Nicole Paulk serves as senior vice president and chief strategy officer of Indianapolis-based IU Health, and she told Becker's that the organization's focus on talent has evolved, including beyond nursing and medical school.
Ms. Paulk has been in her current role since September 2021 and recently shared details about the organization's strategy regarding talent and its overall direction.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What is the biggest way your system has changed in the last year?
Nicole Paulk: We've been focusing on things like, are there more capital-light approaches to growth? Is there a way to phase all of our projects? Because we have a very large downtown hospital project that's expected to open in 2027. But we have a lot of other growth needs across the system. So how do we phase that? We have been more disciplined about integrating our strategic plan and our long-range financial plan so that now we have actually built in strategic investments that we'll need over the next 10 years. Of course, that will always be subject to updates and to pivots. But it's a good way to ensure that we are positioned successfully for the future. Also, to message to the organization that these things are priorities. That's been really important to us.
Additionally, we've been building out certain aspects of our strategy. Probably five years ago, talent would not be core to our strategic plan. But we really see our talent strategy now as kind of the rate limiter to the execution of the rest of the strategy. So we put a lot of energy into that and have partnered with our chief human resources officer to develop a strategy in that area.
We're relatively early in the journey for the talent strategy. I think everyone was responding to COVID and having a staff shortage during the worst of COVID. But I think what we realized is this is not a short-term problem. There's a long-term inbalance between what the demand for healthcare is going to be and the likely supply of folks to provide the care. So we've been looking at a few different things. One is focusing on retention of our current employees. We did a market-based pay adjustment. We also have been working on strategies to really improve our retention of our talent in key areas. Part of it is strengthening our leaders and making sure that they're in the best position to really engage the workforce and get the best out of them. In addition to the compensation adjustment that I mentioned, we're also creating more formalized career ladders, so that people understand that they can stay with us a long time and grow and not need to leave the organization. Another piece that we're looking at are pipeline programs. We're realizing it doesn't start with nursing school or medical school. You have to reach back pretty early in the school trajectory to get people interested in healthcare careers.
We have a relationship with a local high school, Crispus Attucks High School, where we have a fellowship program, where kids can be exposed early to careers in healthcare. We have another internship program with Providence Cristo Rey High School, which is a magnet school here, to provide internships and exposure to healthcare. So we're thinking a lot about how do you start that earlier. We have a unique partnership with IU School of Nursing and relationships with Ivy Tech School of Nursing and other clinical nursing partners. We're always looking for ways to drive the pipeline of talent.
Q: Looking ahead, do you see those things pivoting in 2024?
NP: We're focused a lot on retention because it's easier to retain than to recruit. Part of it is identifying those best practices and spreading those from one function or one facility to another. We also play a very unique role in the state as the only academic health system. So when we think about talent, we think about it not only in terms of how our hospitals and clinics are staffed, but whether we are attracting the right kind of clinician researchers. A big part of that work is identifying programs of distinction, but also recruiting those folks who can help grow our academic acumen and our access to clinical trials and unique research.