CAREER & LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT 

Attracting and Keeping Talent Requires Full Health System Engagement 

Health systems nationally are facing unprecedented challenges in staffing and retaining top talent. As a result, providing a stellar employee experience has become a key differentiator and a vital competitive advantage for systems as they strive to improve patient care and optimize operating efficiencies. 

UNC Health is a 17-location system with more than 4,400 beds and 43,000 employees (including nearly 5,000 medical staff). In 2022, they launched “UNC Health for Me,” an initiative aimed at enhancing UNC Health’s organizational culture and reducing employee turnover. The program represents the health care system’s “unwavering commitment to its teammates, from the moment of recruitment to retirement,” says Ingrid Jones, system director for culture, engagement and retention at UNC Health. 

Jones and her colleagues—Kathleen O'Neill, UNC Health’s HR communications manager, and Kerry Grace Heckle, the system’s executive director for corporate and community relations—shared how the program has been implemented and its resulting impact during the SHSMD Connections Conference in September. 

“Like so many health systems, UNC Health is not immune to the challenges facing our industry: rising inflation, workforce shortages, more patients who need care, and consumers eager for more accessible and affordable options,” Jones notes. “The pandemic brought many of these challenges to the forefront, and our board and senior leadership recognized the importance of quickly responding to our teammates’ needs and well-being in a changing landscape.” 

The Scope of the Problem 

Over the past decade, the health care industry has experienced significant workforce stresses, including employee burnout, mass resignations and labor actions. These have had an adverse effect on staffing across all departments. 

A recent JAMA Internal Medicine study, for example, found that the number of internal medicine resident doctors opting to become primary care physicians has declined by as much as 50% over the past decade. Meanwhile, a separate report suggested that the overall shortage of doctors across specialties in the United States could reach 124,000 by 2034. 

In addition, nearly 1 million registered nurses across the country are expected to leave the health care workforce due to “stress, burnout and retirement,” according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. 

Nurses, doctors and other health care staff are leaving the workforce—or choosing other career paths—for a variety of reasons, creating stress on health systems in an era when the demand for care services is consistently high. 

“Our goal is to ensure UNC Health keeps and attracts the very best talent while providing a genuinely great teammate experience,” O’Neill explains. “As a result, we developed a long-term people strategy for enhancing the teammate experience and to keep teammates from leaving our organization. This strategy, UNC Health for Me, is our commitment to teammates from recruitment to retirement. It places teammates front and center, ensuring their experience at UNC Health is defined by the same Carolina Care shown to our patients and communities.” 

UNC Health’s Response 

UNC Health for Me encompasses a comprehensive approach with onboarding, career development, benefits, recognition, engagement, safety and inclusion. The program focuses on investing in the system staff’s personal and professional growth, thereby fortifying its position as home to a world-class health care team.   

The first step in the implementation process was “gaining alignment” across the health system, including: 

• Garnering commitment from the board of directors; 
• Establishing a partnership among senior leadership for human resources and communications, marketing and public relations; 
• Fostering collaboration among executive stakeholders to participate in fact-finding and focus groups; and  
• Reaching an agreement to align the health system’s organizational objectives around a framework and long-term strategic road map, and identify key initiatives and milestones to maintain and improve the workforce experience. 

“Internal alignment is important when rolling out a new people strategy because it ensures that everyone in the organization is working toward the same goal and understands how their role contributes to it,” O’Neill explains. “A people strategy may involve changes in the organization’s processes or messaging around existing programs or development opportunities. These changes need to be communicated clearly and consistently across all levels and departments, so that teammates can see the benefits and rationale behind them.”    

According to O’Neill, some of the tactics system executives used to gain stakeholder alignment included:    

• Embedding a communications manager within human resources to help drive ongoing communications strategies; 
• Infusing UNC Health for Me across every touch point in the teammate journey; 
• Empowering front-line leaders with the insights and reminders they need to support teammates and engender loyalty; 
• Improving communication and interaction to boost engagement and performance; and 
• Deploying artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to gather and contextualize data, identify critical tasks and increase operational efficiency. 

Once alignment was achieved, the leadership team behind the program sought to communicate its design and objectives systemwide. This included a “Retention Starts With Me” campaign for system leadership that provides education, tools and resources to support them in retaining talent within their individual teams. It also featured a robust intranet-based platform that offered interactive dashboards and reports with “concise, actionable data so managers can make better-informed decisions.”  

This campaign provides leaders with monthly education, tools and resources to support their efforts to retain talent. The interactive dashboards and reports with actionable data help managers make better decisions, and an online platform leverages technology to make it easier for managers to connect with teammates and track their interactions, using AI to customize the experience with each interaction. 

“Internal alignment among key stakeholders during the discovery, planning and implementation helps to avoid confusion, conflict or resistance that may arise from inconsistent or contradictory messages or actions,” Jones explains. “By aligning the people strategy with the organization’s mission, vision and strategic plan, we can achieve higher performance, engagement and satisfaction among our teammates—which ultimately benefits our patients, communities and each other.” 

How It Looks to Staff 

UNC Health for Me includes the following six key “pillars,” which have been in place for 18 months: 

• Welcome Me, which is designed to create a “positive, inclusive and memorable experience for candidates and new teammates” that starts during the hiring process and continues through the early stages of employment; 
• Develop Me, which focuses on teammates’ development, growth and overall experience, professionally and personally, through initiatives designed to expand career mobility and education; 
• Value Me, which strives to establish a “culture” where teammates feel “valued, recognized and equitably compensated for their contributions” toward achievement of system goals; 
• Care for Me, which emphasizes and reinforces that UNC Health is “supportive” of teammates’ personal and professional goals, health and well-being, and personal safety and respect; 
• Include Me, which is designed to be woven throughout all the pillars and build an equitable and inclusive community throughout every element of the teammate journey; and 
• Engage Me, which ensures teammates are engaged, feel connected and cared for through a sense of belonging that focuses on UNC Health’s culture and connecting staff as “One Great Team.” 

Throughout the year, UNC Health observes six-themed “Pillar Recognition” weeks with activities and programs designed to reaffirm aspects of each component of the initiative. 

UNC Health for Me also supports building internal relationships among staff via Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which are voluntary, teammate-led groups that connect those with shared characteristics, life experiences and/or interests. Staff are also encouraged to volunteer in the communities surrounding UNC Health locations, through programs that “promote the mission and values of UNC Health internally and externally.” 

“ERGs are a way we encourage teammates to engage with one another,” Heckle says. “Company culture and work environment have a significant influence on employee engagement and satisfaction. Research shows that teammates who feel comfortable, supported, and develop camaraderie at work are more likely to maintain high productivity and remain in their position.” 

The collective purpose resonates, she adds, citing data from Deloitte that indicate 83% of millennials are more actively engaged when they believe their company fosters an inclusive culture. Another statistic, from Glassdoor, suggests that 50% of ERG members at organizations that use them intend to remain at their job long-term.  

“This aligns with our desire to attract and retain teammates,” Heckle says. “From establishing these ERGs to volunteer opportunities to affiliations with sports organizations, our engagement efforts are collaborative and strategically aligned to support and promote the mission and values of UNC Health internally and externally.” 

Ultimately, the “long-term people strategy” of UNC Health for Me is to help the system attract and keep the very best talent while providing a great teammate experience.  

“One of the most powerful levers in retention is the relationship between teams and their leaders,” Jones explains. “We wanted to support leaders and help them develop. Along with trying to identify the needs of our teammates, we also needed to recognize what they had gone through, throughout the pandemic and beyond. We understood that caring for our teammates was part of retaining them.”