The "Great Resignation," referring to the mass exodus of workers recorded at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, was a prominent narrative across industries, including healthcare. However, Maxine Carrington, senior vice president and chief people officer for New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, told Becker's she never subscribed to the storyline.
"I never bought into it," Ms. Carrington said. "As a matter of fact, we led out with the concept of the 'Great Retention.' We were presenting on this topic to multiple industry organizations, other systems, and our own teammates internally, and the title of our presentation was the 'Great Retention.' We just refused to lean into the problem and lean into that branding."
These sentiments align with a recent analysis published in NEJM Catalyst. For the analysis, Amitabh Chandra, PhD, director of health policy research at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Mass., and Louis-Jonas Heizlsperger, doctoral student in economics at University of California Berkeley, used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to examine healthcare employment, hours and wages from March 2006 to June 2023.
Among their findings was that employment in hospitals (including occupations of physicians, physician assistants, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, medical technicians, and nonclinical workers) is now slightly above what it was at the start of the pandemic and substantially higher in physician offices.
At Northwell, employment levels are stabilizing, according to Ms. Carrington.
She said the organization never experienced the levels of turnover that were being experienced in healthcare or even other industries. She attributed this to the leadership of CEO Michael Dowling and the health system's emphasis on culture and investments in people and the day-to-day workplace experience.
"I strongly believe that culture can be observed every day but it really gets tested in times of crisis," Ms. Carrington said. "And we saw the value of it certainly through the pandemic and post the acute phase of the pandemic. It helped us as we never experienced a 40% first-year turnover and a 30%, 40% and above annual turnover as some other organizations were experiencing. We were certainly concerned that we might, but thankfully, we never did."
Although first-year turnover is coming back down, and annual turnover has come back down, Northwell is not yet at its pre-pandemic annual turnover rate, which ranged between 9.5% and 10%, she added.
"We're slightly north of that and coming back to it, and I think we'll be there by end of year," Ms. Carrington said. "I do see stabilization happening. So even in that context that we never had it that bad, it's definitely starting to stabilize."
One contributing factor to the stabilization: Finding an operational leader to lead talent acquisition for Northwell, a 23-hospital organization.
"When you have 86,000+ people, multiple sites, in multiple geographies, you're running an operation when you're recruiting," Ms. Carrington said. "And I felt like we needed someone who had been a customer of our recruitment services and also someone who could be an ambassador, but who was a strong operator who could look at this entire enterprise, look at process flow, look at efficiency, look at everything differently and bring a business acumen in."
Northwell found that leader in Teri Manno, an operational leader in one of the health system's regions, who had been a leader of service lines and had run physician practices. Ms. Manno began the talent acquisition role in 2021.
Under her leadership, Northwell expanded outreach in communities and diverse populations last year, resulting in a jump in the number of events the health system held or participated in by 140% from 2022.
"We started thinking short term, long term," said Ms. Carrington. "What's the short-term strategy that gives us some quick wins? What are the longer-term strategies that will set our talent pipelines up in a sustainable way? Who do we work with? For example, internally, we work closely with our community and population health department. So, whenever they're out in the community, our recruiters are side by side with them.
"Then who do we partner with externally? Which organizations? Which schools? We also have a significant focus on inclusion hiring. We work to employ people with disabilities, people who've been involved in the justice system, veterans and more. There's also our pipeline program for caregivers who've been out of the workforce for more than two years, and also our alumni initiative, which maintains a relationship with former team members and provides an easier path for them to return to the organization. I think these efforts have also helped with stabilization."
Additionally, Ms. Carrington pointed to Northwell's work around flexibility. She acknowledged that for certain roles, there are criteria that are necessary and nonnegotiable from a regulatory standpoint.
But "for some roles, we can look at education and work experience differently" she said. "Even with nursing, you can start at Northwell without your BSN. We require that you get it within a certain period of time, and we'll work with you and provide funding for your education.
"And that's baked into the job description. We've always had some level of flexibility, but we've increased it and we're moving more and more [toward that]. We are doing an analysis right now formally of all job descriptions to evaluate requirements and what we can remove or move more toward a preference approach versus a required approach. We're practicing it, but we're going to solidify it."