The Changing Role of the Healthcare CHRO

Business acumen

Healthcare CHROs need a vocabulary that extends beyond payroll and benefits, employee surveys, and holiday bonuses. They need to understand the major issues and the language of the industry so they can communicate effectively with everyone from the chief medical officer to anesthesiologists to orderlies. They need to understand complex healthcare laws and regulations, and they need to stay abreast of certification rules to ensure employees are up to date and able to work legally. They also need to understand the changing needs of their patient population and how those needs affect their workforce—for example, patients with Alzheimer’s will present very different challenges from patients in a pediatric practice. Although the top priorities for CHROs in 2023—including attracting talented medical practitioners and developing future leaders—remain firmly in the HR wheelhouse, the role of the CHRO is expanding into organizational design, change management, and other areas.

Ability to spot industry shifts

CHROs need to be able to identify industry shifts and determine how their organization should adapt to them. These may include generational changes, such as the rise of omnipresent personal computing devices, resulting in a more tech-savvy workforce that lacks the patience to navigate legacy software systems. Or the shift toward value-based care, which links payments to both the cost and quality of care. Or changes brought about by unforeseen events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which accelerated the adoption of telehealth consultations and increased the use of travel nurse services.

Cultural vision

Workforce culture is the mix of attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and traditions that define an organization’s work environment. CHROs are responsible for the cultivation and sustenance of a vibrant work culture and for instilling change if the culture starts driving people to leave. CHROs need to align the organization’s culture with clearly defined corporate strategy and branding. For healthcare organizations in particular, corporate culture affects more than employee satisfaction and customer loyalty; it also affects patient outcomes.

Talent assessment

Talent assessment is a key element of recruitment, performance management, career development, and succession planning. It’s particularly important in healthcare, where the talent is often very specialized and its quality affects patients’ lives. Finding the right talent often means developing current staff and redeploying them in new roles. Healthcare organizations often have different goals from other industries—HR managers may be tasked with curbing waste and reducing noise levels, for example. Assessing staff on their commitment to these goals is part of what makes the healthcare industry unique.

Adaptability

Adaptive healthcare CHROs are able to step back from the crisis of the day and take a wider view of the organization’s long-term objectives. To the extent they can, adaptive CHROs anticipate needs, trends, and options rather than just reacting to them, and they communicate priorities throughout the organization to build consensus. Adaptive CHROs are transparent in their decision-making process and open to challenges and feedback that might alter the plan. For example, an adaptive CHRO for a hospital system looking to hire more registered nurses would gather data about where the shortages are most acute, seek the advice of staff nurses, and expand the decision-making process to include third-party experts.

Empathetic leadership

Due in part to the stresses created by the pandemic, mental health issues are at a crisis level in the industry. One third of the frontline healthcare practitioners who responded to a 2021 Kaiser Family Foundation/Washington Post survey said they have needed some form of mental healthcare. A top priority for healthcare CHROs is to use their emotional intelligence to create an empathetic and supportive culture, one that removes the stigma around seeking help. Even programs that don’t seem related to mental health—such as flexible scheduling, childcare support, and work-at-home options—can improve employee well-being.

Leadership development

There’s truth to the notion that people don’t leave jobs, they leave poor managers. Savvy healthcare CHROs prioritize developing their organization’s leaders and managers at all levels through formal training programs and ongoing feedback. Healthcare leaders need all the qualities that every other leader needs—but they also need deep empathy for patients and a clear understanding of the roles of everyone involved in care teams. The ideal leader and manager is someone who inspires, engages with, and motivates employees and exemplifies the organization’s values.

Establish, uphold, improve, and communicate workplace culture

Healthcare CHROs, working with other members of the C-suite, help build and sustain a work culture that attracts talented people, keeps them engaged, promotes innovation, and is conducive to delivering first-rate patient care. In healthcare, culture means far more than just “a nice place to work.” Research by the National Health Service shows that dysfunctional healthcare organizational culture has resulted in increased rates of patient mortality. To promote a positive workplace culture, healthcare CHROs are creating orientation programs and ongoing mentorship programs that are designed to acclimate employees to their new surroundings and coworkers. They’re also offering employees opportunities to provide feedback to management through regular surveys and other channels.

Advise the C-suite and board

CHROs play a unique role in the C-suite: They’re often considered the most emotionally intelligent members of the group, and they also provide the “voice of the employee” in discussions with other C-level executives, who can be insulated from general employee concerns. CHROs need to take employee requests for changes to work practices—such as more-flexible schedules, better mental health support, and remote work options—to the C-suite for consideration. The CHRO is also involved in succession planning for C-suite roles.

Additionally, CHROs advise senior management on everything from physical security and environmental health and safety to real estate and facilities. Other C-suite members are beginning to recognize the strategic role the CHRO can play. In a 2023 Accenture report, 87% of the CEOs surveyed said the CHRO should play a role in ensuring their organization’s long-term profitable growth, but only 45% said they had created the conditions to allow the CHRO to do so.

Communicate the employee value proposition

The employee value proposition consists of everything an organization offers to attract and retain its people. The basics are competitive salary and benefits, but leading healthcare organizations also focus on other factors, such as providing employee wellness programs, helping workers improve their work-life balance, offering flexible scheduling, and creating more-transparent management processes. And they’re making sure current and prospective employees know about these initiatives.

Engage the workforce

Creating a culture of employee engagement is one way healthcare CHROs can reduce turnover rates and improve employee satisfaction. Engagement starts with listening to what employees have to say. Methods range from “rounding,” whereby senior leaders and managers walk the halls, talking with staff and patients, to developing surveys that ask for employee input on work schedules, patient and family relations, new directives, and other issues. CHROs need to strike a balance between intrusive, repetitive requests for feedback and surveys that are so infrequent that workers discount the impact they might have.

Improve overall performance

Before healthcare CHROs can drive performance improvements, they need to understand what strong performance means for their organization. Higher productivity segmented by role? More surgeries? Higher overall patient throughput? Higher revenues and profits? Better patient outcomes? Higher patient satisfaction scores? And how are all the performance indicators going to be measured—what data will be needed? Some indicators, such as patient satisfaction, are harder to measure than others, such as revenue.

Develop teams

Healthcare CHROs inevitably have many positions to fill at any given time, and they know they can’t recruit for every one of them. They need to identify employees who are able to grow into certain positions, identify what kinds of skills and experience they need, and help chart a career roadmap for them, which includes getting them the required training. According to the AI at Work study by Workplace Intelligence, 83% of employees want to make a career change but face obstacles such as a lack of opportunity for internal growth and a lack of confidence in their ability to make a change. It’s up to the CHRO to help remove those obstacles, and technology can help. 85% of the employees surveyed said they want access to technology to help them identify skills gaps, recommend ways to upskill, and provide next steps for career progression.

Advocate for technology

Most healthcare organizations use basic HR technology to manage payroll, benefits, recruiting, and training. But many aren’t taking advantage of capabilities in the human capital management (HCM) application suites they already pay for. 66% of CHROs who responded to a 2021 PwC Pulse survey said a top challenge is implementing HR systems and tools, and 63% said they’re hiring digital-savvy HR professionals. Prospect Medical Holdings, which operates 17 hospitals and 165 medical care clinics across five states, is taking full advantage of their new cloud-based HCM system—which replaced myriad unconnected systems—to quickly access information about all 17,000 employees. In addition to many other capabilities, the system supports flexible scheduling, sends employees notifications when it’s time to take a break, and allows management to send out regular communications to help workers feel more connected to the organization.