Today in health, it, we start down our list of the top five things that
Speaker:are top of mind for healthcare CEOs.
Speaker:And today.
Speaker:The conversation is about labor.
Speaker:It's about staff.
Speaker:It's about the competition for staff.
Speaker:That's what we're going to talk about.
Speaker:My name is bill Russell.
Speaker:I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system.
Speaker:And creator this weekend.
Speaker:It a channel dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:A couple of things I want to cover before we get to this topic.
Speaker:If you're unaware, we have launched four channels for
Speaker:2022 this week health academy.
Speaker:This week health community, this week health conference
Speaker:and this week health news.
Speaker:All right, so we have four channels for next year.
Speaker:Let me give you a little rundown of each one.
Speaker:Here's what I want you to do.
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Speaker:We're still waiting for those to be approved for some reason, but hopefully
Speaker:there'll be approved this week and you can subscribe to them there.
Speaker:Let me tell you about each one.
Speaker:News is about the news.
Speaker:It's going to be the today show and the new stay show shows that have
Speaker:been very successful on our channels.
Speaker:And I look forward to you subscribing to that.
Speaker:And keeping up to date on the news conference is, we want to develop a
Speaker:channel that is a year long conference.
Speaker:It's just keeps going.
Speaker:And we're going to have a show called keynote, where we have keynote
Speaker:speakers and we talked to them for.
Speaker:You know, 45, 50 minutes here, what's going on in their world.
Speaker:How they're impacting health.
Speaker:It.
Speaker:, this is going to be about the intersection of healthcare and
Speaker:technology and how things are shaping up.
Speaker:, we're also going to do solution showcases, which think about that as
Speaker:the walk of the floor, to look at the different solutions that are available.
Speaker:This week health community is a new channel for us.
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Speaker:bring their own guests onto the show.
Speaker:So this is going to be.
Speaker:, a channel that is community based and focus.
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Speaker:working with,, analytics, clinical informatics data, you name it.
Speaker:, but this is the show.
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Speaker:Tuesday, Thursday is the community show and we have some guest hosts
Speaker:already lined up and we have more invitations out there and you
Speaker:can, can subscribe to that as well.
Speaker:And this week health academy is where you go to get educated
Speaker:on healthcare and healthcare.
Speaker:It.
Speaker:Our first show in there is going to be insights.
Speaker:It's going to air on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
Speaker:What we heard from you is that you use our show to bring new people into the
Speaker:industry up to speed quickly, and that it isn't a very effective way to do that.
Speaker:Here's what we're going to do.
Speaker:We're going to take excerpts from our first four and a half years of shows.
Speaker:We're going to take the highlights and we're going to put them
Speaker:into a show called insights.
Speaker:It's going to air Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
Speaker:How are, do you see that as people who are new to the industry, or if you're
Speaker:mentoring, somebody have them listen to that show, listen along with them
Speaker:and tell them, you know, what your thoughts are on it and bring them
Speaker:up to speed on what you're doing.
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Speaker:health.com.
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Speaker:there, or anywhere you listen to podcasts, you could do it there.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Let's get to today's topic.
Speaker:The top of mind issues for health it execs.
Speaker:And if you remember, we sorta laid them out.
Speaker:There was labor was number one, cybersecurity.
Speaker:Number two.
Speaker:All things digital, number three, automation was number four and caravan
Speaker:used to change and care vendors.
Speaker:It's number five every day.
Speaker:This week, I'm going to be touching on one of these and talking
Speaker:about what I would do as a CIO.
Speaker:Based on what I'm hearing from the CIS.
Speaker:So let's talk about number one.
Speaker:It is labor, and this is the competition for staff.
Speaker:It's about retention.
Speaker:It's about attracting new staff, all things having to do with staff.
Speaker:There is a significant competition that's going on for staff right now.
Speaker:Here's how I'm going to break this particular one down for you.
Speaker:Number one, we're going to be looking at.
Speaker:, retention, then we're going to be looking at attracting and finding new talent.
Speaker:And then the final thing I want to talk about is developing staff.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So let's talk about retention.
Speaker:I think a 0% retention goal is a bad goal.
Speaker:I've always thought it was a bad goal.
Speaker:And I know some of the things I'm going to say here might ruffle some feathers,
Speaker:but this is just the way I think about it.
Speaker:Adapt it to how you think about it.
Speaker:A 0% retention rate tells me you're not developing people.
Speaker:If you're developing people, they should be in high demand
Speaker:outside of your four walls.
Speaker:And quite frankly, you're going to lose some of them.
Speaker:You should lose some of them.
Speaker:It's okay to lose some of them.
Speaker:, the only way to get a 0% retention rate is to hire people , pay them well above
Speaker:what they're worth or hire them well beyond what their capabilities are, or to
Speaker:not develop any staff and not make them more valuable than the day they started.
Speaker:With your organization.
Speaker:So again, 0% retention rate is not a good retention rate.
Speaker:So you're going to lose some people let's assume.
Speaker:90% retention is a good retention number.
Speaker:If you're going to lose 10% of your staff, you should know which staff.
Speaker:You are going to struggle if you lose.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So I always, in my mind, Alyssa people that I could not afford
Speaker:to lose as an organization.
Speaker:And so I have talked to some people who have lost key staff recently, you know,
Speaker:the person who, really knows the network inside and out, who knows all the routes,
Speaker:who knows how all the,, the V LANs are set up and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:Not that you couldn't recreate that, but that is a, significant
Speaker:role in some organizations.
Speaker:You need to know who those people are, just do it once twos and threes.
Speaker:If you lost them, ones are, if you lost them, you would struggle.
Speaker:You'd have to pay a consultant to come in.
Speaker:You would have to, uh, potentially pay a recruiter to find somebody.
Speaker:If there are ones you need to make sure you're taking care of your ones
Speaker:need to make sure they are connected to you, connected to the organization.
Speaker:That they are being taken care of, that they are being paid.
Speaker:Appropriately for the role that they're doing within your organization,
Speaker:that they clearly understand.
Speaker:The lines of communication that they clearly understand what's expected of
Speaker:them, that they clearly understand what's next for them, with my ones, actually,
Speaker:with everyone in my organization.
Speaker:I want it to be able to ask them what's next in your career and
Speaker:I wanted to get a very crisp answer from them.
Speaker:Part of that was my job.
Speaker:As the leader, I needed to make sure that the career tracks were very well
Speaker:understood and I needed to make sure that the managers were having conversations
Speaker:with each individual employee to make sure that they understood why or they
Speaker:wanted to go within the organization and that they were developing them,
Speaker:that they were investing in them in ways that were going
Speaker:to get them to the next level.
Speaker:One of the biggest problems we have is that people always think it's about money.
Speaker:It's not always about money.
Speaker:Sometimes it's about the manager that they have.
Speaker:Sometimes it's about the culture.
Speaker:Sometimes it's about, they just don't know where what's next for them.
Speaker:And so they start looking outside your organization.
Speaker:If you don't make it clear, what's next for them within your organization,
Speaker:they're going to find somewhere else to go outside your organization.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So retention, you have to be clear with them.
Speaker:What's next?
Speaker:You have to pay them accordingly and you have to create the right structure.
Speaker:If they have a bad manager, that's on you.
Speaker:You've got to do something about bad managers.
Speaker:, we did, poll surveys on a regular basis.
Speaker:And you could almost identify the bad managers within our department.
Speaker:Now we had, 600 to 700, some odd people in the organization.
Speaker:And you could just look at the responses and say, okay,
Speaker:There's a group of people here that are really not happy.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:They report to two managers.
Speaker:, so that is.
Speaker:Generally an indicator.
Speaker:All right, let's talk about the competition for staff.
Speaker:We just did two great shows from the healthcare to healthcare event.
Speaker:We did one with Doug king CIO of Northwestern medicine, and he
Speaker:talked about what they are doing to.
Speaker:, bring new talent into their organization.
Speaker:If you haven't listened to that show, listen to it.
Speaker:They've built a really good pipeline of people coming into their organization.
Speaker:Young people, smart people, talented people.
Speaker:, they're focused on diversity.
Speaker:They're focused on, , Getting people early so that they don't, they're not inhibited
Speaker:by what they have learned somewhere else.
Speaker:So you get new thinking.
Speaker:, new approaches.
Speaker:They're tied into the universities and colleges and they're pulling people out.
Speaker:Directly.
Speaker:So, he shared a lot of things that they're doing it.
Speaker:Northwestern medicine.
Speaker:And I think it's valuable for any CIO to take a listen to that episode.
Speaker:It's one of the today shows it was from November 15th.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:The other one was November 10th.
Speaker:It was also from the health care to health care event.
Speaker:It was Stephanie Lahr with monument health, and she talks about culture.
Speaker:Developing a good culture.
Speaker:In a remote world.
Speaker:And how important is to do that.
Speaker:Not only to retain your existing staff, but to attract new staff into that.
Speaker:, when people come into a vibrant culture and exciting culture, they
Speaker:make connections very quickly.
Speaker:They feel at home and it's a place that they want to stay
Speaker:and you know, what else they do.
Speaker:They tell other people about it.
Speaker:, whenever I'm talking to people about.
Speaker:Finding new talent, really attracting new talent.
Speaker:If you like the people who work for you.
Speaker:They are the best way to go about getting additional talent
Speaker:within your organization.
Speaker:Now, if they aren't saying good things about working in your organization,
Speaker:you've got another set of problems, but generally speaking, if you
Speaker:can get your staff excited about working where they are working today.
Speaker:They will know people in the industry.
Speaker:And if they don't know people in industry, you're doing a bad job, developing them.
Speaker:You need to introduce them to other people in the industry.
Speaker:But at this point when you're having a battle for staff, your
Speaker:staff is your best ambassadors.
Speaker:Your staff is the best.
Speaker:I don't know a Sherlock out there.
Speaker:They're going to be the ones who find a new talent to bring them in.
Speaker:Plus the stuff that Doug talks about creating a pipeline.
Speaker:Uh, all the way back to high school, they're bringing in a high
Speaker:school kids and giving them a great experience at Northwestern medicine.
Speaker:So that's, , you know, we talked about retention.
Speaker:We talk about the competition for staff.
Speaker:You've got to make your place a great place to work.
Speaker:You've got to use your staff to find new staff.
Speaker:And you've got to be working on great projects.
Speaker:So you have to take the mundane tasks.
Speaker:We've been talking about this for years.
Speaker:For some reason we haven't made as much progress as we need to
Speaker:make, which is we've got to take the mundane tasks and we've got
Speaker:to automate the heck out of them.
Speaker:And then we've got to take that off of people's plate.
Speaker:We can't keep putting mundane stuff on them and then saying, come work here.
Speaker:We're doing great stuff.
Speaker:, we may be doing great stuff, but it's in that department over
Speaker:there, or that department over there, it's not necessarily.
Speaker:Here.
Speaker:What you want is , you want to take that mundane stuff off the plate and say, look,
Speaker:we are working on the next generation.
Speaker:Of cloud for healthcare and it sort of looks like this.
Speaker:You need, something that's going to, that's going to catch
Speaker:people's eyes and bring them in.
Speaker:Let's talk about developing staff.
Speaker:You have to develop your staff.
Speaker:And I've, I've talked about this a couple of times on the show, but you
Speaker:can't send all of them to conferences.
Speaker:You can send all of them to training.
Speaker:So what are you going to do?
Speaker:And the answer to that is you've got to figure out a way.
Speaker:To invest in your staff and create a mentoring program.
Speaker:Everybody in your organization who wants to be mentored should be mentored.
Speaker:And you have to define what mentoring is and mentoring can be as simple as,
Speaker:sharing your connections, sharing your experience, sharing your knowledge,
Speaker:and creating an environment where they can take risks, where they
Speaker:can go out and try the next thing.
Speaker:And you can be there alongside of them To make sure that they don't fail and
Speaker:to make sure that they are picking up and learning the right things.
Speaker:You are going to help somebody to take the next step in their career.
Speaker:Everyone should have that opportunity within your organization.
Speaker:If you don't, you're just asking for trouble.
Speaker:You're just asking for people to leave.
Speaker:One of the reasons we developed this channel on this show.
Speaker:Is because there are 700 people in my organization.
Speaker:I couldn't send them all to classes.
Speaker:I couldn't mentor them all.
Speaker:And I wanted them to experience the conversations I was having at
Speaker:the conferences with other CEOs.
Speaker:And so I started to do these interviews so that they could
Speaker:have access to these things.
Speaker:Mentoring, somebody could be as simple as listening to the show with them
Speaker:and having a conversation with them.
Speaker:And you can pick the shows you want to have.
Speaker:We've done 450 of them.
Speaker:And you can pick the ones that are specific to data, clinical informatics,
Speaker:cybersecurity, whatever topic you want, or the people you think might be interesting.
Speaker:You might want to talk to them about what they're doing at Intermountain
Speaker:or what they're doing at.
Speaker:, NYU Lango and or what they're doing at, you know, fill in the blank.
Speaker:We've talked to a lot of different health systems, a lot of different CEOs.
Speaker:A lot of different perspectives and that's another way to mentor people and
Speaker:you've got to be developing your people.
Speaker:If you don't, you're just asking for trouble.
Speaker:Well, that's all for today.
Speaker:If you know of anyone that might benefit from our channel, like say
Speaker:someone you're trying to mentor, they can subscribe on our website this week.
Speaker:health.com.
Speaker:We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to
Speaker:develop the next generation of leaders.
Speaker:VMware Hill-Rom Starbridge advisors, McAfee and Aruba networks.
Speaker:Thanks for listening.