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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Redesigning the Healthcare Workforce for the Future with Jeremy Stephens
00:12:51
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- [00:00]
A
At Insight Global Health, we are dedicated to helping you and improving healthcare for everyone. That means building stronger teams and delivering sustainable solutions that truly make a difference. We offer a full spectrum of talent and technical services and deliver cross industry expertise to bring you innovative best practices to solve the problems that we face in healthcare. We're not just promising you results, we are delivering them. Visit us@insightglobal.com hi everyone, this is Lucas
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B
Voss with Becker's Healthcare coming to you live from Becker's 2026 annual meeting. So excited to have you and I am very excited to have Jeremy Stevens here, Chief Human Resources Officer and Executive Vice President at Tightlands Health. Jeremy, welcome. Great to have you.
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C
Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here. It's a pleasure.
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B
Yes, I do want to start off with introductions for those that might not know you yet. At least tell us a little bit what you do at tightlens and a little bit about the organization.
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C
Sure. So again, my name is Jeremy Stevens. I'm the Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resource Officer at Tidelands Health. Tidelands is a regional health system from about the border of North Carolina, South Carolina south, down almost to Charleston and right along the coast. So we're in a really growing area. Actually the county that most of our hospital inpatients are is one of the fastest growing in the entire United States. So we really growing fast and trying to meet that demand for all of
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B
our patients and great views.
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C
I'd imagine that's it's not a bad place to work for sure.
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B
Just to level set our conversation, I've been asking leaders this all annual meeting, what's that one thing that you're really, that's commanding your attention that you really look to, that you're paying extra attention to right now.
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C
So I think the biggest, biggest thing is we've recently enhanced our partnership with musc and so that has created a new opportunity for us to think differently and how we can partner and really provide care and expand our services throughout the area. But with that comes kind of the, the primary thing which is pipeline, workforce, making sure we've got the workforce to meet that demand. With that fast growing area, we've got to have a lot of people coming in that are really skilled, able to take care of all those patients.
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B
Yeah, again you mentioned the area that's growing fast. But and again we're also seeing so much rapid market change from again from workforce, technology, whatever it may be. Really when you think about the decisions that you're making on a daily basis, what's that one decision or pivot that's required more leadership conviction for you, where you needed to really pay attention and make a decision, especially when it comes to making sure that you're aligned with your people, your organizational values, et cetera, what sticks out for you.
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C
So I think that again, focusing on that enhanced relationship has been key because people are wanting to understand what that means and how their work might change or might not change. We're also unique in that we have a very rural system to the south of our area, which challenges how we recruit and how we bring people into that area versus the more transient to the north, which has a lot of new people moving into that area. So again, trying to figure out how to align those goals new with this new focus, with this new partnership, and really trying to make sure that everybody understands exactly what they need to do to be successful and to bring all of those people on board so that we can care for our patients.
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B
I'd imagine that requires a lot of communication, a lot of meetings, alignment a lot.
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C
Yeah, we're, we're really needing to communicate, communicate, communicate. And sometimes the message changes quickly, but we have to be able to pivot fast and communicate even if it changes 180 degrees from day one to day two. We know what our primary focus is, we know what our primary goals are, but there's a lot of little goals that happen to support those major initiatives. So within the HR function, we've been really communicating. We talk and we talk and we talk to make sure that we're focused on retention. We can't let any of our great employees leave. We've got to keep them on board and then figuring out how to get folks on board and then really focusing on where those turnover areas are. We've done a great job of an amazing team. I would say the best HR team I've ever worked with in my entire career. And we're really focused on what's important and keeping the employees and getting some more on board and then training them up, making sure that they're ready to meet the demands of the future.
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B
When you're looking at what you've just described, again, it's very complex. There's a lot of people involved. How has that changed your decision making process? How has that changed your assumptions about leadership as a whole?
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C
So I think what we've had to do is maybe slow down just a little bit when it comes to some of the future strategic type decision making so that we could handle more of the tactical. I mean, there's a Lot of tactical things that need to be done prior to opening up the new hospital that we're going to build and new things that we're going to do. And, and so you really gotta make sure that the foundation is strong, that there's no cracks in the brick, that you're really, really set where you need to be. So maybe changing some of the real aggressive focus. And I say that kind of tongue in cheek because we're very aggressive and still going out there and trying to do some real progressive things, but allowing time for the tactical. So I want to make sure my team doesn't get burnt out because they do have to focus on tactical and getting everything done that needs to be done day by day. But we can't lose sight of the future. So we can slow it down slightly, but if we slow down too much, we'll be out of the game.
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B
Yeah. When you think about all of these forces and all of these different change elements, where do you think leaders today need to be more decisive? They need to take more action?
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C
I think it's got to be fast action. I think that what you can't do is sit around and talk and talk and talk and then not be able to act. If you talk too long and you plan too much and you're never going to be 100% sure of what needs to happen. So getting it to 90% sometimes is good enough. And you got to move. All the people around us are moving fast. We can't be left behind because we're still trying to make decisions. So we've got to move fast. So I think the critical key for leaders is moving fast, making critical decisions based on the best information that you have, you're never going to have a hundred percent of all of the facts. But if you get close to 90, even 80, and you know the direction that you need to move, get going, move on that, and then the rest you can fill in as you're on the fly.
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B
Yeah, don't stall. I think really critical. Nothing's going to move if you just keep where you're at.
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C
Exactly.
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B
That's a crucial point. I want to talk a little bit about your, your personal journey as a leader and what motivates you and what drives you. Right. I think that's really, really crucial. What's that one mindset or those leadership habits that you've adopted that's been most critical for you personally in keeping the momentum that we've just talked about going and not stalling?
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C
Well, I could talk about this one for a while. I've been very, very fortunate to have amazing leaders that I've worked with and I've tried to learn a little bit from them throughout my career and try to take all those wonderful things that they've done and build my own ball of clay, if you will, to create what I want to be based on all those different people that I've had an opportunity to see. And I think that it boils down to the team. I don't think that you can do what you need to get done unless you've got an incredible team.
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B
Yeah.
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C
The team at Thailand, especially within the HR group, which is what I'm responsible for, is an amazing team. We work well together, we know what we're trying to accomplish, we know how we're going to get it done and to watch the team grow and develop and using a strategic plan and having vision and, and then just the creativity that they, that they all share to get things moving and doing it maybe different than it's been done in the past. Thinking out of the box has really allowed that team to become incredible. And we've, we've been very fortunate to win a lot of awards and be recognized. But it's much more than that. It's the team and enjoying when I come to work and I'm kind of an HR nerd. I'm not afraid to admit it, but I think the team, we have a lot of fun, we enjoy that and we get a lot done in our successes is evident and it's, it's all about the team. The team. The team.
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B
Yeah. Well, I'm certainly glad that you are an HR nerd. There's lots to talk about there. And my next question is perfect for an HR nerd. I think you're the perfect one to answer this. I want to talk a little bit about shifting workforce expectations. Right. When I think about myself, my expectations have certainly shifted in the marketplace. But for healthcare workers, I feel like for providers, et cetera, this is even more critical right now. How are these shifting workforce expectations around? Right. Flexibility, mobility, et cetera, influencing how you are designing workforce models as a self proclaimed HR nerd?
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C
Well, this is where my nerdism really gets to get into the game. I think the workforce has to be different. It has to be more flexible. It has to be more adaptive to the needs. It used to be you could just post a job and have a ton of people apply and pick somebody and move on. It's not like that anymore. You really have to be strategic and focused on going out and getting the Best talent. There's tons of pipelines to build, tons of different ways to develop those folks and get them on board. But if your systems and your, your flexibility is not there, then you're going to lose a whole section of the workforce that's looking for that. I sat in a session yesterday with Gen Z and there were some really good comments about kind of the day of the 1.0 FTE is, is gone.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And, and really what you need is the more flexible workforce that you can scale up and down based on volumes, but give them the flexibility to work as much as they want. And so getting the mindset of people that maybe have been around the industry for 40 or 50 years thinking different that, you know, yes, used to come to work every day, you did that for a long, long time and had a wonderful career. But some of the people coming into the workforce now only want to work a 0.3, a 0.5, a 0.7, whatever that may be. And we've got to figure out how to adapt our programs and our systems to allow for that. Our policies, you know, benefits are different at different levels. You got five generations of people working in the workforce. So you have to have flexibility, have to be able to attract and really not deselect anybody because of your policies. You want to have your policies as flexible and adaptive as possible so that as many people that want to come can come and you can find a home for them and get them going. And who knows, a year from now, five years from now, their needs may change. And so you have to think about what your policies flexibility allows for people to progress as they develop within the organization to meet those changing needs through their family lives. So it's challenging, it's, it's a fun time. If you're an HR and you're a nerd, it's a lot of fun to, to get in there and, and figure out ways to make a difference.
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B
Speaking of HR nerds, I, I want to talk a little bit about the technology piece to this again. It's very, very important across the board for healthcare, including for hr. Data is not just telling you there's a shortage anymore. It can also help you do some other things right. How are you utilizing technology, specifically data and analytics, to maybe make some predictions and be able to redesign those workforce models that we've just touched on.
- [11:09]
C
It's all about predictive analysis now and shifting from that reactive to predictive. And that's the key and understanding where your gaps are going to be. Really looking into the future to Say this group has X amount of turnover projected with retirement of why? Plus, you know, people we plan on promoting is another variable. So you kind of start walking through all that and you're doing in advance. So it's not necessarily going to happen tomorrow, but it might be two years down the road. Well, you better be getting prepared to figure out how to get that done. And so I think there's the predictive side. I'm loving the AI. I love all the opportunities that it brings to to standardize. I still think you have to leverage lean process improvement type models. You really need to understand your system and map it out the employee life cycle. But once you do that, then you can start looking at how can AI come in and help standardize and take away some of the monotonous, boring work that is just data driven stuff that you need but may not need to be done by a person and can get some of those things done. So now you can shift the work of the person to more people centered things. Discussions with people, communicating with people, talking to candidates, getting out there ahead of the game and figuring out a way to bring people on board. Retain engagement. Engagement is the key. Without engagement you're going to lose your workforce. So all of those variables that now you can focus on and not have to spend your time on the data and the monotonous sort of day to day things that AI can really come in and help you do.
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B
Yeah. Jeremy, it's so great to have you. Thanks so much for taking some time.
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C
Thank you. It's my pleasure. Appreciate it.
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B
Absolutely. And I'm Lucas Voss. It's great to have you as the audience and thank you for tuning into the Becker's Healthcare podcast.