article by Dr. John Sullivan & Master Burnett
One of the goals of this weekly column is to celebrate the best practices of the recruiting profession. In line with that effort, I’m happy to report that the Wall Street Journal has recently run an entire story focusing exclusively on the accomplishments of one of our own, Trudy Knoepke-Campbell of HealthEast. It’s important to recognize this rare event not only because it provides an opportunity to learn from HealthEast’s best practices, but also, more importantly, because it also might be an indication that the Wall Street Journal, the benchmark business newspaper, has begun to recognize the importance of recruiting. Although the Wall Street Journal does occasional feature stories highlighting recruiting trends, it is extremely rare for them to write an entire article highlighting the recruiting best practices of a single firm. We view such recognition by the prestigious newspaper to be just another indication that recruiting is recognized by those outside the profession as something that is of increasing interest to a wider business audience, because it is a function that can have direct measurable business impacts.
From Minneapolis-St. Paul to Wall Street
On October 3, 2005, The Wall Street Journal profiled Ms. Knoepke Campbell in its Theory and Practice column, which appears in the Managing section of the paper (click here to read the column). The column is dedicated to looking at the people and ideas that are demonstrating an impact and influencing managers. Ms Knoepke-Campbell, who tends to shy away from public recognition, says, “My jaw still drops every time I think about it. I was in the Wall Street Journal.” Proud she should, be because we estimate, as external observers, that the changes that HealthEast’s team have designed could have a positive dollar impact of over $23 million.
Stepping Up in a Time When Most Are Letting Down
Twenty-three months ago, this ERE column highlighted the efforts of HealthEast’s team to embrace the new DNA of HR and implement practices senior corporate leaders would clearly view as demonstrating a positive impact on the business. That column detailed the efforts of Ms. Knoepke-Campbell’s team to devise and implement best practices in the area of recruiting and workforce planning for the HealthEast Care System, a hospital system operating four hospitals, numerous clinics, home care, and medical transportation in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. Fast-forward nearly two years later, and you find a story worthy of the Theory and Practice column in The Wall Street Journal. The Trudy Knoepke-Campbell story is truly one about a professional stepping up to meeting the expectations and needs of the business during a time when most practitioners are letting their organizations down. Survey after survey reveals that most corporate leaders are beyond being frustrated with their HR function; they’re downright unhappy. The Watson Wyatt Human Resource Scorecard Alliance found that while 83% of senior line managers consider the major HR functions critical to the success of the business, only 34% rate the performance of their organization in those areas as being “good” or better.
Contrast that rating with this one: 93.8% — the percentage of line managers surveyed at HealthEast Care System who stated that the recent work of Ms. Knoepke-Campbell and her colleagues to implement new selection tools and improve the processes were adding significant value to the business. Behind this story, and everything that HealthEast is doing with regards to workforce planning, is a theme, one we all could learn from: Stop defending the status quo because it is how “we have always done it,” and embrace new tools and processes that more accurately fit the current business environment. As director of workforce planning, Ms. Knoepke-Campbell, is charged with developing and implementing tools that ensure the hospital system has access to the right volume of employees at the right time and in the right location. While many would accept this role as an administrative one, Ms. Knoepke-Campbell sees it as a leadership role, a job not focused on mere forecasting, but rather one focused on investigating the needs of the business and devising workforce and recruiting strategies to fit those needs.
The Background
Trudy Knoepke-Campbell joined HealthEast Care System in the fall of 1999 as their first-ever director of workforce planning after completing more than 15 interviews. Her primary motivation for taking the job was that it gave her the opportunity to once and for all prove that compensation was not always to blame for people leaving an organization. At that time, the staffing situation at HealthEast wasn’t pretty. Vacancies in several key areas were forcing the organization to contemplate cutting back on critical services, and temporary staffing service utilization was driving labor costs through the roof. The vacancy rate in radiology for nuclear medicine technicians was especially acute: 58% of the allocated positions were vacant. Using temporary staff to fill just this void was costing the hospital group an estimated $1 million a year.
Major Successes
Both the WSJ column and our ERE profile of excellence highlighted the major quantifiable accomplishments of HealthEast’s team. Some of them include:
Tools and Approaches Used
Following are some of the tools and approaches Ms. Knoepke-Campbell used to address the workforce issues present at HealthEast when she joined:
What’s Coming Next?
Like many healthcare organizations, HealthEast is facing some difficult challenges. The aging population, in conjunction with rapid growth in the Twin Cities area, will continue to put pressure on all of the area’s hospitals with regards to service delivery. That increase in demand for services will come as the availability of talent hits an all-time low. HealthEast is already experiencing up-ticks in vacancy rates for physical therapists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacists, and radiology technicians. All of this comes at a time when the hospital system is expanding services to meet demand, new outpatient care providers are popping up, and a major discount chain is opening pharmacies throughout the area. So to help stave off the competition for talent, HealthEast is looking into:
Conclusion
Recruiting has never been a profession that sought out publicity. Most in the field have preferred to let their work speak for themselves. It is however, important to realize that the world of recruiting is changing. One only need to look at Donald Trump and his television show, The Apprentice, to realize that publicity and branding efforts can have a positive impact on both the volume and the quality of applicants a company gets.
In this column I have highlighted the best practices of great recruiters like Michael Homula of FirstMerit, Dan Hilbert of Valero, and the team at HealthEast to stimulate other recruiters to be more competitive and to think outside the box. This recent recognition by the Wall Street Journal is another building block in my campaign to get more recruiting functions to brag about and publicize their best practices — not for ego purposes, because most of the people I profile have to be talked into telling their stories, but instead to increase the sharing of best practices in our profession. This HealthEast story is especially compelling because it occurs in the field of healthcare, where almost everyone complains about unsolvable problems. The time has come for great directors of recruiting to realize that publicity, PR, and employment branding are becoming essential elements of any great recruiting program. If you are one of the many recruiting functions or recruiters that has a compelling story, tool or best practice that you wish to share with others, send it to me at johns@sfsu.edu and I’ll do my part to share with others. In addition, I urge everyone to submit their application to the annual ERE Excellence awards competition so that your organization can be recognized for its excellent work.
