Healthcare HR Leader Roundtable - Future of Work in Healthcare

Start with the work (current and future tasks) and not existing jobs. Melt jobs down into the individual components of work that needs to get done. Then re-organize those into new jobs.

Consider the full array of human work engagements not exclusively regular employment in jobs. Look at the full Talent Ecosystem Integration Model to support work.

Combine humans and automation, not replace humans in jobs. Demystify job automation for your works by proactively communicating how their roles with change, not disappear. Acknowledge what you don’t know yet.

Allow talent to “flow” to work and not be confined to fixed, traditional jobs. Empower and motivate people to do the work their best fit and excited to do.

The only rational future of work policy is "We Don't Know."  Acknowledge that you don’t know the future of work, and that it will change more rapidly. Now, at first that sounds chaotic.  But, in fact, you don't know what your products/services will be beyond five years in the future. You don't know what your software will look like beyond five years in the future. Yet, you navigate future uncertainty in products and software.  You do it by using tools for rigorous perpetual reinvention, such as agile, lean, user involvement, etc. I'm suggesting that the HR profession and function to become the hub for rigorous experiments in work design.  As with products/software you will learn and adjust, just like your product or software development group uses those tools to perpetually learn, adjust and do rigorous design, even in an uncertain future.

John Boudreau, Author or Work Without Jobs;  Professor and Senior Research Scientist with the Center for Effective Organizations, at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

At Mercy, we’re offering gig work because people want flexibility. Now we have an automated system that workers can use on their phone and say, hey, I want to pick up this shift on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, and then I’ll come back on Sunday night, so they can customize their schedules to better balance their personal priorities and commitments. People want to feel like they belong, but they also want to feel like they're learning, and that they're adding value.

Bridget Marzette-Bender, VP of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, Mercy

Today, employees are considering jobs the same way they would nutrition in a supermarket. They’re looking at an organization's moral code – what they stand for, their volunteer and charitable activities, their political alignments. As an employer, we need to learn how to brand our jobs better and make them more satisfying and fulfilling to the definition of the diverse workforce that we're trying to court.

Jason Robinson, Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Molina Healthcare

In redesigning work, we should start by asking the actual frontline workers and patients. In my 20 years of healthcare experience, we came up with all kinds of different solutions to try to support clinicians as they provided patient care and fulfilled their administrative duties such as charting.  None of them worked perfectly. Yet, I can't remember a time when we actually asked clinicians how they would design the work from scratch.  While considering patient feedback, if clinicians were given a clean, 12-hour slate, how would they redesign the work to better serve  patients and gain efficiencies in their work? 

Pam Ries, President & CEO, Thrive Consulting & Coaching; Former CHRO at Spectrum