A Recipe for Building a Diverse Workforce: The Benefits of Intentionality

Description

This session will explore the journey that CHRISTUS Health took to make diversity a core focus. CHRISTUS Health is an international health system comprised of almost 350 services and facilities, including more than 60 hospitals. Many business narratives across the U.S. reflect the desire to increase diversity to impact culture, but few succeed. The secret ingredient is intentionality. Our journey to “create a culture of health equity, diversity and inclusion” has come with growing pains, but consistent intentionality has led to tremendous success in changing culture across an organization vastly diverse in service-line offerings and geographic spread. This effort has led to engaging not only our employees, but our executive leaders, governance boards, and even the communities we serve.

In healthcare, research has shown that differences in health outcomes occur as a result of many different factors, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, location, gender, disability status, and sexual orientation. Imagine bringing the voice of individuals from these communities to the decision-making table. How would that enlighten and inform business decisions? Diversity is more than skin-deep. It is about having diverse leaders at the table who bring diversity of thought, and a variation in perspectives and approaches to the way we care for our patients and positively impact the health of our communities.

Join us in learning how CHRISTUS Health has leveraged numerous diversity strategies to impact business development and growth. In this session, we will discuss a host of strategies and programs applied, such as:

• diversifying our governance boards;
• redesigning our mentorship program to encourage executive leaders to mentor minority candidates;
• development of a Minority Executive Fellowship Program that serves to create a pipeline for diverse mid-level managers to move into executive-level positions;
• and the implementation of pay-at-risk goals for talent acquisition teams to shepherd when working with hiring managers for executive-level positions.

Learning Outcomes

1. Explore the role of our governance boards, executive leaders, and middle managers in driving a culture of diversity and inclusion
2. Discover ways to integrate new and existing diversity strategies that will grow your talent pipeline for diverse talent
3. Assess the impact of meaningful interconnected D&I strategies on customer experience and talent acquisition, retention, and workforce engagement