As children’s hospitals continue to face significant challenges with staffing shortages, finding innovative ways to attract and retain talent remains a top priority for HR leaders.
Stacey Whiteside, director of experience and engagement at Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora, says providing staff with growth opportunities should be a key aspect of your strategy. “A talent philosophy that promotes internal mobility of your people is good for your organization and certainly good for your people,” she says. “A mindset around internal career mobility is going to be essential in good talent management moving forward—especially in the health care industry.”
Whiteside adds that fostering employee mobility may require a paradigm shift, but it’s necessary to align your personnel strategies with the needs of today’s workforce. “We have to start moving away from the idea that somebody will be in that position for 10 or 15 years—that's not realistic anymore,” Whiteside says. “We must embrace that people want to learn, grow and make changes. If we want to keep our good people, creating systems that support movement and growth internally is really important.”
To that end, Children’s Colorado recently launched a tuition-free education program—the first of its kind nationally among pediatric hospital systems, according to the hospital. Whiteside acknowledges that embracing employee mobility could lead to staff movement outside the hospital system, but she says it’s a risk worth taking.
“I'll bet on Children’s Colorado any day, so we want to build the systems, processes and programs that support mobility in positive ways,” Whiteside says. “That's what our workforce—our talent—will need from us.”
Read more about how Children’s Colorado’s new program aims to increase access and remove traditional hurdles to attaining higher learning.
