Building a People First Culture at Methodist Health System with Alen Brcic

Summary

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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

Episode: Building a People First Culture at Methodist Health System with Alen Brcic

Release Date: March 6, 2026
Guest: Alen Brcic, Chief Human Resources Officer, Methodist Health System, Dallas
Host: Kelly Gooch, Senior Editor and Enterprise Lead, Becker's Healthcare

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on how Methodist Health System is proactively shaping a “people first” culture under the leadership of Alen Brcic, its Chief Human Resources Officer. Brcic details the system’s remarkable achievements in employee retention, engagement, and patient experience, as well as its strategic use of technology and leadership development. He discusses headwinds facing healthcare, the role of culture, and keys to sustaining organizational excellence as Methodist approaches its centennial.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Methodist Health System Overview

• Background: Methodist is a nearly 100-year-old faith-based healthcare system in Dallas, with a network of 13 hospitals and nationally recognized services (Level I Trauma Center, Multi-organ Transplant, Level III NICU) ([00:18]).
• Mission: A deep-rooted commitment to “improving and saving lives through compassionate quality healthcare.”

Three Major Initiatives in the Past Year

1. Reducing Employee Turnover

• Achievement: Methodist is at the 84th percentile nationally for low turnover, across clinical and non-clinical roles, benchmarking against a million-worker industry database ([01:42]).
• Strategy: Direct engagement with each individual considering resignation, reviewing processes to support and retain talent, and ideating with leaders to meet employee needs.
  • Quote: “We ideate with our leaders how we can retain them... meeting them where they are, yielding significantly strong outcomes.” — Alen Brcic [02:14]

2. Maximizing Employee Engagement

• Achievement: Reached the 83rd percentile nationally—“the highest in our history”—for employee engagement ([02:51]).
• Approach: Implementation of action plans, activation of 700 leaders, and an ongoing people-centric focus despite technological advances in healthcare.
  • Quote: “Healthcare remains a people-centered business. An engaged workforce ultimately delivers the highest quality of care for our patients.” — Alen Brcic [02:31]

3. Elevating Patient Experience

• Focus Area: Intensive work in ambulatory surgery, reviewing patient surveys, and establishing a system steering group for continuous improvements ([03:37]).
• Goal: Personalize care and “drive that human experience” by leveraging technology and system-wide support.
  • Quote: “Really personalizing healthcare is what we are focused on—driving that human experience.” — Alen Brcic [04:14]

Strategic Priorities Moving Forward

Building on Success

• Challenge: As performance increases, future benchmarks “get more narrow,” making each employee and patient interaction even more critical ([04:55]).
• Artificial Intelligence Implementation:
  • Rediscovering high-caliber candidates from past applicant pools, showing significant ROI.
  • Real-time, data-driven optimization of talent marketing spend.

Sustaining & Elevating Culture

• Recognition: Awarded “Best Places to Work” and “Great Place to Work” certifications for 2025 and 2026 ([06:28]).
• Philosophy: “I firmly believe that Methodist has a culture that is second to none… Our goal is to continue to elevate that, because we know once our employees feel they belong, once they're engaged… the outcomes for our patients... will be significantly better into the future.” — Alen Brcic [06:49]

Defining a People-First Culture

• Leadership Role: 700 leaders are encouraged to inspire their teams, build relationships, and foster trust.
  • Quote: “We always want them to assume positive intent... Did I build trust? Did I leave relationships stronger?” — Alen Brcic [07:37]
• Focus on Development: Prioritizing upskilling and career progression for staff to meet tomorrow’s healthcare needs ([08:26])
• Handling Adversity: Addressing workplace violence, mental health challenges, and adopting an “assume positive intent” mindset ([07:55])

Navigating Healthcare’s Challenges

• Current Headwinds: Recognized industry-wide pressures like financial challenges and workforce strain ([08:54]).
• Cultural Safety Net: Trust, employee voice, and compassionate care form the backbone for resilience.
  • Quote: “If people feel seen, if they get the highest quality of care, and they also receive the highest level of compassion, everything else will follow.” — Alen Brcic [09:36]

Opportunities for Growth

1. Upskilling & Workforce Development:
   • Special focus on technical roles (radiology, lab, etc.).
   • Investing in employee career growth and future readiness ([10:30]).
2. Technological Enablement:
   • Leveraging technology to empower—not replace—staff.
   • Prioritizing utility over novelty (“not just chasing the shiniest objects”) ([11:02]).
3. Real-Time Patient Experience Enhancement:
   • Aiming for in-the-moment feedback and guidance to clinicians.
   • Using AI to personalize care as it happens, not just via retroactive surveys ([11:42]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Retention: “Looking at our processes and procedures to ensure that support great talent to remain with Methodists while meeting them where they are…” — Alen Brcic [02:05]
• On Culture: “Our 700 leaders—they’re on stage every single day… inspire their teams to greatness, connecting them to the mission.” — Alen Brcic [07:24]
• On Compassion: “How do we ensure that through our strong employee engagement numbers, through our strong patient experience… we continue to be at the forefront of healthcare?” — Alen Brcic [09:18]
• On Growth: “We continue to focus on excellence... Our charge is how do we continue to build on that great momentum and continue to elevate from there.” — Alen Brcic [12:08]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 00:18 — Introduction of Alen Brcic and overview of Methodist Health System
• 01:42 — Three major initiatives: turnover, engagement, patient experience
• 04:55 — Strategic priorities for 2026; AI in hiring and marketing
• 06:28 — Workplace awards and vision for the future
• 07:21 — Defining leadership’s role in culture and upskilling
• 08:54 — Difficulties and headwinds in healthcare today
• 10:30 — Main opportunities for organizational growth
• 12:31 — Wrapping up and looking ahead to the centennial

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Summary

Alen Brcic’s conversation with Becker’s Healthcare illuminates Methodist Health System’s deliberate, data- and people-driven approach to healthcare HR and culture. Grounded in values and proactive leadership, Methodist’s story is one of continued evolution: leading-edge retention, award-winning engagement, and a progressive embrace of technology are all orchestrated in service of staff, patients, and the Dallas community. As the system prepares for its 100th anniversary, its roadmap highlights belonging, development, and a relentless push to build a culture—and care experience—that is “second to none.”

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm Kelly Gooch, Senior Editor and Enterprise Lead at Beckers and I'm pleased to welcome Alan Bersich, Chief Human Resources Officer at Methodist Health System in Dallas. Alan, thank you so much for joining us. Before we dive in today, I'd love to start by having you introduce yourself and share a bit about your background.

[B]

Absolutely. It's great to be with you this afternoon. And hello from the DFW region. As you shared, my name is Alan Burchich. I have the privilege to lead our human resources function for the Methodist Health System. For those of you outside of we are a faith based organization with a mission to improve and save lives through compassionate quality healthcare. We are coming up on our centennial anniversary. Almost 100 years of service to the southern sector of Dallas in the DFW region and we are so proud of all that we continue to achieve for our communities. Methodist has a network of 13 hospitals through ownership and affiliation with nationally recognized medical services such as level one Trauma Center, Multi organ Transplantation, Level three NICU and so many other things. From a workforce culture perspective, we are so proud to continue to redefine what it means to work in a place that prides itself on putting its people at the forefront of all that we do. And I'm really excited to be with you today.

[A]

Thank you. And congratulations on that centennial as well. That's so great to hear. I know as you just outlined, there's I'm sure many important things you could mention but was curious if you could maybe dive into one of the most important initiatives you've led in the last year and maybe what that entailed and what the results were there.

[B]

Absolutely. So three focus areas for the last year that we are so, so proud of. One relates to turnover, our turnover. We benchmark ourselves nationally against healthcare organization, a database of about a million healthcare workers. Looking at from a national perspective, we have ACHIE, the 84th percentile. From a turnover perspective, very low turnover across all of our domains, nursing, other clinical roles which are all the tech related roles, non clinical and overall which we are so, so proud of. The outcomes of the great strategy we had around intentionally engaging on every single individual who is resigning from Methodist Health System and ideating with our leaders how we can retain them. Looking at our processes and procedures to ensure that support great talent to remain with Methodists while meeting them where they are and that ultimately has yielded significantly strong outcomes from an overall turnover perspective. The second initiative was related to employee engagement. When you look at employee engagement, healthcare Is about people caring for people and from a workforce perspective. While we have explored artificial intelligence, implemented it and numerous other things, Healthcare remains a people centered business. An engaged workforce ultimately delivers the highest quality of care for our patients. Not only the quality, but also the compassionate care which is part of our mission statement and who we are to numerous strategies around developing clear action plans, activating our leaders, 700 leaders across our system. We have been able to achieve the 83rd percentile nationally on employee engagement, which is really, really significant and the highest in our history. From a Methodist health system perspective, the third strategy centered around patient experience and figuring out ways how do we continuously evolve in all of our patient experience domains. Our number one focus for this year and last year has been ambulatory surgery, outpatient ambulatory surgery. And we have developed strategies through really figuring out ways to be reviewing every one of the comments that we get from our patient experience surveys, developing a system steering group that works with operational leaders and clinical leaders on the ground, but also supports them from an overall system perspective to better technology, better engagement and ultimately tools that they need to ensure that the patients on the end receive the highest quality, the most compassionate care based on their preferences. So really personalizing healthcare is what we are focused on driving that human experience. And we have made significant gains last year and continue to see amazing improvements into 2026.

[A]

Yeah, that's great to hear that that percentile. And also just that continued focus on patient. It sounds like patient engagement and also employee engagement and patient experience as well. And anything else you had mentioned, You've outlined a few things there, but anything else you'd mention, Alan, looking ahead, other big priorities or headwinds, you're really focused on this year.

[B]

Absolutely. What we are focused on this year is continuing to build on that great momentum. Once you are already doing great across all of the domains that we track, workforce and patient experience perspective, how do we continue to elevate the benchmarks as you get higher, get more narrow, which means that every single engagement continues to be as important. So a few things that we are doing on the workforce side, we are implementing artificial intelligence. We have implemented already two key functionalities around artificial intelligence. One is to help us rediscover candidates who have applied at Methodist, maybe a few years ago weren't selected but were high caliber candidates and that has already showed significant roi. And then the second piece is from a cost containment perspective around promotion of our jobs, our talent, brand marketing, figuring out how do we really in real time, dynamically based on data, shift our investment dollars for those jobs that we need additional candidates to fill the role. So we are really data science driven. We look at all of the key metrics and are always trying to figure out how do we optimize the resources we have to drive those strategies. As I look ahead, continuing to elevate our culture will be really, really at the forefront of my role and what we continue to do. As you may have known, we have already been awarded a great place last or best places to work in 2025, in 2026, great place to work, certified in numerous other awards that we are so proud of. Now the question is how do we continue to evolve and elevate? And I firmly believe that Methodist has a culture that is second to none, the best culture based on outward facing metrics in the DFW region. And our goal is to continue to elevate that because we know once our employees feel they belong, once they're engaged, once our culture is strong, the outcomes for our patients, the outcomes for our communities and all of our loved ones who are patients in some point in time will be significantly better into the future. And we are so excited to continue on this journey.

[A]

Yeah, thank you so much. And I I'm curious, you're just following up too. Is any anything else specific you mentioned on what that culture, what you envision that looking like specifically? Just any other other details there that you're you're thinking about culture?

[B]

Absolutely. We always ask our leaders and challenge them really that we set the path forward. But what does that mean? All of our 700 leaders they're on stage every single day and our ask of them is to continue to inspire their teams to greatness, connecting them to the mission. Our ask is that they continue to strengthen relationships within their leadership teams within cross functionally across the system because we know through relationships through a common purpose we can achieve anything. The other asks are we always want them to assume positive intent? As leaders and as healthcare workers we are facing challenges every single day. Might be workplace violence, mental health challenges, employee needs that we are experiencing. How do we continue in all situations, no matter what, continue to assume positive intent and always leave relationships stronger than we found them? Today we walk in in the morning compared to when we leave. The question I ask myself is did I build trust, did I leave relationships stronger and did I assume positive intent in all engagement even at times when we disagree? Ultimately the goal is that as leaders in the healthcare community, we continue to encourage our staff to grow and develop. That might mean development from a career progression perspective, but even more Important, upskilling them, to ensure that they continue to be able to meet the opportunities of tomorrow and serve our patients in the best way.

[A]

Absolutely. And you just mentioned, of course, challenges as well. And not only, I know you mentioned workplace violence, but of course, financial pressures, just an evolving landscape in general. And so what would you say is maybe the hardest thing you'll have to do this year?

[B]

Absolutely. And I would say that, you know, we are fortunate. At Methodist, we are always focused on how do we look ahead. So for us, in a continuously changing environment, our focus needs to continue to be to build trust, to ensure that our employees feel seen and heard. And how do we ensure that through our strong employee engagement numbers, through our strong patient experience, delivery of services, we continue to be at the forefront of health care. We believe that if we take care of our people and if we provide great care from a consumer perspective, if people feel seen, if they get the highest quality of care, and they also receive the highest level of compassion, and everything else will follow. When we look at our data set and holistically across all of the domains that we are tracking at the system level, we believe that we are working diligently on all of those and are so proud of our achievements. So while there is a lot of talk around financial pressures and challenges and no organization is immune, being able to be strategic, proactive will ensure that we continue to position Methodists strong for the next century to come.

[A]

And that's a perfect segue into what I wanted to ask next, which is where you really see the best opportunities for organizational growth right now.

[B]

Absolutely. So again, from a clinical perspective, we continue to open up access points, but my goal is to focus more on the workforce side and the experience we are creating from our patients. From a workforce perspective, across our region and across the country, we are struggling with all roles related to techs, meaning radiology lab, anything that has a tech in a title. How do we continue to upskill individuals? How do we continue to grow the workforce within our own ranks? Encourage people to continue to develop will be one of our focus. As a second focus with the evolution of technology is how do we continue to upskill our workforce to be prepared, to utilize the capabilities and tools that exist out there, to ensure that we are providing not only the skills that they need, but leveraging technology as an enabler, leveraging technology to serve our employees, to ultimately deliver better care rather than just chasing the shiniest objects at the forefront. The last piece and the third piece from an experience perspective is as we look at patient experience, our focus is how do we continuously improve our capabilities to deliver insights and guidance to clinicians as they are working with patients directly rather than waiting for a survey and to come back a week two weeks later? How do we ingrain processes leveraging AI, leveraging capabilities to influence behaviors of our clinicians right at the time when they're delivering the care and ultimately continue to personalize health care? Those are the three top opportunities for growth from a workforce experience, perspective and truly looking at the Methodist Health System model. Much before I joined this organization we continue to focus on excellence. This organization has done that over almost a century of service and our charge is how do we continue to build on that great momentum and continue to elevate from there which is always a challenge but we are up for the task.

[A]

Yes. And congratulations again on that centennial coming up and thank you again Alan for this fun and interesting conversation. I really do appreciate your time and I look forward to working with you again soon.

[B]

Sounds awesome. Thank you so much. Kelly.