The old adage has never been more true – people don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad bosses. Witness the nearly 1.5 million people who quit their jobs in the healthcare industry over the summer of 2024. Of course it is impossible to know the reasons why, but just imagine the questions it raises for an industry in permanent frantic hiring mode.
What exactly are health systems saying to their people to convince them to stay?
What are the compelling reasons employees have on a daily basis to come to work?
Do employers even understand their people?
These are the types of questions that Adele Johnson-Kebe obsesses about in her role as vice president and chief human resources officer at Dayton Children’s Hospital, the only regional health system dedicated to pediatrics. There are terrific children’s hospitals around the country, and then there is Dayton’s.
Raving employee engagement
The latest U.S. News and World Report rankings put it sixth in Ohio and 19th in the Midwest overall, and it is nationally recognized in orthopedics and behavioral health.
Any great hospital starts and ends with a high quality workforce delivering exceptional patient care. Finding that caliber of talent is one thing. Keeping it is another.
The eternal doom loop of bringing in new talent, watching them burn out from stress, anxiety and long shifts, seeing them quit, only for the cycle to start all over again, is getting old.
What if there were a way to put an end to the madness once and for all? Dayton Children’s may have found the answer, and it could be a template for other health systems.
Employee engagement at the hospital has never been less than 72 on a scale of zero to 100, Johnson-Kebe said. Patient family satisfaction scores are high too. Employees are more than eager to talk about their jobs. People genuinely like working there because they feel the organization has their back.
“In every role I’ve had in this hospital, I have felt like I really am making a difference for kids,” a 14-year employee said in a post titled “The best place Nikki’s ever worked.”
When’s the last time someone raved about their employer at such deafening decibels?
“We can’t rest on our laurels”
Employers know that talented, highly engaged employees tend to attract the same – great people want to work with other great people. So, what is the easiest way to improve engagement at an employer that doesn’t have it? Find an employer that does, and offer ridiculous incentives to poach their talent.
“To use one of my Dad’s favorite phrases, ‘If I’m trying to catch a bunch of bluegills, I have to find the right fishing hole and the right bait,’” Johnson-Kebe said. High engagement, low turnover, a fun culture, a comprehensive wellbeing program, and a generous total rewards program. Those are table stakes, sure. Who doesn’t have them?
The key differentiator at Dayton Children’s is highly engaged, mission-focused, inclusive and empathetic leaders.
“If the leader doesn’t know about these benefits and isn’t championing them, and isn’t looking for opportunities to engage with employees, then it really doesn’t matter what kind of benefits we have,” she said. “We can’t rest on our laurels. We have got to be up on our game.”
A relentless focus on people translates into an exceptional employee value proposition (EVP) at Dayton Children’s. The vacancy rate for registered nurses hasn’t exceeded 7% in the past three years. Overall voluntary turnover hasn’t been higher than 20% in the same time frame, Johnson-Kebe said. It currently stands at about 17%, amazingly low considering another regional employer reported a turnover rate as high as 42% within the last three years.
“That’s painful,” Johnson-Kebe said.
It is indicative of something quite wrong at that organization. A hospital does not lose nearly half its staff unless its people aren’t hearing what they need to hear from leaders in terms of what’s in it for them. That is where an EVP is so vital.
Cold water in the face
Dayton Children’s is focusing its efforts around retention in years two through five. An internal program that is designed to grow talent from within by allowing people to fully experience the demands of other roles so they know what to expect before formally stepping into it has been a successful effort to accomplish that.
“If you start as a housekeeper or another entry-level role, we’re creating a career pathway so that you can grow into an advancing role, such as an RN,” Johnson-Kebe explained. “You will have had the appropriate exposure and enough cold water thrown in your face that you know that healthcare is hard work, but it is really important and rewarding work.”
Boosting EVP with AI
Dayton Children’s is looking to distinguish itself even further by exploring how AI can be leveraged to support its EVP. This includes a finely-detailed review of its compensation strategy, and answering forward-thinking questions around how it can be more inclusive with job requirements and foster employee growth and development, even in the face of stringent regulatory academic requirements that disparately impact marginalized communities.
AI is perfectly suited to such a task, as well as many others. I have written extensively about technology’s role in attracting and keeping talent. For instance, AI is helping health systems place people in appropriate roles based on skills and qualifications. The technology identifies what people are good at and makes recommendations to hiring managers. That includes existing employees as well as external candidates.
In fact, numerous studies point to a direct correlation between AI and high employee engagement, key to fast-growing organizations such as Dayton Children’s. The best thing about working there is that leaders focus on employees and understand the critical importance of having a strong employee value proposition.
“It’s not just lip service for us,” said Johnson-Kebe.
Luke Carignan
Luke Carignan helps health systems hire smarter, faster and more efficiently in his role at Phenom, a global HR technology company in greater Philadelphia. He is the co-host of “The Bo and Luke Show” and The American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration podcasts.
