundation first, and so an easyexercise to go through.
This is a very watered downversion of it.
We actually have a wholeassessment you can take on our
(28:35):
website.
You can entertain and do thisas well.
Where are you in the life cycle?
You know, the idea is we allwant to be in an integrated,
evidence-based position Fancywords for saying.
You have a very strongoptimized process that should be
fully tech-enabled at thispoint, if not have the majority
(28:56):
of it fully automated.
That is producing a top,world-class candidate and hiring
manager experience and hasalleviated the pressure on your
function.
So all you're having to talkabout is workforce planning and
retention and not about how toget people in the door because
you've solved that problem.
I would do the assessment ifyou'd like, but also you can
(29:18):
just look through these andwhere am I at?
And then what I like to do isokay, if your vision in five
years is to have a one-clickprocess that is fully automated,
but you're here.
What are the basic blocking andtackling we have to do first?
That's your one-year plan.
Your two-year plan is to gethere.
Your three-year plan is toaccomplish.
(29:39):
You know probably what has beenput on your plate today to
accomplish from an innovationperspective.
Hopefully this was helpful.
Again, this is how we actuallyoperate.
It's what we do.
This is how we partner withleaders all over the country to
sit down at the table with youand help you figure out a place
to start.
I'm sure a lot of you alreadydo a version of this work today,
(30:02):
and it's not overly exciting,right, it's just doing the hard
work and figuring out how tooperationalize our HR functions
in a way that I just don't thinkwe've prioritized historically.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
I loved your description of partnership.
I love the idea of dualculpability, where you have a
client and you have a strategicpartner that both have
strategically aligned goals andobjectives.
My question is have you everengaged in a performance-based
risk-sharing contract with aclient where the focus is on
(30:35):
quality based on time, toproductivity and then retention?
And then my second question isyou noted that Cincinnati is a
very competitive market?
That's certainly anunderstatement.
How do you protect againstconflict of interest when you
already have a presence inCincinnati and you happen to be
based in Cincinnati?
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah.
So the first thing we addressthe contract structure.
So it is very normal now for usto have shared skin in the game
.
So the way that we're going towork best is in looking at this
as a long-time partnership.
Right, it takes a while totransform these things.
Your average most time, theaverage time to fill we're
walking into a loan, requiresfor a pretty substantial
(31:18):
partnership.
But what we have evolved to iswe put higher backstops in place
.
So what is the hires that we'regoing to think we're going to
achieve?
We put a target cost per hires.
There's already sort of areimbursement built in if we
don't hit that threshold.
We also will layer in SLAs thatalign with your strategic
priorities.
So whether it's a qualityinitiative, a time to fill
(31:41):
initiative, whatever it might be, we mutually agree on those
SLAs as well.
And on the front end we try toset what those targets are, but
we leave it in many cases for atthree months.
We sort of regroup on the SLAswe signed, really solidify that
the data and the targets areappropriate and then work from
(32:02):
there.
The CFOs tend to really likethis plan because there's
dollars, you know.
Again, there's shared risk.
I will say I haven't paidanything back yet.
So we really work hard with ourpartners to get the numbers
right.
Right it has to be fair forboth sides.
We put in accountabilitymetrics to hold each other.
(32:26):
A lot of it is on hiringmanager, a lot of it turns to
process, and so that's where alot of fun good process work
comes in and not works well andvery competitive markets.
So the way that we sort of lookat it is what is the candidate
availability?
We do an assessment Are wereally really fighting for the
(32:47):
same candidate?
So we look at everything fromcommuter patterns, depth of
where candidates live versusdepth of where candidates work.
Are they actually driving leftover this bridge or right over
this bridge?
We just work in DC a lot with apartner of ours.
There's one bridge no one wantsto go over, so we start there
(33:08):
and then we really talk about isit the right thing for the
prior partner that we have?
We turn down work.
Derek's not like that, but myjob is to make sure we can
recruit and deliver for thepartners we already have, and we
do turn down work because it'snot the right thing to do.
In most cases we can find aplace to play together.
(33:30):
Maybe it's not everything,maybe it's not nursing.
It is very rare that weactually have an issue where we
can't figure out a solution tosupport both parties in a fair
way From a delivery perspective.
The way that I manage that isthe same.
The teams are not shared.
Our recruiters are always 100%dedicated to one specific
(33:55):
partner and hopefully a specificunit, but a specific area.
So you're never sharingrecruiters and we structure the
leadership to where theleadership is.
I'm really your commonsnominator right that, and maybe
an SVP that ensures thathopefully our best practices are
being shared.
But it truly is.
There's not one winning versusanother because of whatever
(34:18):
incentive that VP might havethat day.
But yeah, it's a little tricky.
It is tricky especially in theCincinnati's.
Bob Q saw me when Chicago waslike stop turning on business,
take it all.
You know, because we're veryprotective of that partnership
and I'll call my existingpartners and say this is the
circumstance, can I get yourreaction?
(34:38):
And nine out of ten timesthey're going to tell us to
pursue it.
If they don't, we figure outwhat the alternative is.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
The thing with that is, from my perspective, when
you partner with human you sortof own the database.
So the people that apply toyour organization they don't
fish out of that, for you knowLoyola or Surrey right, so they.
Now what gets tricky is whencandidates apply to every
(35:06):
hospital in Chicago.
So they become in everydatabase and so the choice is
theirs of where to go.
And so that puts the onusreally on the organization for
their value proposition anddifferentiating themselves to
say I want University of ChicagoMedicine absolutely hands down
over Northwestern or Loyola oranybody else.
(35:27):
So that's where you know,that's sort of how I view it.
With respect to the performance, we never had a performance
sort of contract.
Now for me that's like having aprenup of some kind.
It just doesn't really feelright.
When you have the trust, whenyou have the strong partnership,
(35:50):
you know you're not feelingyou're taking, you're being, you
know taken advantage of.
And and particularly youmentioned the word retention.
You know that's sort of a youknow a thing with me, because a
lot of people will say you know,when you hired them, did your
retention, you know, get better?
And so I view that a littledifferently.
(36:13):
When I hired them, theexpectations I had of human was
to bring to our doorstepcandidates that subscribe to our
value proposition, for them tobe able to articulate who we are
, what we do, what we value,what's it like to work for us.
That's as much as I can expectthem to do, besides, of course,
(36:38):
being followed by candidatesOnce they cross the threshold
into our organization.
The retention is a leadershipchallenge, a leadership
responsibility.
They don't have control over it.
When I first started, we usedto do HR orientation and people
who ran the orientation said bythe time they left orientation
(37:01):
they were all jacked up and assoon as they got to the unit
they went fresh and burnt.
So you know they control whatthey can control.
If they're bringing us peoplethat aren't a good fit, that's a
different issue, but that'swhat I looked for when they
hired people.
Are they missing the boatentirely or are they bringing
(37:22):
people that we can really moldand groom and you know, make
part of our organization longterm?
You know, make part of ourorganization long term.
The whole retention thing isjust.
You know everyone's looking for, you know where to point the
finger on that and you know thereality is retention is impacted
(37:43):
by the little things thatpeople experience every day they
come to work.
It's not, you know, we justacquired a new hospital and all
that.
It's the interaction you and Ihave in the hallway or don't
have.
It's the meeting how I wastreated at the meeting just an
hour ago.
It's all these little thingsthat cumulatively make up why I
want to stay or leave theorganization.
(38:06):
And the thing that always, foryears, just puzzled me was, you
know, figuring out what drivesengagement is a pretty simple
thing, because all you have todo is ask yourself what kind of
relationship do you want withyour employer?
Because we all want the samething.
It's not a mystery, right?
(38:27):
We want to be paidcompetitively, we want to be
developed, we want to beinvested in, we want to be
respected, we want to beincluded, we want to be valued
All these things everybody wants.
So if you want it, and I wantit, why not do that for the
people that you're charged withleading?
And when you do that, I thinkyou know who wants to go to work
(38:51):
and have a lousy relationshipwith their boss, who wants to
dread getting up in the morning?
No way.
So work on those things.
But it's you know, it'ssomething that perpetuates
organizations, because I thinkwe promote people into jobs who
are really strong clinicians andnow they have responsibility
(39:14):
for people and they don't knownecessarily how to balance that.
And then you add on top of itsome of you were talking about
the span of control that some ofthe people have in health care.
I'd never seen that in otherorganizations.
It's impossible to have animpact on 150 people.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
It's impossible to have an impact on 150 people.
The other thing, I'll say justa slightly more specific sample.
We understand it's a real thing.
So one of the things we try todo is, if we can really refine
our forecasting numbers and wecan know that you're going to
have a lot of new grads that aregoing to be required to fill up
this specific area can we lookat investing in additional
(39:53):
preceptors?
What other training can be putin place to take that
responsibility off the managers?
And so that's some ways thatwe'll partner as well as we're
thinking about the hiringforecast.
What are the incremental changesthat need to happen to support
and insulate that manager?
Because that's really why theexperience falls apart most
cases.
(40:13):
So again, maybe, as you'rethinking about your forecasting
and numbers, it's not just upthat higher.
If you're bringing 50 peopleinto a unit in a short period of
time, the unit is help.
How can we layer in someadditional support?
You know, bob, there's more foryou.
But, sarah, if we're to weighin, can you talk a little bit
(40:36):
about what success or whatlearnings you have from like the
change management ofimplementing human?
Speaker 4 (40:41):
specifically with your hiring managers, who may or
may not like that control thatthey have over the selection
process.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So the change most of the musicians that we
experienced was going to HR,because over time I think people
actually saw the writing on thewall that we were going to be
and not everybody does that thatworks with RPOs or Owerk Newman
we were going to change themout.
It wasn't.
It didn't make sense to me toduplicate, to have an internal
(41:11):
team, an external team,particularly because one of the
goals that we had was to have aconsistent candidate experience.
We didn't want, you know, onegroup of people talking about
the value proposition one wayand another.
So that was important over time.
(41:32):
So the resistance most of itcame from the HR team, keep in
mind our current process wasabout as bad as it could get.
So you know, when you bring astack of resumes it's a daunting
(41:54):
experience for a hiring managerand we had half hiring managers
saying, oh, you mean, I don'thave to find my old people
anymore.
So we went from that to beingpresented well-qualified,
diverse slate of candidates andthen the human folks built a
relationship with the hiringmanagers and for me, again, the
hiring managers were really thekey measurement that I would
(42:18):
focus on.
If I heard noise at any time,I'd get all over it because I
knew that that was going to makeor break this whole journey
that we're on.
But there really wasn't anyresistance from the hiring
managers and when you thinkabout it, you know they were
getting their needs fulfilledwith people that you know.
(42:40):
The decisions they had to makeacross this slate of candidates
was a hard decision for them.
It was, you know, good andbetter and best that they were
being presented with good andbetter and best that they were
being presented with.
And so there wasn't pushbackfrom the executives.
They were all watching verycarefully, there's no doubt
(43:00):
about it but they weren't liningup in my office saying what in
God's name are you doing?
They were like holy mackerelwe're getting people.
Our personal best at one time, Ithink, was hiring RNs in 33
days.
I mean, it was like crazy.
So it was all you know, thiswave of positiveness that took
(43:22):
place and, like I said, thehiring managers became very
attached to their recruiters andthe human folks knew our
organization so well.
You know, I remember beingpicked up at the airport one day
from the person who still leadsthe team today and she's in the
(43:46):
car with me talking on the wayto the office and she's
mentioning all these people whowork there, these physicians,
these clinicians, this person,that person, and I was blown
away by how well she knew notonly the people who they work,
but their nuances and you knowthe different things about the
(44:07):
personal things about people.
So they really make an effortto understand, you know, with
the organization and people andthe culture.
So really, honest to God, itwasn't, you know, we would have
lasted nine years or eight yearsand I certainly wouldn't have
been there.
You know they would have gottenme a long time ago if things
didn't really work out well.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, what I'll say is, most of the time our biggest
challenge is with the talentacquisition team that we might
feel they might feel threatenedby us, even if it's very clear
in the forefront that we'redividing responsibility or it's
natural right the hiring managerprocess.
So we do have a dedicatedapproach and we start off every
(44:51):
single relationship with we callit an intake call.
That's just part of our naturalprocess.
When a new job opening isposted, but the very start of a
partnership, or if there's a newunit being assigned to us or a
new hiring manager, it is aone-on-one call where the
recruiter and the recruitmentmanager are getting to know you
instantly.
We ask the hiring manager whatyour culture is like, what's
your preference like, et cetera.
(45:12):
So on the forefront there'ssort of an alignment that stays
true through the duration ofpartnership.
The only time that we see wherewe have an opportunity to work
through challenges with hiringmanagers is if there's a change
in the process that puts a newtimeline responsibility on them.
So if you come to us and youneed to exponentially increase
(45:36):
your throughput of hires meaningwe have to reduce your time to
fill and we all stack hands thatthe biggest delay is that it's
taking your hiring managers twoweeks to get back and we put a
target in there of 72 hours.
We're going to hold youaccountable to that.
That is usually the only timethat we have a little bit of
work to do with the hiringmanagers, but then all of a
(45:58):
sudden their needs are beingfulfilled and how we work
through that is, with the unitleadership, we really make sure
the hiring manager has thesupport that they need to
achieve those numbers and thatthey understand this is a
company initiative.
We're not picking on you etcetera, what the impact is.
But beyond that, hiringmanagers are usually our biggest
(46:19):
cheerleaders and advocatesbecause we're taking so much of
the responsibility off of their,their plate and the stress that
they feel.
So so are there any concernswith your team not being?
I'm saying, in your case, popit recruited, the inch caught it
?
Yeah, you know, do you have anypush that could we get?
This asked 100 of the time and100 percent of the time we are
(46:41):
still 100 remote and hire whatwe need to.
So it's been interestingpost-pandemic because all of a
sudden that tolerance level justchanged in general because a
lot of your HR teams are nowremote, but it comes up a lot.
What we try to do is we go onsite on a regular basis.
All of our recruiters will gothrough your onboarding class as
(47:03):
our intention.
We will walk your unit floors.
We end up having face time withhiring managers that maybe
prior teams didn't go about itthat way, because it's sort of
natural that they understood thehospital et cetera.
We really do a lot of work inyour market to understand it.
If there are nuances beyondcover, we try to then get there
(47:25):
Like the weird bridge situationsthat's like a reality in a lot
of markets.
But yeah, it's always somethingthat's a concern at the
forefront and we really justwork with you guys to partner
understand your EVP.
You will work with us to puttogether an elevator pitch,
right.
So each of our recruiters willhave their sales pitch to the
candidate.
It should 100% mimic your brand.
(47:45):
No one knows we exist.
Our phone numbers are yourphone numbers.
We map all this stuff so it'sseamless.
You do not know human exists,the candidate.
We don't hide it.
If we are point blank ass, thatwould be lying.
But the candidate just doesn'tknow.
They do not.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
There are opportunities for them to come
to Chicago.
There are many opportunitieswhere we have business review
meetings and they have some ofthe recruiters tag along and
then they take advantage of thattime to personally be their
hiring managers.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yeah, and have job fairs.
We still do on-site job fairs.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Just so we're out there.
It's always the summer monthsin Ice Monster.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, but you know, we sort of assess, like I have
one partner that had an on-siteteam.
She wanted two people on siteto do a very specific rotation
of a group that was reallychallenging.
A new community household theyacquired.
We put two people on site theretwo days a week.
That's not.
It's not gonna last forever,right, it doesn't.
They're not gonna have thatneed forever.
(48:50):
But let's figure out what we'resolving for and that's how we
try to go about it.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
We spent a lot of time coming down to Florida.
We'd send groups of individualsdown here to train them on our
benefit programs, ourcompensation programs, our union
contracts, so all those thingsthat they needed to do to be
well-equipped about ourorganization, because they did
everything from source to makethe offer.
(49:16):
And so you know it was to ouradvantage to invest that kind of
time and we would do thatregularly because you know the
benefits would change and thecontracts would change.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yeah, it gets to.
The idea would be just like wehave a seamless candidate hiring
manager experience, it shouldalso be a seamless experience
for you all.
So the best partnerships arewhere we truly are just treated
like one of your employees.
We're joining team meetings,we're part of that, we're
hearing what's going on.
Ultimately, we have the right.
The director of comp is part ofour contact.
(49:48):
You know it's the same, itshould not be any different.
Of comp is part of our contact.
You know it's the same, itshould not be any different.
Um, really, the difference justcomes in and uh, the hopefully,
the data.
We're going to show you how wewill always bring best practices
, be able to access a ton ofinformation and insights, and
that's my job is to make sure,like we're helping to make you
as best in class as you can be.
(50:09):
But beyond that, and hopefully,all the levels of service are
improving.
But if we're bringing a higherlevel of service, your internal
team is going to start bringinga higher level of service.
It's how it happens, it's howit works right, and so, the more
that we can think about aseamless employment experience
and TA experience, all of thattranslates into all of the work
(50:31):
that your candidates feel too,so it's even true of your full
interim team today.
Yeah, any other questions?
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
We typically deal with three different headways
some with how we are positionedin the state, some with the type
of work we do and some with thegeographical settings on it, so
especially the most restrictivesettings, whether it is a
qualified residential treatmentfacility, psychiatric treatment
(51:01):
facility or psych hospitals.
The first headwind that we seefrom the state is both Kansas
and Missouri.
The net loser of of not to tellyou know compact is great for
many other states, but to thesetwo Midwest states ultimately
there's a net loss.
(51:21):
So that's first thing.
Second, the maturity curve ofour nurses.
We attract a lot of younggraduates but by year three they
come to us genuinely eitherthrough exit survey or concern
to us that I'm losing a lot ofmy skills being in this QRTP,
(51:43):
being in this PRT, being in thispsych hospital.
So we are somewhat kind ofcollaborating with other
hospitals nearby where we askthem hey, are there some parents
that our staff can do?
So there is some collaborationto go in that way.
So that's the second advent forus.
The third advent is some of ourhospitals or the psychiatric
(52:06):
locations.
They are very deep ruralregions, very deep rural regions
.
It works for the nurses who areyoung, with many under fifth
grade kids.
But as the kids are getting tomiddle school and high school
they tend to prefer more otherlocal care.
So the lifespan of a nurse inour facilities tend to be
(52:30):
between that three to five years.
So how do you navigate it a bitso yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
So your circumstances are real, right, and I would
not like to be in your shoes tosolve all of those.
Right, and I think this goesinto being realistic.
Then, with what yourrecruitment and hiring model
looks like and what does best inclass look like for you is just
not going to be the same thatit is going to be in a setting
(52:59):
like UChicago, medicine or otherareas, right?
So I think having a realisticunderstanding of what are we
trying to solve for if thesefactors are real and
unperventable, right, and I'mnot.
I don't know if they'reunperventable or not, but
they're your reality and one ofthe things you just said, I saw
this done during the pandemic acouple of times and it just
(53:23):
wowed me the more that we canstart stop thinking about our
staffing crisis as within thesefour walls and you start
breaking down the walls of yourhospital and start thinking
about it and servicing yourcommunity in whole and creating
partnerships with other groups.
And if you can get into thedialogue of how are we going to
(53:46):
transfer, how are we going tosupport this, what opportunity
is?
Because I think that the bigneed for your group is the
visibility into what's next forthem, right?
So if you know they're going tohave a five-year shelf life
because of the reality, so it'sgoing to be really hard to even
get them in the front doorbecause they're already thinking
(54:07):
about the teenage years.
Is there a partnership or aplan that you have that's like
we're going to get you ready tocatapult you to that next
opportunity In exchange for that?
This is what your day-to-daylooks like right now, et cetera.
But how do you take thoseproblems and turn it into the
value proposition you're goingto offer them?
So, listen, I'll just sayknowing your reality and
(54:28):
sometimes realizing you can'tchange your reality, that's okay
.
Now that would help us backinto what are the real things
you can solve.
How does that translate intoyour volumes and how is that
okay for your business and howdo we get your investors and
board to understand that it'sokay for your business?
(54:49):
So I think that you've started.
You know your limitations.
That's a good place to start.
So how do we take what we'reworking with and make it the
best experience we can whilewe're there and then create a
long-term solution that you knowis out of the four walls?
But how, then, do you getsomeone else pushing those
candidates back to you and thatreciprocal approach.
(55:12):
I think you're going to dependon a lot of network
relationships to make thathappen.
It sounds like you alreadystarted.
Listen, we support healthsystems.
At one point it was all 50states, but it's coast to coast.
Every geographic setting youcan imagine, every demographic
setting you can imagine, youthink you have a unique issue.
We've heard it and everyone'sissues are real.
(55:34):
But that's the point.
This treating talent acquisitionlike an industry-wide solution
and a one-side-fits-all solutionis not going to work.
This is not how we're gonnafigure this out.
We're gonna figure this outlocation by location, community
by community, and reallystarting from the ground up and
(55:57):
understanding those nuances.
And so that's why we're lookingat market data and comparison.
Don't just pull up the bigbackers report that's commuting
in the northeast right.
Let's take it a step forward.
Let's look at similardemographics, look at similar
markets and partner with peoplethat are in your role in that
area, so that you can understandwhat they're doing and hire you
to work.
Even if you're thousands ofmiles apart, you have the same
(56:20):
exact issue.
If you're in this specificdemographic, this specific
market and find those likepeople, really, really drill
down, and that's a big part ofour secret to our success is
taking our data and taking ourexperience as very finite
examples and realizing how theyapply to the circumstances that
(56:41):
we're facing and being againrealistic with what is possible.
You know, does that help?
Yes, all right, I think we areat lunch, but we're around, so
if you have any questions, I'dlike to talk to you.
Appreciate your time.
If you haven't done the QR code, I'll put that back up.
But also we have yourinformation, so if you go here,
you'll get to a landing page.
(57:02):
It's a 2025 state of healthcare report.
You can navigate out of that.
Our resource hub has the talentmaturity model.
It has ROI calculators.
There's more resources than wepossibly know what to do with.
I'm even being filmed today.
I will become a resource atsome point, but spend time there
.
It's all this information youcan download.
It's all yours.
(57:23):
Hopefully it helps on your TAjourney.
So great Thanks.
For those of you not familiar with Human, we started
Human as a standalone RPObusiness in late 2016.
Prior to that, we were part ofa larger travel nursing business
.
We recognized an opportunity totransition into value-add
relationships, not just be thenecessary evil that traveling
(00:21):
was, and so we took what was avery small portion of that
business, sold that business offand really spent all of our
time and energy over the lasteight years trying to bring our
RPO solution to life.
We primarily spent our time inhealthcare even today.
We started this business, soall of our customers are in
(00:44):
healthcare even today.
We started this business, soall of our customers are in
healthcare.
Now about 65% of our partnersare in the healthcare space.
We've been able to translatethe work that we do in hospitals
and the non-clinical side intocommercial areas and into
enterprise large organizations,so that's been an exciting new
feat for us.
But, as you can tell by ourstats, we hire a lot in health
(01:06):
care.
So last year we madeapproximately 42,000 hires on
behalf of our partners and abouthalf of those are RAs.
That is the primary reasonhealth care organizations reach
out to us.
It's always our starting pointhow can you help me with RNs and
then the intention over time isto partner and expand that
relationship to provide furthersupport for their clinical and
(01:28):
non-clinical needs.
We're really proud of the workthat we do.
We have some KPIs that we holdourselves to really high level
of standard.
The idea, as you partner withus, is that we have this
baseline of standard and we workwith your system to achieve
those same levels of successstandard and we work with your
system to achieve those samelevels of success.
(01:48):
We are really proud of thepartners that we work with.
12 of our partners have beenwith us for more than six years
and Bob represents one of thosegroups.
We just completed our mostrecent survey and received a 9.8
NPS for over 36 uniqueorganizations.
That ranked us so very proud ofthose results.
So why do people call us?
So?
We get called for two reasons.
(02:09):
The first reason is someone hasan immediate issue that they
are trying to overcome.
We see this a lot coming out ofCOVID and the pandemic and we
have health systems andfinancial crises because of the
premium labor expenses that theyendured during that time period
.
So a lot of times the phonecalls we need your help to
(02:31):
reduce premium labor or we havea vacancy issue, whatever is
going on that has made their jobopening search, and so we can
come in and help augment yourexisting talent acquisition
function.
I'll show you about some of theways that we go about that, but
we are always trying to take therelationship beyond the HR
(02:52):
relationship, so similar to whatwas being discussed in the
prior panel, and how can wealign the work that you're doing
with your financial incentivesas an organization partner with
your CFO, and then take it astep further, and how we partner
with your COO or youroperations function to really
institutionalize what is goingon.
So that way it is no longersomething that HR alone is
(03:15):
pushing, but it really becomes abusiness-wide initiative.
We track these stats incrediblyclosely.
This is just in the last fewyears these are four of our
largest partners that all thesenumbers have been verified by
their CFOs and what we were ableto save them so that savings
does include the full cost ofour program as well has been
(03:37):
factored into that.
So that's one reason peoplepartner with us.
The other reason people partnerwith us is they're in seats like
yours, really trying to thinklong term and strategically
about how they can transform howtheir talent acquisition,
function works.
These are usually individualsthat have 10-year plans, are
(03:59):
looking at their upcomingturnover, retention challenges,
aging, population and businessdevelopment plans.
This is our most excitingpartners to be in.
It's really where we think wecan be the most beneficial.
We get to truly helprevolutionize what is happening
in your organization.
(04:20):
Again, we'll talk a little bitabout how we do that in a second
, but Bob is going to tell hisstory about our partnership and
why he originally engaged us andwhat the results were as a part
of that, and his vision, whichdates back well ahead of the
pandemic, and how he wanted toget ahead of what was going on
(04:40):
with staffing.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
So just a little bit more about myself.
I know I introduced myself asthe former head of human
resources for the University ofChicago Medicine.
Actually, my background overthe course of what was 42 years
spanned a variety of industries.
Most of my background in HR hasbeen for for-profit
(05:06):
organizations, any industrieslike financial services,
manufacturing, consumer goods,life sciences, private equity so
I had a lot of experienceoutside of non-profit.
This was the first opportunitythat I came across towards the
end of my career.
I'd have to say that it wasprobably I am envious of many of
(05:28):
you who have been in this fieldfor many, many decades.
In some cases, for as long as Ican remember, nobody in
healthcare would really talk toyou unless you were from
healthcare.
It was a very insular industryand I was fortunate to come
across a CEO who thought verydifferently, had lots of
(05:49):
experience, of course, in healthcare, but saw the value of
people outside of health careand for certain, you know, I
wasn't doing any surgeries oranything but things like supply
chain and HR and those kinds ofthings Things like supply chain
and HR and those kinds of things.
So I was able to bring much ofwhat I learned over the years to
(06:11):
health care.
So when I think back at thepartnership, having been there
10 years, the two things thatSarah describes is the reasons
why people do business with themI think I fall into both of
those categories.
Frankly, it started out with aproblem.
(06:31):
I was with the organizationmaybe two years and things were
apparently they were goingsomewhat well.
I thought.
I looked at lots of thedashboards and numbers until one
day I got a call from the headof our ambulatory operations,
(06:53):
who I had a very goodrelationship with but was very
direct and said to me oh Bob,you're killing me with the
staffing and I'm like you knowwhat are you talking about?
I get all of these greatreports.
She said well, we don't havestaff for the clinics, and so
that was sort of a wake-up callfor me, knowing that I needed to
(07:16):
do something pretty dramatic.
And so when I thought about thecurrent state of our talent
acquisition and gave a lot ofthought to that, it was pretty
primitive in many ways.
So, for example, the idea ofrecruiting at University of
Chicago Medicine was recruiterscarrying, you know maybe 100 or
(07:40):
so recs.
We used CareerBuilder as ourmain source and our recruiters
would pull resumes fromCareerBuilder, pile them up,
walk into a hiring manager'soffice and say who would you
like me to call it?
And so they were almost givinga sort of a homework assignment
to the hiring managers, whowould go home, like a teacher
(08:03):
often does, and grades tests.
They would sit home and theywould review resume after resume
and come in and they were verymuch a part of the process.
So when I decided we needed todo something different, I was
aware of RPOs I never had workedwith them before, but it was
aware, certainly, of what theydo and I spent a lot of time
(08:28):
researching a variety ofdifferent companies big ones,
small ones and I sort ofaccidentally came across
Youman's website one afternoonand I was intrigued by the
quality of the website,particularly things that they
talked about, like the cultureof their organization.
So they made it fast forward.
(08:50):
They made it as part of the cutof companies that we asked to
speak with and from that pointforward, you know, I was still
very hesitant.
I was not necessarily I wouldcharacterize myself as not
necessarily a believer and I wasnervous as hell because here I
am turning over the, you know,the responsibility of bringing
(09:13):
talent into the organization asthe CHRO, and what if that thing
sort of crashed in Burke?
So I wanted to take baby stepsand so the first description
that Sarah said about solving aproblem I needed to solve the
ambulatory problem.
And so we had 50 jobs open and,after going through the due
(09:38):
diligence of all these companies, having visited their
facilities down in Florida whichto this day I think it was sort
of staged in terms of how theyset things up, because people
were just like smiling from earto ear.
They were so engaged and theculture just sort of hits you as
(10:00):
soon as you walk through thebuilding.
As soon as you walked throughthe building, but that sort of
not only was it true, it sort ofmanifested itself over time in
the team that they pulledtogether for us and many of
those people who are stillservicing the University of
Chicago Medicine are still onthat account.
So there's a lot of consistencyin terms of the team.
(10:22):
So we decided to partner withthem 50 jobs and I think the
first weekend that they put outsome sort of a blast, there was
thousands, maybe 3,000applicants for those 50 jobs and
the understanding when wepartnered with them was that we
(10:42):
would take baby steps, we wouldprove ourselves that we could do
this.
I get more comfortable with whothey are and how they operate.
But if they delivered, we wouldexpand the partnership over
time.
And so the first 50 jobs, theynailed it.
(11:04):
And then I had a decision tomake.
I had a decision who?
I sat with the CEO at the timeand said, okay, so now we want
to expand the partnership.
Do we go big or do we play itsafe?
Do we give them the largestbusiness unit, if you will, of
our patient care services or dowe play it safe and do a smaller
(11:26):
unit?
And, of course, the CEO saidlet's go big.
And so we moved on to patientcare services.
They started to do a lot of theclinical roles.
Then we moved on toadministrative jobs and just
kept growing the business.
We then brought on onboarding.
They did our onboarding or aredoing the onboarding them.
(11:49):
They've done some leadershiproles, director level roles.
They've also done someexecutive roles.
Now, throughout this partnershipand I use the term partnership
because that's really what itwas it wasn't a vendor
relationship.
To me, there's a big differencebetween having a vendor work
(12:11):
for you versus having a partnerPartners.
We all know both our personallives and professional lives are
people who think of yourselfbefore they think of themselves,
of you before they think ofthemselves, and that's been the
relationship with Hewitt.
It's how do we solve problemstogether.
I always felt that my issues,my problems, were their problems
(12:35):
, and it takes a lot of work tobuild that partnership.
It takes a willingness fromboth parties, but that's what
has evolved over the years.
And so, you know, fast forward,nine years later, they're still
at it.
They're posting tremendousnumbers and they've got a cross
(12:57):
system in place, which we neverhad, and we eventually changed
out our recruiters For them.
They became an extension of ourteam.
They would come to Chicago,we'd have our business review
meetings, we'd go to White Soxgames.
(13:28):
We treated them just like, youknow, our employees well into
the partnership, and so, unlikemany of my peers who lost a lot
of sleep during that period, Islept better, always had one eye
open, never took my eye off theball, but I knew that we had
the processes in place, we had aconsistent team of people and
(13:53):
they continued to post, you know, large numbers.
They were hiring almost 5,000people when I left, and it took
a little longer for them to dothat because we were all sort of
fishing out of the same pond.
But you know we made it througha lot better, I think, than
many of my peers.
(14:13):
So it's again one of the bestdecisions I made.
And the other thing I'd justleave you with is the hiring
managers.
For me was the sort of thebellwether.
That's what I kept very close,paid very close attention to,
was the hiring managers andtheir level of satisfaction with
(14:36):
the process and with therecruiters.
And whenever there was an issueand very rarely was there, most
(14:59):
of the issues were when you hadthe audacity to promote people
and take them, move them along.
The hiring managers are likewhat am I going to do, you know?
But the fact of the matter is,you know, it's been, it's been a
great relationship and you knowsome people go full bore right
out of the gate.
We did the approach that Idescribed and it worked well for
us.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Thank you Great.
Yeah, and listen.
We love partnerships like thisbecause, ultimately, what we're
trying to accomplish is whatyou're trying to accomplish,
right.
We are trying to createsystematic, sustainable
workforce solutions.
The healthcare industry hascome a long way, but boy does it
have a long way to go, as weknow, and I think part of what
(15:34):
we try to bring into this issort of a consumer mindset, and
so some of what we're going totalk about you've heard in the
earlier sessions.
There's going to be some themeshere, but all of these areas,
if you were to ask me sort ofwhat does your program look like
, it basically looked exactlylike this of how we get started.
(15:54):
But the reality is, each of youcan access in this way today
and a lot of times when peopleare partnering with us, I think
they think I have this magicwand that just produces
miraculous candidates out ofnowhere.
In actuality, we just have avery systemized process.
(16:14):
We have uncovered everyopportunity to stop the bleed.
So where are we losing people?
Where is fall-off happening?
Where can we refine experience?
And by taking that approachover and over again and not
letting the subjective get inthe way of the objective are how
we put up these numbers and howwe get our partners from being
(16:38):
in a constant state ofreactionary crisis type of
response into proactive,strategic thinking.
So the first thing is you haveto understand your reality.
We'll talk about that a littlebit.
Have to understand your realityWe'll talk about that a little
bit.
It's interesting to me some ofthe conversations out in the
(17:00):
market today.
How many of you feel like lastyear you could breathe a sigh of
relief in hiring right Show ofhands?
Was last year better for youthan prior years?
All right, let's look at somenumbers and show why that
concerns me.
Right, you also need to knowyour personal numbers.
We all have these incredibleworkday isoms, amazing ATS
systems.
(17:20):
There's so much data in there.
Do we know what to do with thatdata and how to take action
from it?
You need to define your needsand so what is it that you need
to do in the next year toovercome whatever your
challenges?
Your vacancy rate how many FTEsdo you need by the end of the
year?
Do you know how to do that work?
(17:40):
Do you know how to calculatethose numbers?
Do you know how to do it overfive years and 10 years?
That's, honestly the firstthing that we do in our
partnerships is tell you howmany annual hires you're going
to need.
And then the last thing, reallyknow your gaps.
So we'll look at something on atalent acquisition maturity
model.
I have a QR code available youguys can scan into all this
stuff and take it all home withyou.
(18:02):
But it's interesting to me howmany times I'm in a conversation
about innovation, becausethat's a strategic priority for
your business, but we don't havestandardization first, and so
it's very difficult to innovateif there is not a standard way
of behaving.
And I think one of thechallenges we have in HR within
(18:25):
these health systems is thesebusinesses have these robust
plans for introducing AI andintroducing technology.
Well, it's really easy to do inpatient services, where all the
money goes and all theinvestments have been for 20
years to be able to improve thatexperience.
But we know what your fundinglooks like, right.
We know that the same time andattention hasn't been spent and
(18:48):
investments haven't been made inthe HR, so you're starting from
behind.
So how are you holding the samestandards as your counterparts
in other areas?
How can we get you there andmake your business case for
proving what has to happen first?
So we're not going to go throughall of this data, but when I
talk about understanding yourreality, I mean actually do the
math on the data.
(19:09):
So when we look at somethinglike our in turnover year over
year, I am so glad everyone'sbreathing a sigh of relief.
It's great we're not posting27% turnover like we were a
couple years ago at a nationallevel.
Great we're down to 18%.
The amount of ties have been aconversation this year that were
(19:31):
at pre-pandemic levels.
Do the map on 18% versus 15.9%across the amount of individuals
that make up that group?
It is hundreds of thousands, iswhat it starts to add up to
Vacancy rate we have.
I mean, some of these.
2024 is still a projection, ithasn't fully been analyzed yet,
(19:54):
but I think we know it's goingto be less than last year.
Some people are saying it'sgoing to be 8%, but 8%, 9%.
Why do we want to start with avacancy issue?
Why aren't we solving it beforewe know that we're going to
continue to have increased joborders, et cetera.
Going to continue to haveincreased job orders, et cetera.
Drilling into what each of thesenumbers mean, not just for your
system but for your market, foryour region, those are really
(20:18):
important, because I think somany times we think percentages
and they seem better, but areyou equating it to the actual
volume and quantity behind it?
And then the other thing that Ithink is something real for us
all to look at right now is alot of position control was put
into place last two years.
We all played a numbers game.
(20:39):
Great, I think the exercise ofevaluating job openings is huge
and something that should alwayshappen.
How is it that the active jobopenings for RNs only represent
half of the vacancy population?
So when we're thinking aboutjob openings, yes, they've come
down, yes, we have satisfiedsome of the short-term demands
(21:02):
that we have, but we're stillnot even hiring and even
marketing half of what ouractual needs are.
The most important thing for meon understanding reality is
then how do you know what yourtrue baseline is so that five
years from now, when you'rehearing stats about additional
needs, when you're sitting therewith your CFO and they're
talking about the expansionplans, you're like now I have
(21:24):
another 2,000 FTEs to accountfor it, 50% of this unit's going
to retire you have a realisticbaseline to work from and then
you can add on those futurestats that you know are
inevitable to fall into yourworkforce needs.
There is a ton of competitionfor RNs.
(21:45):
We know that.
It's actually interesting whenyou look at some of the
healthcare reports that we'llsend out RNs everyone.
I think we are feeling a littlerelief in the RA world.
We will, for the first time, Ithink, in 30 years, have a bit
of a surplus for a very shortperiod of time, and that is not
true in all regions.
So those of you that look veryconcerned you should be, because
(22:05):
it's not true in your regionright Northeast, do not get
excited.
It is not happening in yourarea.
But globally, we're in aposition where the schools have
done their job right.
We have regenerated thispopulation.
What are not listed here areimaging issues, our pharmacy
issues, our tech issues, all theissues we all know that are
(22:26):
going on, and so I think that'spart of the dialogue that we
need to be in and part of whatwe need to be talking about,
just like Bob said, like whatare those hot pocket areas that
maybe have not historicallyreceived the attention they
should, that the shortages areabout to grow, and how do you
really drill into that?
And that's where just reallyunderstanding your data and that
competitive landscape at eachindividual job level becomes
(22:49):
important.
Can you change yourrequirements for your pharmacy
techs, like, let's do some ofthat work now to make sure that
we don't have a bottleneck and ashortage issue in a couple of
years?
The other thing I just want toshow this.
So these are actually realsystems we work with.
I have some real data.
Everything in here is real datafrom our BI platform that we
(23:10):
pull together.
We pull market information allthe time.
For some partners it's daily,based on where we're at in the
partnership, but at leastquarterly we're looking at what
is the competitive landscape anda lot of times what I like to
do this is teed up for a veryspecific conversation with a
friend of ours in Rochester.
But I like to pull markets andI like to pull both comparable
(23:33):
markets or markets that youthink are thriving, and we try
to look at the data andunderstand what are the
similarities, what are thenuances, what are the important
factors for you to consider?
So I would also encourage youlook beyond your own market.
Cincinnati has a very similardemographic profile to
Jacksonville, florida Slightlydifferent overall population
(23:54):
size, but the demographic mixand the competition for
healthcare is very similar.
So one of our partners based inCincinnati.
That's the first thing we did.
It's how we knew to scope thedeal.
We had been working inJacksonville for Baptist Health
System for a decade.
I knew those numbers like theback of my hand.
I was able to instantly connect.
This is what we need toconsider there and as a result,
(24:17):
we decided you know, we've beenin that partnership for four
years and we're hiring over6,000 people a year when before
they could barely break 3,000.
And so knowing your data, butfinding relative markets and
then creating a relationshipwith someone on that market, I
think all of that is somethingwe can work on now in this
little bit of a period ofbreathing time that we feel that
we have Knowing your numbers.
(24:39):
So there's a lot of data hereand we're not going to review
all this specifically, but Iactually have homework for you
all that I would encourage youto do.
If you can't sit down and fillout your grid, I'll call it on
your critical KPIs for yourrecruitment function.
Maybe not you, maybe yourdirector or TA, right?
(24:59):
If you can't do that veryquickly, we're not tracking the
right things, and the reason Isay that is these KPIs and these
efficiency metrics inform us asto where we're losing people.
Where's the bleed?
How do we stop the bleed?
You can do it unit by unit,manager by manager.
You have all this amazing datain your system, readily
(25:20):
available to you.
If you haven't already investedin Power BI, that's how we call
all our data together now.
But the workday and the systemsare great.
The reporting is cumbersome, soif there's some way to put some
analytics on top of it for itto do the hard work for you.
But knowing your numbersinstantly tells you what is off
(25:41):
right, what has changed, whathas become a negative and how am
I going to go laser focused tosolve that very specific problem
.
This is a subset of a lot of theinformation that we look at
whether it's time to fill orefficiencies.
We take this back and look atthe stages, the recruitment
process.
If you don't have your time andstage activated workday, please
(26:01):
go activate it.
It tells you how long acandidate sat in each stage.
We then triage that and thatreally starts to put together
your full playbook for you.
This is now my priority.
To go, software it's black andwhite, right, defining your
needs.
So this is one of my favoritethings that we cracked the nut
on a few years ago.
(26:21):
We're constantly in discussionsaround talking with health
systems that really did not knowhow to calculate what their
annual hiring needs were, and wewere being asked can you please
scope out this major deal?
Oh, by the way, put a cost perhire backstop in it.
Tell us exactly how many peopleyou're going to hire.
But our partners couldn'tfigure that out either.
(26:42):
They would know vacancy FTEcount.
So we started doing this.
We came up with a very, very,very simple formula that I will
tell you is very accurate.
We use this in every engagementfor pricing a deal, starting a
deal, and it's part of ourannual forecasting partnership
reviews, and it's this simpleTake the year what's your
(27:05):
average time to fill?
That's how many times a yearyour job's going to turn.
So that's how many times youcan expect that same job opening
to reproduce.
You take your number of jobopenings that's active at that
time, times the turn that's howmany hires we're going to make.
Okay, the way that you can makesure that that number is
(27:25):
accurate is then measure itagainst your turnover number.
It should jive, and the onlytime that we see that not be
accurate is if your time to fillis so long that we actually
need to calculate over a14-month period of time instead
of a 12-month period of time,just to account for that.
Happy to do some of this withyou, but it's fun, just play
around with it, and I thinkyou'd be interested to see how
(27:50):
accurate it is for the largerpicture when you get granular
per unit.
There's a lot of nuances there,especially if we have ratio
changes happening new towers,all the things that we work
through but it's a really greatplace to start to know.
Next year, I have to hire 2,000people, right.
And then the last thing, andthis is the last thing I'll talk
on before we open up forquestions Again it's really
(28:13):
difficult to innovate and be putin that position next to your
peer that gets all the fundingand all the attention not
innovation, patient safetywithout truly having the right
foundation first, and so an easyexercise to go through.
This is a very watered downversion of it.
We actually have a wholeassessment you can take on our
(28:35):
website.
You can entertain and do thisas well.
Where are you in the life cycle?
You know, the idea is we allwant to be in an integrated,
evidence-based position Fancywords for saying.
You have a very strongoptimized process that should be
fully tech-enabled at thispoint, if not have the majority
(28:56):
of it fully automated.
That is producing a top,world-class candidate and hiring
manager experience and hasalleviated the pressure on your
function.
So all you're having to talkabout is workforce planning and
retention and not about how toget people in the door because
you've solved that problem.
I would do the assessment ifyou'd like, but also you can
(29:18):
just look through these andwhere am I at?
And then what I like to do isokay, if your vision in five
years is to have a one-clickprocess that is fully automated,
but you're here.
What are the basic blocking andtackling we have to do first?
That's your one-year plan.
Your two-year plan is to gethere.
Your three-year plan is toaccomplish.
(29:39):
You know probably what has beenput on your plate today to
accomplish from an innovationperspective.
Hopefully this was helpful.
Again, this is how we actuallyoperate.
It's what we do.
This is how we partner withleaders all over the country to
sit down at the table with youand help you figure out a place
to start.
I'm sure a lot of you alreadydo a version of this work today,
(30:02):
and it's not overly exciting,right, it's just doing the hard
work and figuring out how tooperationalize our HR functions
in a way that I just don't thinkwe've prioritized historically.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
I loved your description of partnership.
I love the idea of dualculpability, where you have a
client and you have a strategicpartner that both have
strategically aligned goals andobjectives.
My question is have you everengaged in a performance-based
risk-sharing contract with aclient where the focus is on
(30:35):
quality based on time, toproductivity and then retention?
And then my second question isyou noted that Cincinnati is a
very competitive market?
That's certainly anunderstatement.
How do you protect againstconflict of interest when you
already have a presence inCincinnati and you happen to be
based in Cincinnati?
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah.
So the first thing we addressthe contract structure.
So it is very normal now for usto have shared skin in the game
.
So the way that we're going towork best is in looking at this
as a long-time partnership.
Right, it takes a while totransform these things.
Your average most time, theaverage time to fill we're
walking into a loan, requiresfor a pretty substantial
(31:18):
partnership.
But what we have evolved to iswe put higher backstops in place
.
So what is the hires that we'regoing to think we're going to
achieve?
We put a target cost per hires.
There's already sort of areimbursement built in if we
don't hit that threshold.
We also will layer in SLAs thatalign with your strategic
priorities.
So whether it's a qualityinitiative, a time to fill
(31:41):
initiative, whatever it might be, we mutually agree on those
SLAs as well.
And on the front end we try toset what those targets are, but
we leave it in many cases for atthree months.
We sort of regroup on the SLAswe signed, really solidify that
the data and the targets areappropriate and then work from
(32:02):
there.
The CFOs tend to really likethis plan because there's
dollars, you know.
Again, there's shared risk.
I will say I haven't paidanything back yet.
So we really work hard with ourpartners to get the numbers
right.
Right it has to be fair forboth sides.
We put in accountabilitymetrics to hold each other.
(32:26):
A lot of it is on hiringmanager, a lot of it turns to
process, and so that's where alot of fun good process work
comes in and not works well andvery competitive markets.
So the way that we sort of lookat it is what is the candidate
availability?
We do an assessment Are wereally really fighting for the
(32:47):
same candidate?
So we look at everything fromcommuter patterns, depth of
where candidates live versusdepth of where candidates work.
Are they actually driving leftover this bridge or right over
this bridge?
We just work in DC a lot with apartner of ours.
There's one bridge no one wantsto go over, so we start there
(33:08):
and then we really talk about isit the right thing for the
prior partner that we have?
We turn down work.
Derek's not like that, but myjob is to make sure we can
recruit and deliver for thepartners we already have, and we
do turn down work because it'snot the right thing to do.
In most cases we can find aplace to play together.
(33:30):
Maybe it's not everything,maybe it's not nursing.
It is very rare that weactually have an issue where we
can't figure out a solution tosupport both parties in a fair
way From a delivery perspective.
The way that I manage that isthe same.
The teams are not shared.
Our recruiters are always 100%dedicated to one specific
(33:55):
partner and hopefully a specificunit, but a specific area.
So you're never sharingrecruiters and we structure the
leadership to where theleadership is.
I'm really your commonsnominator right that, and maybe
an SVP that ensures thathopefully our best practices are
being shared.
But it truly is.
There's not one winning versusanother because of whatever
(34:18):
incentive that VP might havethat day.
But yeah, it's a little tricky.
It is tricky especially in theCincinnati's.
Bob Q saw me when Chicago waslike stop turning on business,
take it all.
You know, because we're veryprotective of that partnership
and I'll call my existingpartners and say this is the
circumstance, can I get yourreaction?
(34:38):
And nine out of ten timesthey're going to tell us to
pursue it.
If they don't, we figure outwhat the alternative is.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
The thing with that is, from my perspective, when
you partner with human you sortof own the database.
So the people that apply toyour organization they don't
fish out of that, for you knowLoyola or Surrey right, so they.
Now what gets tricky is whencandidates apply to every
(35:06):
hospital in Chicago.
So they become in everydatabase and so the choice is
theirs of where to go.
And so that puts the onusreally on the organization for
their value proposition anddifferentiating themselves to
say I want University of ChicagoMedicine absolutely hands down
over Northwestern or Loyola oranybody else.
(35:27):
So that's where you know,that's sort of how I view it.
With respect to the performance, we never had a performance
sort of contract.
Now for me that's like having aprenup of some kind.
It just doesn't really feelright.
When you have the trust, whenyou have the strong partnership,
(35:50):
you know you're not feelingyou're taking, you're being, you
know taken advantage of.
And and particularly youmentioned the word retention.
You know that's sort of a youknow a thing with me, because a
lot of people will say you know,when you hired them, did your
retention, you know, get better?
And so I view that a littledifferently.
(36:13):
When I hired them, theexpectations I had of human was
to bring to our doorstepcandidates that subscribe to our
value proposition, for them tobe able to articulate who we are
, what we do, what we value,what's it like to work for us.
That's as much as I can expectthem to do, besides, of course,
(36:38):
being followed by candidatesOnce they cross the threshold
into our organization.
The retention is a leadershipchallenge, a leadership
responsibility.
They don't have control over it.
When I first started, we usedto do HR orientation and people
who ran the orientation said bythe time they left orientation
(37:01):
they were all jacked up and assoon as they got to the unit
they went fresh and burnt.
So you know they control whatthey can control.
If they're bringing us peoplethat aren't a good fit, that's a
different issue, but that'swhat I looked for when they
hired people.
Are they missing the boatentirely or are they bringing
(37:22):
people that we can really moldand groom and you know, make
part of our organization longterm?
You know, make part of ourorganization long term.
The whole retention thing isjust.
You know everyone's looking for, you know where to point the
finger on that and you know thereality is retention is impacted
(37:43):
by the little things thatpeople experience every day they
come to work.
It's not, you know, we justacquired a new hospital and all
that.
It's the interaction you and Ihave in the hallway or don't
have.
It's the meeting how I wastreated at the meeting just an
hour ago.
It's all these little thingsthat cumulatively make up why I
want to stay or leave theorganization.
(38:06):
And the thing that always, foryears, just puzzled me was, you
know, figuring out what drivesengagement is a pretty simple
thing, because all you have todo is ask yourself what kind of
relationship do you want withyour employer?
Because we all want the samething.
It's not a mystery, right?
(38:27):
We want to be paidcompetitively, we want to be
developed, we want to beinvested in, we want to be
respected, we want to beincluded, we want to be valued
All these things everybody wants.
So if you want it, and I wantit, why not do that for the
people that you're charged withleading?
And when you do that, I thinkyou know who wants to go to work
(38:51):
and have a lousy relationshipwith their boss, who wants to
dread getting up in the morning?
No way.
So work on those things.
But it's you know, it'ssomething that perpetuates
organizations, because I thinkwe promote people into jobs who
are really strong clinicians andnow they have responsibility
(39:14):
for people and they don't knownecessarily how to balance that.
And then you add on top of itsome of you were talking about
the span of control that some ofthe people have in health care.
I'd never seen that in otherorganizations.
It's impossible to have animpact on 150 people.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
It's impossible to have an impact on 150 people.
The other thing, I'll say justa slightly more specific sample.
We understand it's a real thing.
So one of the things we try todo is, if we can really refine
our forecasting numbers and wecan know that you're going to
have a lot of new grads that aregoing to be required to fill up
this specific area can we lookat investing in additional
(39:53):
preceptors?
What other training can be putin place to take that
responsibility off the managers?
And so that's some ways thatwe'll partner as well as we're
thinking about the hiringforecast.
What are the incremental changesthat need to happen to support
and insulate that manager?
Because that's really why theexperience falls apart most
cases.
(40:13):
So again, maybe, as you'rethinking about your forecasting
and numbers, it's not just upthat higher.
If you're bringing 50 peopleinto a unit in a short period of
time, the unit is help.
How can we layer in someadditional support?
You know, bob, there's more foryou.
But, sarah, if we're to weighin, can you talk a little bit
(40:36):
about what success or whatlearnings you have from like the
change management ofimplementing human?
Speaker 4 (40:41):
specifically with your hiring managers, who may or
may not like that control thatthey have over the selection
process.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So the change most of the musicians that we
experienced was going to HR,because over time I think people
actually saw the writing on thewall that we were going to be
and not everybody does that thatworks with RPOs or Owerk Newman
we were going to change themout.
It wasn't.
It didn't make sense to me toduplicate, to have an internal
(41:11):
team, an external team,particularly because one of the
goals that we had was to have aconsistent candidate experience.
We didn't want, you know, onegroup of people talking about
the value proposition one wayand another.
So that was important over time.
(41:32):
So the resistance most of itcame from the HR team, keep in
mind our current process wasabout as bad as it could get.
So you know, when you bring astack of resumes it's a daunting
(41:54):
experience for a hiring managerand we had half hiring managers
saying, oh, you mean, I don'thave to find my old people
anymore.
So we went from that to beingpresented well-qualified,
diverse slate of candidates andthen the human folks built a
relationship with the hiringmanagers and for me, again, the
hiring managers were really thekey measurement that I would
(42:18):
focus on.
If I heard noise at any time,I'd get all over it because I
knew that that was going to makeor break this whole journey
that we're on.
But there really wasn't anyresistance from the hiring
managers and when you thinkabout it, you know they were
getting their needs fulfilledwith people that you know.
(42:40):
The decisions they had to makeacross this slate of candidates
was a hard decision for them.
It was, you know, good andbetter and best that they were
being presented with good andbetter and best that they were
being presented with.
And so there wasn't pushbackfrom the executives.
They were all watching verycarefully, there's no doubt
(43:00):
about it but they weren't liningup in my office saying what in
God's name are you doing?
They were like holy mackerelwe're getting people.
Our personal best at one time, Ithink, was hiring RNs in 33
days.
I mean, it was like crazy.
So it was all you know, thiswave of positiveness that took
(43:22):
place and, like I said, thehiring managers became very
attached to their recruiters andthe human folks knew our
organization so well.
You know, I remember beingpicked up at the airport one day
from the person who still leadsthe team today and she's in the
(43:46):
car with me talking on the wayto the office and she's
mentioning all these people whowork there, these physicians,
these clinicians, this person,that person, and I was blown
away by how well she knew notonly the people who they work,
but their nuances and you knowthe different things about the
(44:07):
personal things about people.
So they really make an effortto understand, you know, with
the organization and people andthe culture.
So really, honest to God, itwasn't, you know, we would have
lasted nine years or eight yearsand I certainly wouldn't have
been there.
You know they would have gottenme a long time ago if things
didn't really work out well.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, what I'll say is, most of the time our biggest
challenge is with the talentacquisition team that we might
feel they might feel threatenedby us, even if it's very clear
in the forefront that we'redividing responsibility or it's
natural right the hiring managerprocess.
So we do have a dedicatedapproach and we start off every
(44:51):
single relationship with we callit an intake call.
That's just part of our naturalprocess.
When a new job opening isposted, but the very start of a
partnership, or if there's a newunit being assigned to us or a
new hiring manager, it is aone-on-one call where the
recruiter and the recruitmentmanager are getting to know you
instantly.
We ask the hiring manager whatyour culture is like, what's
your preference like, et cetera.
(45:12):
So on the forefront there'ssort of an alignment that stays
true through the duration ofpartnership.
The only time that we see wherewe have an opportunity to work
through challenges with hiringmanagers is if there's a change
in the process that puts a newtimeline responsibility on them.
So if you come to us and youneed to exponentially increase
(45:36):
your throughput of hires meaningwe have to reduce your time to
fill and we all stack hands thatthe biggest delay is that it's
taking your hiring managers twoweeks to get back and we put a
target in there of 72 hours.
We're going to hold youaccountable to that.
That is usually the only timethat we have a little bit of
work to do with the hiringmanagers, but then all of a
(45:58):
sudden their needs are beingfulfilled and how we work
through that is, with the unitleadership, we really make sure
the hiring manager has thesupport that they need to
achieve those numbers and thatthey understand this is a
company initiative.
We're not picking on you etcetera, what the impact is.
But beyond that, hiringmanagers are usually our biggest
(46:19):
cheerleaders and advocatesbecause we're taking so much of
the responsibility off of their,their plate and the stress that
they feel.
So so are there any concernswith your team not being?
I'm saying, in your case, popit recruited, the inch caught it
?
Yeah, you know, do you have anypush that could we get?
This asked 100 of the time and100 percent of the time we are
(46:41):
still 100 remote and hire whatwe need to.
So it's been interestingpost-pandemic because all of a
sudden that tolerance level justchanged in general because a
lot of your HR teams are nowremote, but it comes up a lot.
What we try to do is we go onsite on a regular basis.
All of our recruiters will gothrough your onboarding class as
(47:03):
our intention.
We will walk your unit floors.
We end up having face time withhiring managers that maybe
prior teams didn't go about itthat way, because it's sort of
natural that they understood thehospital et cetera.
We really do a lot of work inyour market to understand it.
If there are nuances beyondcover, we try to then get there
(47:25):
Like the weird bridge situationsthat's like a reality in a lot
of markets.
But yeah, it's always somethingthat's a concern at the
forefront and we really justwork with you guys to partner
understand your EVP.
You will work with us to puttogether an elevator pitch,
right.
So each of our recruiters willhave their sales pitch to the
candidate.
It should 100% mimic your brand.
(47:45):
No one knows we exist.
Our phone numbers are yourphone numbers.
We map all this stuff so it'sseamless.
You do not know human exists,the candidate.
We don't hide it.
If we are point blank ass, thatwould be lying.
But the candidate just doesn'tknow.
They do not.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
There are opportunities for them to come
to Chicago.
There are many opportunitieswhere we have business review
meetings and they have some ofthe recruiters tag along and
then they take advantage of thattime to personally be their
hiring managers.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yeah, and have job fairs.
We still do on-site job fairs.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Just so we're out there.
It's always the summer monthsin Ice Monster.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, but you know, we sort of assess, like I have
one partner that had an on-siteteam.
She wanted two people on siteto do a very specific rotation
of a group that was reallychallenging.
A new community household theyacquired.
We put two people on site theretwo days a week.
That's not.
It's not gonna last forever,right, it doesn't.
They're not gonna have thatneed forever.
(48:50):
But let's figure out what we'resolving for and that's how we
try to go about it.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
We spent a lot of time coming down to Florida.
We'd send groups of individualsdown here to train them on our
benefit programs, ourcompensation programs, our union
contracts, so all those thingsthat they needed to do to be
well-equipped about ourorganization, because they did
everything from source to makethe offer.
(49:16):
And so you know it was to ouradvantage to invest that kind of
time and we would do thatregularly because you know the
benefits would change and thecontracts would change.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yeah, it gets to.
The idea would be just like wehave a seamless candidate hiring
manager experience, it shouldalso be a seamless experience
for you all.
So the best partnerships arewhere we truly are just treated
like one of your employees.
We're joining team meetings,we're part of that, we're
hearing what's going on.
Ultimately, we have the right.
The director of comp is part ofour contact.
(49:48):
You know it's the same, itshould not be any different.
Of comp is part of our contact.
You know it's the same, itshould not be any different.
Um, really, the difference justcomes in and uh, the hopefully,
the data.
We're going to show you how wewill always bring best practices
, be able to access a ton ofinformation and insights, and
that's my job is to make sure,like we're helping to make you
as best in class as you can be.
(50:09):
But beyond that, and hopefully,all the levels of service are
improving.
But if we're bringing a higherlevel of service, your internal
team is going to start bringinga higher level of service.
It's how it happens, it's howit works right, and so, the more
that we can think about aseamless employment experience
and TA experience, all of thattranslates into all of the work
(50:31):
that your candidates feel too,so it's even true of your full
interim team today.
Yeah, any other questions?
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
We typically deal with three different headways
some with how we are positionedin the state, some with the type
of work we do and some with thegeographical settings on it, so
especially the most restrictivesettings, whether it is a
qualified residential treatmentfacility, psychiatric treatment
(51:01):
facility or psych hospitals.
The first headwind that we seefrom the state is both Kansas
and Missouri.
The net loser of of not to tellyou know compact is great for
many other states, but to thesetwo Midwest states ultimately
there's a net loss.
(51:21):
So that's first thing.
Second, the maturity curve ofour nurses.
We attract a lot of younggraduates but by year three they
come to us genuinely eitherthrough exit survey or concern
to us that I'm losing a lot ofmy skills being in this QRTP,
(51:43):
being in this PRT, being in thispsych hospital.
So we are somewhat kind ofcollaborating with other
hospitals nearby where we askthem hey, are there some parents
that our staff can do?
So there is some collaborationto go in that way.
So that's the second advent forus.
The third advent is some of ourhospitals or the psychiatric
(52:06):
locations.
They are very deep ruralregions, very deep rural regions
.
It works for the nurses who areyoung, with many under fifth
grade kids.
But as the kids are getting tomiddle school and high school
they tend to prefer more otherlocal care.
So the lifespan of a nurse inour facilities tend to be
(52:30):
between that three to five years.
So how do you navigate it a bitso yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
So your circumstances are real, right, and I would
not like to be in your shoes tosolve all of those.
Right, and I think this goesinto being realistic.
Then, with what yourrecruitment and hiring model
looks like and what does best inclass look like for you is just
not going to be the same thatit is going to be in a setting
(52:59):
like UChicago, medicine or otherareas, right?
So I think having a realisticunderstanding of what are we
trying to solve for if thesefactors are real and
unperventable, right, and I'mnot.
I don't know if they'reunperventable or not, but
they're your reality and one ofthe things you just said, I saw
this done during the pandemic acouple of times and it just
(53:23):
wowed me the more that we canstart stop thinking about our
staffing crisis as within thesefour walls and you start
breaking down the walls of yourhospital and start thinking
about it and servicing yourcommunity in whole and creating
partnerships with other groups.
And if you can get into thedialogue of how are we going to
(53:46):
transfer, how are we going tosupport this, what opportunity
is?
Because I think that the bigneed for your group is the
visibility into what's next forthem, right?
So if you know they're going tohave a five-year shelf life
because of the reality, so it'sgoing to be really hard to even
get them in the front doorbecause they're already thinking
(54:07):
about the teenage years.
Is there a partnership or aplan that you have that's like
we're going to get you ready tocatapult you to that next
opportunity In exchange for that?
This is what your day-to-daylooks like right now, et cetera.
But how do you take thoseproblems and turn it into the
value proposition you're goingto offer them?
So, listen, I'll just sayknowing your reality and
(54:28):
sometimes realizing you can'tchange your reality, that's okay
.
Now that would help us backinto what are the real things
you can solve.
How does that translate intoyour volumes and how is that
okay for your business and howdo we get your investors and
board to understand that it'sokay for your business?
(54:49):
So I think that you've started.
You know your limitations.
That's a good place to start.
So how do we take what we'reworking with and make it the
best experience we can whilewe're there and then create a
long-term solution that you knowis out of the four walls?
But how, then, do you getsomeone else pushing those
candidates back to you and thatreciprocal approach.
(55:12):
I think you're going to dependon a lot of network
relationships to make thathappen.
It sounds like you alreadystarted.
Listen, we support healthsystems.
At one point it was all 50states, but it's coast to coast.
Every geographic setting youcan imagine, every demographic
setting you can imagine, youthink you have a unique issue.
We've heard it and everyone'sissues are real.
(55:34):
But that's the point.
This treating talent acquisitionlike an industry-wide solution
and a one-side-fits-all solutionis not going to work.
This is not how we're gonnafigure this out.
We're gonna figure this outlocation by location, community
by community, and reallystarting from the ground up and
(55:57):
understanding those nuances.
And so that's why we're lookingat market data and comparison.
Don't just pull up the bigbackers report that's commuting
in the northeast right.
Let's take it a step forward.
Let's look at similardemographics, look at similar
markets and partner with peoplethat are in your role in that
area, so that you can understandwhat they're doing and hire you
to work.
Even if you're thousands ofmiles apart, you have the same
(56:20):
exact issue.
If you're in this specificdemographic, this specific
market and find those likepeople, really, really drill
down, and that's a big part ofour secret to our success is
taking our data and taking ourexperience as very finite
examples and realizing how theyapply to the circumstances that
(56:41):
we're facing and being againrealistic with what is possible.
You know, does that help?
Yes, all right, I think we areat lunch, but we're around, so
if you have any questions, I'dlike to talk to you.
Appreciate your time.
If you haven't done the QR code, I'll put that back up.
But also we have yourinformation, so if you go here,
you'll get to a landing page.
(57:02):
It's a 2025 state of healthcare report.
You can navigate out of that.
Our resource hub has the talentmaturity model.
It has ROI calculators.
There's more resources than wepossibly know what to do with.
I'm even being filmed today.
I will become a resource atsome point, but spend time there
.
It's all this information youcan download.
It's all yours.
(57:23):
Hopefully it helps on your TAjourney.
So great Thanks.
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