Building Early Career Pathways from the Classroom to the Clinic: Session Recap: Key Takeaways from at HR Healthcare

07/13/2026

The HR Healthcare keynote panel, “Building Early Career Pathways from the Classroom to the Clinic”, brought together HR leaders Garth Gabriel, Kelly Weatherly, Rohit Singh, and Richard Kropp, moderated by Mindy Spigel. They shared practical strategies to build workforce pipelines from elementary school through adult learners, especially in rural and hard-to-staff markets. Their insights highlighted how intentional partnerships, creative programs, and long-term planning can close critical workforce gaps.

Key Takeaways

1. Start career inspiration early, from elementary school through high school

Garth Gabriel emphasized the power of early exposure by engaging students at every stage of K–12. At the elementary level, clinicians visit classrooms with hands-on demonstrations to spark curiosity about healthcare careers beyond doctors and nurses. Middle school students experience “Hidden Heroes in Healthcare” simulations that bring the patient journey to life. By high school, structured career pathways and hospital tours introduce real roles, facilities, and leaders, helping students see tangible futures in the health system.

2. Build deep partnerships with schools, colleges, and technical programs

The panel underscored that sustainable pipelines require strategic partnerships with high schools, technical schools, community colleges, and health sciences academies. Organizations are funding teachers, deans, and faculty positions, co-designing curricula, and hosting immersive events like allied health and pathology showcases. These collaborations expand program capacity, align training with real-world needs, and create direct pathways into roles such as nursing, allied health, and skilled trades critical to hospital operations.

3. Don’t overlook adult learners and second-career talent

Richard Kropp and Kelly Weatherly highlighted the importance of adult learners, including displaced workers, parents, and individuals seeking second careers. By partnering with adult education providers and workforce boards, organizations are recruiting adults into MA, CNA, and allied health programs and offering fully funded tuition through owned colleges. These efforts not only create new career opportunities and community stability but also reduce reliance on high-cost travelers by developing local, loyal talent.

4. Use pathways to boost retention and reduce contract labor spend

Rohit Singh stressed that thoughtfully designed internal pathways support retention and financial sustainability. Rather than relying on expensive contract staff, his organization builds pipelines through LPN programs, administrator-in-training tracks, and formal support for frontline employees such as dietary aides or housekeeping staff who want to advance. By offering tuition assistance, flexible schedules, and clear growth paths, organizations can retain talent, fill hard-to-staff roles internally, and demonstrate measurable return on investment to finance leaders.

5. Engage and repurpose your aging workforce as teachers and mentors

The panelists cautioned against losing the wisdom of an aging workforce. Kelly Weatherly described programs that keep experienced nurses and technologists partially at the bedside while transitioning them into teaching and preceptor roles, funded through grants and academic partnerships. This approach preserves clinical competency, expands faculty capacity so more students can be admitted, and supports structured knowledge transfer. Real-world examples, such as seasoned nurses leading through a cyber outage using paper workflows, underscored the value of this expertise.

6. Design purposeful leadership pipelines with clear expectations

Leadership development is most effective when it is intentional and selective. Richard Kropp’s “So You Wanna Be a Manager” simulation immerses aspiring leaders in the realities of a day in management, helping them decide whether leadership is truly for them. Rohit Singh described targeted programs aligned with critical roles, such as system-level leaders or facility administrators. Participants enter high-potential pools, rotate through operations, receive mentoring, and prepare for succession in a structured, ROI-focused way.

7. Keep high potentials engaged with shadowing, projects, and mentorship

When immediate promotion opportunities are limited, organizations must still nurture high-potential talent. The panel shared tactics such as shadowing current leaders, assigning high-visibility corporate projects, and pairing participants with mentors who provide guidance and a “safety wall” for candid conversations. Programs like ECU Health’s Aspiring Leaders combine soft skills training, business acumen, and role-play scenarios, reinforcing that growth requires both organizational investment and personal commitment from the employee.

Why It Matters

Healthcare organizations are facing persistent workforce shortages, aging staff, rural recruitment challenges, and rising contract labor costs. The strategies shared in this session demonstrate that career pathways are no longer optional; they are central to workforce resilience and organizational strategy. By engaging students early, supporting adult learners, and intentionally developing leaders, HR teams can align talent pipelines with five-year business plans, reduce costly traveler reliance, and protect critical knowledge. For industry leaders, these approaches offer practical blueprints for building a sustainable, homegrown workforce that can adapt to evolving clinical and operational demands.

Actionable Insights

  • Build K–12 pipelines: Partner with schools to introduce healthcare careers through classroom visits, simulations, and hospital tours that spark early interest.
  • Invest in adult education partnerships: Collaborate with workforce boards and adult ed providers to reskill displaced workers into MA, CNA, and allied roles.
  • Formalize leadership pathways: Create structured programs with simulations, mentoring, and rotations that prepare high potentials for critical leadership roles.
  • Leverage experienced staff as educators: Transition senior clinicians into teaching and preceptor roles to expand seat capacity and preserve institutional knowledge.

Want more insights from HR Healthcare? Explore the full agenda.

This recap captures highlights from the HR Healthcare keynote panel “Building Early Career Pathways from the Classroom to the Clinic” to support ongoing workforce strategy discussions within your organization.

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026, HR Healthcare_Keynote Panel_Building Early Career Pathways from the Classroom to the Clinic

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: It's so nice to all be together in person. We've all met online, but not together in person,

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: all right. The question I wanna start with today then is, so what strategies have you all put into place to build your future workforce your workforce pipeline? What are some of the things you've done?

Mindy Spigel: And whoever wants to start first, 'cause you all have great ideas to share

Rohit Singh, Head of Human Resources, Integreties Health: We let the most popular

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: All right, Garth, our superstar. Kick us off. Kick us off.

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: Good morning, everyone. Good morning. See, that's not gonna work. So the gentleman from Deloitte yesterday said he was a pastor's kid. I am as well, and when you grow up in church, you need that reciprocal response.

So good morning. Good morning. All right, we're ready. We're ready. So Kettering Health has invested a lot of time and focus in that career pathways. We focus as early as elementary school all the way to the college classroom. In elementary school, we have different employees go to the elementary school kids.

So we have a radiologist go and take slime and show the kids- ... this is what I do. I get this out of the lungs. So- ... we have nurses that go and talk. We try to get them excited at an early age to spark their interest, to tell them it's not just nursing and doctors, there are other pathways for you to develop a career.

At the middle school level, we have a program called Hidden Heroes in Healthcare, and we've partnered with other hospital systems in the area for this program. And we walk the middle schoolers through a simulation. So it's a natural disaster simulation, and it takes them through a patient journey from beginning to end, and it sparks their interest.

They ask questions about different career paths that way. At the high school level, we have a Career Pathways program where we partner with a number of high schools in the area, and they actually tour our hospital facilities. So they get to walk through, ask questions, meet with leaders, and that sparks their curiosity.

Quick success story we recently had. We had a high school individual, he was about to graduate, and he just knew he was gonna go into construction management. And he went through our Career Pathways program and said, "You know what? Maybe I'll do NA." So he became an NA, and now he's currently working on his BSN in nursing- Yay

To work at Kettering. So we have a program where he can actually go to school and work at Kettering at the same time. And then finally, we're unique in our area in that we have a college attached to our main hospital. So we have Kettering College attached to our hospital, which 90% of the nursing graduates come into our network.

And we partner with a number of colleges and universities along the way.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Wow. Awesome.

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: Yeah.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Awesome. I'm gonna throw it to you next, Kelly. Do you have any- what, anything you wanna add to what he's doing, or share what you're doing?

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: Yeah, so much like my colleagues, we're very similar in the fact that for probably about 10 years we've been focusing in the high school space.

And we actually fund teachers to go into the health sciences academies that we've placed in six, soon to be seven, of our area high schools. We cover an extremely large geographic footprint pretty much from the Virginia border almost to the South Carolina border on the eastern seaboard of North Carolina.

And so that's a quite, as you can imagine, that's quite a bit of geography to to solidify. But these teachers are teaching STEM, not solely focused in the health- in the hospital jobs specifically, but we do lots of different things. They have career counselors that are pretty much attached to them to help them navigate.

We do a very large on the ground where they come into our facilities a couple times a dif- a couple different times of year. The most recent one that, that comes to mind is we actually had our pathology group come, and they set up their own tables, and it's a huge competition with the staff of who can attract the best, the biggest population of students, and then they vote on the best booth.

Our pathology at group actually brought in a placenta that had been attached.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Wow.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: And so the kids all gloved up, and they got to touch it-

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Wow

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: ... and move it around. And and so those kinds of things are very helpful, and getting ready to expand that. We are also working in the skilled trades. How many of you have aging facilities?

Maybe I'm the only one.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: No. I see a few.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: And we have a hospital on the coast of North Carolina. Anybody been to the Outer Banks?

And so the Outer Banks is one of those areas that we had a facilities and properties person that had been there for thirty years. And when he went to retire and hurricane season came, and they all knew he had to push that one button when the hurricane came, we needed to make sure we have good continuity.

So we realized that we have an aging force in that skilled trade as well. So we've got pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeship programs that we're partnering with our high schools and community colleges to make sure that they, we're starting to bring in those skilled trades, HVACs, plumbers, electricians, and things like that.

So we're solidifying that. So we're looking not only from the clinical perspective but also so from the skilled trades perspective.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Awesome. Thank you. Rohit, I'm saving you on purpose for last 'cause you're doing something different, Dick. No, you. Not the person next to you. Yeah. So Rohit, I'm gonna let you go past-

Rohit Singh, Head of Human Resources, Integritus Health: Very similar but I think just before I get into, just by way of background who we are.

So we are about three thousand employees, skilled nursing long-term care facilities, mostly in Massachusetts. We happen to be in some of the very rural neighborhoods in Massachusetts too. So that makes the talent challenge more acute certainly. So I'll give you an example. North Adams way very rural in Massachusetts.

We have three facilities. And we essentially, what Kelly said, we just paired up with one of our technical schools there, McCann program. And this year we graduated twenty-three LPNs through the program. So they essentially come into our facilities for clinical work. They do the program. We support it.

But what we're trying to do is also, just as Gabs said, Gab said going to high schools, but actually give them the opportunity to actually come work for us. And not just, this is what healthcare is, but also What being a professional means and how discipline is important and how working in collaboratively is important.

So you start there and infuse those those skill sets just because of necessity. We have a CFO i- in our midst. I need to prove the return on investment- ... for any of these programs. So as opposed to going out and getting contract employees in, which is very expensive, can I build a pipeline and have a slightly long-term view into things?

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Dick, I left you for last 'cause you're doing something in addition to what they are. So go ahead and talk about what you're doing, please.

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: Yeah for those of you who are not familiar with Maine we're very rural areas where our hospitals are. Rumford, Bridgton, Lewiston.

I'm now at York. And it's very difficult to recruit into those areas. We have two critical access hospitals as well as the Maine Medical Center. And what we've done is we've partnered with the two high schools, the, the schools that are technical high schools, and we've paid for the faculty for those high schools.

So that gives us a link into those. Like these other folks, we start with the middle schools, and we work our way through the high school and the community college. And I have most recently been the vice chair of the Workforce Development Board for Western and Central Maine. We were able to earn grants of several hundred thousand dollars so that we could pay for these programs.

Now, Mindy, which is what did you want me to say specifically?

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: You're the one who talked about adults, right? Adults?

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: Oh, yes. One- '

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Cause you talked about the students, but-

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: One of the things that we've done, particularly through this Workforce Development Board, they're very interested in the older worker, the adult worker, and we've made partnerships with the adult education groups in Western and Central Maine, and we go out to those folks who are now trying to be re-employed.

Many of them have been out of work for a long time. The mills have closed. We're not the Shoe Town anymore, and they need work. So we've gone out to those adult education programs, and we've recruited those folks. We've brought them into the MA and the CNA programs gotten them, getting them ready to go to nursing school and allied health pro- classes.

We own our own college, the Maine College of Health Professionals, and we put them into there, and we pay 100% for their tuition so that then they can be hired by us into open positions when we're done. But working with those adult education groups, and we did a lot of work after the mass shooting in October of '23 with the resiliency groups.

Lots of people were turned out of work after that for lots of different reasons, and we brought them into the hospital system. And now we're giving them the kind of hope and future that they deserve.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Yeah. Thank you. That's what I was meaning- I know ... 'cause you had... Yes. Thank you.

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: I said so much stuff, I didn't remember what it was.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: And I listened.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: It's inter- it's interesting 'cause adult learners are a little bit different. Maybe we'll go a little bit more- Go ahead. You

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: can talk about it, though.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: Yeah so adult learners, it's interesting that more parents are involved in the students and how their students are gonna solidify themselves for their careers.

I don't I don't know how many parents are in the room, but I wanna make sure that my kid's gonna be able to take care of herself, and she's not gonna be moving back in with me.

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: Wanna bet?

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: 100%.

So a lot of parents are coming to a lot of the recruitment events that we have, and more it's, I think somebody mentioned it yesterday, what the heck does a surg tech do?

What does sterile supply do? Because those are those back, back office jobs, that man behind the curtain, and a lot of people don't understand what they do. So we've seen a lot of parents come to our just what we would call an allied recruitment event. It's really education of what does this field do and what does it take to get in there, and we have our community college partners as part of that.

They'll bring their parents, and it's amazing to me how many parents wanna know from a second career perspective of, okay, what does that job do, and how would I get into it? And it's then we can concierge them out to talk to a community college as to what that means. Yeah. We've actually funded the dean of our college one of our community colleges, and looking to partner additionally so that community college could then have a good, stable foundation of what those allied health and nursing curriculums really need to be actionable once they come on board.

So those partnerships are invaluable.

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: And the payoff is that when you have, particularly in the the areas that Kelly just mentioned, we have lots of travelers, agency people, because it's so hard to get folks to come out to where we are. By doing the adult education program, we can significantly reduce the cost of agency fees.

We paid $40 million last year- ... in traveler costs. And every one of those folks who comes through that adult ed program reduces that cost significantly. So your CFOs will like that. Yeah.

Rohit Singh, Head of Human Resources, Integreties Health: Yep. Yes.

No, and for the employees it is a pathway for, towards retention, right? So you're showing them a pathway for growth because not everyone- Yeah

Starts as a nurse, right? We have dietary aides, we have activities aide, housekeeping people. Once they've started to understand what we do and started to enjoy it, how do we nudge them along? Yeah. And how do we provide them the support? Especially the prerequisites that you need to have before you step into those programs.

Absolutely. Can we offer that support by way of tuition and flexibility?

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And then Kelly, just one more thing if I can put you on the spot. I think you talked about what you did with your older nurses

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: Yeah. So a couple pet projects that we're working on and working to, to go through.

How many of you have a very aging workforce? Yes. So have you seen that your nurses can't stand by the bedside for 12 hours at a time or your other modalities, so they're considering retirement, right? That legacy and that knowledge base that they have to leave is ginormous. So what we are working on with one of our grant partners is, how do we still employ them full-time?

We put them by the bedside so they don't lose competencies in their clinical setting, so they're by the bedside for 12 hours. And then I have them go in and teach the next generation and preset that next generation. So partner... And we'll fund it completely. Partnering with our community colleges so they can increase their seat size, they can take more students.

Because one of our recent community, or one of our recent partners in the academic setting said, "I had 95 applicants for the curriculum. I could only take 45." And so we started to probe why. I don't have enough teachers." Let us help you fix that, right? So it's a great way to keep your extremely talented nurses and other modalities in place.

It's, Somebody mentioned surge techs and rad techs. Preach, because that is a huge problem for us as well. And so how do we keep them solidified? We concierge them over to be teachers, we get them the training that they need, and then we bring them back. They, most of the time they love our organization.

They don't wanna leave the workforce, they're keeping their skills sharp, and they're giving back. So that's one. The other one is we have a lot of team member, or a lot of students that we're hearing from our community colleges that drop out because of life. We talked about the emergency savings yesterday with our partners from Rain.

And so one of the things that you hear is, "I had a flat tire," "I can't find childcare," those types of things. So we're really going to be talking about how do we partner with community colleges and pilot, I use the words pilot very significantly, trying to get a curriculum that's more advanced. So maybe you take classes and your prerequisites in the classroom Monday through Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but let's do clinicals on Saturday for a 12-hour rotation or Sunday for a 12-hour rotation.

Meeting them where they are, allowing them to still bi-bifurcate their time, still set time in the classrooms and be able to work and then get the clinical skills they need. And I'm hoping that could then speed up a two-year degree to maybe 18 months or even 12 if you can get them in. We've gotta meet them where they are.

And even considering night shift if we have enough volume that they could get those clinical

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: competencies. Excellent. Thank you so much. Great ideas, guys.

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: I just wanna add to, to that point when you're talking about an aging workforce. We had a cyber issue- ... last year and all our systems went down.

And all the newer nurses didn't know what to do. Yeah. But it was your senior experienced nurses that rolled up their sleeves and said, "We know how to handle this." And it was so fascinating to see because they stepped up to the plate- And they knew how to do everything in paper. And they really garnered a lot of respect from the newer generation of workforce.

And in that process, we realized we have to figure out how to do this knowledge transfer because we are losing a segment of our workforce and knowledge base in our health system. So we're actively working on that.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: I love it. Love it. And as a nurse, I really appreciate that. All right, so I wanna, I'm gonna ask one more question- and then we wanna hear your questions. What strategies have you guys been using to identify and grow your future leaders?

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: One of the things that we did was try and identify people who had interest in being leaders. And I, we developed a program called So You Wanna Be a Manager. And it's a simul-

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: They like that.

Mindy Spigel: Oh, yeah.

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: It's a, it's an old-fashioned simulation where we take potential leaders, supervisors, managers through a day in the life of a manager from the moment they get in at, and do huddle at seven o'clock in the morning all the way through the end of the day when they're doing handoff. What's it like?

Here's an in-basket. Remember the old in-basket exercise? I'm still doing it. It really works because it gets people away from their email, although I do it in an email kind of fashion, but they have to make decisions about all the things that are coming at them constantly. And then we teach them how to do decision-making.

We teach them about how to help and mentor people who are coming up behind them. It's a f- seven-day program over the course of six months, and at the end of it, you wind up... If you put twenty-five people in to start with, fifteen of them don't wanna be managers. They wanna stay as individual contributors and continue to take care of patients.

The others wanna go on. Yeah. And then we put them into a high potential pool, and we continue to give them programming over the course of the next several months so that they can, as jobs come up for frontline leaders, they can apply for them.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Yeah, I love that 'cause so how often do we say, "You're a really good nurse.

Mindy Spigel: You're now a manager," and they have no clue what they've just stepped into, right? Yeah. Anybody else?

Rohit Singh, Head of Human Resources, Integreties Health: No, it's very similar. I'll give you two examples. One I was part of a large health system academic before I came to this role. And part of the challenge for any leadership development is has to be purposeful around what are you trying to solve for.

And so if you look at a large health system, one of our biggest challenges then used to be you grow up in a hospital, and once you start to get into leadership, we want you to have a systems view, but we never trained you to build one. So the program that we had put in at Yale was essentially around how do we build that.

And we started small to the point about return on investment because that has to align with succession for critical roles that were hard to fill. We started small, two to three people. By the end of three years, we had thirty-five people in that program. Very high retention of all of the people in the program, but also we were able to fill those positions very critical internally.

When I come to this role, the long-term care skilled nursing, we have twenty-two facilities, small ones, but each one of them needs an administrator. So at any particular point of time, I need to have an administrator because 22 people, 22 facilities, there would be turnover. And I need to have somebody's license on the building.

If I lose one, I have to get a contract one to come in. It gets very expensive. So we built in a year-long program wherein we would rotate you through different streams of operations and build you towards in what we call an administrator in training program. Started with two. We were able to fill the new position that came in through it, and then we're beginning to expand it.

Awesome. 'Cause that's how we can build a return on investment, but I'm also showing pathway to people towards leadership. And it is self-selected. People can apply for the program. We would take you through as to why you want to do leadership and so on, and then have you go through the program.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Excellent. Thank you. Let's leave the last couple minutes for y'all to ask questions if there are. Any questions out there?

Mindy Spigel: Not. We'll keep talking, but I know there's gotta be... Anyone have anything they wanna ask the panel? There you go. Thank you.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: One sec. Do you-

Audience Member: Jeet: Hi, everyone. My name is Jeet. I'm with UChicago Medicine. My question might not be exactly what we're talking about, but I'm wondering about folks that are high potential and in these pathways or in these programs. How are... any ideas on how you keep them engaged if we don't have positions for them?

Jeet: Because again, we wanna keep the talent we have and not have them move on. So curious.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Great question.

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: We do shadowing assignments so that the high potential people, let's say they're in some clinical operations, and we don't have any openings at the moment for someone to move into. We assign you to a, a, a leader who's in that job, so you can spend time learning about it and becoming more competent, if you will, at that.

And it keeps them engaged because for two reasons. One, they're learning new things, and they know they've got somebody protecting them

Rohit Singh, Head of Human Resources, Integreties Health: And the other piece that, I'm not trying to directly answer that question, but, one of the pieces that I saw very powerful in the high-potential programs that I've run is mentorship or the mentoring connections.

For all of the programs that have been successful have had a very strong mentorship program that essentially allows a safety wall to be created, for want of a better word, for that high potential, for them to share their challenges and issues and sometimes understand the ebbs and flows of the business and how even while you're ready, the opportunity might not be available.

But as you're having those conversations, you're starting to see the challenges of the next level, which is where the mentor comes in, and you're able to be ready for it whenever that

Speaker 11: opens. I agree with both of those. What we've also done is special projects, and not like small projects, like corporate initiatives that are gonna get a lot of exposure and visibility.

We give them opportunities to lead out and participate in those.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: So you grow them while they're still in their current role.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: Yeah. Yeah. We have a program called Aspiring Leaders, and so it's a program that has to come with recommendations. It's an interview process for those that are looking to be into leadership roles, and they go through a very intensive 12-week, 10-week program, or a little bit longer than that.

It gives them a little bit of soft skills training. It shows them the criticality of what they would be dealing with. Does a lot of that role play for the interaction, talks about their business devel- the business acumen that has to be developed as a leader. And so that has been very successful.

I think we're on cohort number 12. It's been running for several years. It has been very successful from the feedback perspective, but I will give you one of the-- I'll be very vulnerable and tell you that one of the faults that we have is when you go back to do performance management so tying all the pieces together, I can't say when I'm doing my direct reports' evaluations, just I can't get something to feed into their performance management to say, "Josh has invested in himself, and he's done all these things."

We have it in the perform- in the learning system, but I can't get it brought into the other area so that I can say, "He's investing in himself as I'm walking alongside to invest in him." It has to be a mutual thing. It's not just I wanna be this, I wanna be that. Are you just giving me lip service, for lack of better terminology, or are you really taking those next steps to be showing me that's what you wanna do?

But that's one of the things that we...

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: awesome. Thank you. What other questions do you wanna ask this amazing panel?

Mindy Spigel: Oh, there's a hand over there. Thank you.

Audience Member: Hi. Thank you so much. I have a question around the role of technology. How do you think technology can play in some of these issues that we've talked about around keeping people, getting people into the system?

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: For Kettering, you will feel my pain if you've gone through it.

We're currently going through a Workday implementation. Oh. Anyone?

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Oh, there's

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: a- Okay. ...

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: groan.

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: Yeah. We're four months into an 18-month transformation project. But we're excited in that some of the tools that they have shared with us that, and capabilities that we'll have are gonna help us in that area.

So anybody, Workday? No. Okay.

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: We can't make it. If you don't configure it right-

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: Oh ...

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: you're in a lot of trouble. Yeah. Because six months after it's done, you're gonna go, "I thought it did." It don't. We're in the middle of implementing Epic.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: Oh.

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: That's what I thought.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: So a lot of snakes come out, right?

Mindy Spigel: There's a lot of snakes on our heads with these changes. Y- Okay.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: You win with Epic. I- You win. Yeah I, your question's interesting. I think technology is a blessing and a curse. We're actually from a succession planning perspective, so again, I mentioned the aging workforce, we're working on trying to gather the competencies and the skills that the, what we would call a high potential would need in order to come into that role.

Looking at it in a multitude of different facets of this leader's been good at this, or what do we need an evolving role to be able to accomplish? And multiple stakeholders take this we use TalentTelligence is the tool that we use. And so then it helps us as high potentials come in, we can give them the, this, the fit assessment to say, "Does that work?"

Or, "Are they going to be able to fit the bill?" Or, "What skills do they need to develop to fit the bill?" So we use technology in that. Again, I'm still having a really hard time because I think the, a key conversation is in that performance management process to tie those skills back.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: Thank you for that question.

Mindy Spigel: All right, I think we have just two minutes left. So is there w- any other question that y'all have out there that we can answer quickly? Panel, one last takeaway. What would you want them to take away really fast? We have a minute and a half. So one thing, if you could tell them one thing to think about, what would that be?

Richard Kropp, Senior Vice President & Chief People Officer, formerly Central Maine Healthcare: Don't forget the adults.

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: I love that one. Yeah.

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: Have more than one strategy. I think that's probably,

Rohit Singh, Head of Human Resources, Integreties Health: you know- Yeah, just to build on it. The multiple entries into the health, healthcare realm and there are multiple pathways that we'll have to always offer. F- in the two years we've heard, the workforce challenge is not gonna go away, that's the reality. So it always has to be multipronged. You have to do leadership development, you have to do engagement, but you also have to build a pipeline, all simultaneously- Yeah,

Garth Gabriel, Director of Human Resources, Kettering Health: yeah ...

Rohit Singh, Head of Human Resources, Integreties Health: and with as less of an i- investment as possible.

Kelly Weatherly, Chief Human Resource Officer ECU Health: I'd quickly build a strategy that looks out five years.

Focus on where your high potentials to retire are, and you can classify those however you work. And then look at where you're, you've either got expansion from the business that's coming in, as long as you're at the table for that, and understand where your high turnover is in some of those areas and/or contract labor, and then try to, when you're forecasting out, build those pipelines associated with those very, very quickly.

Because if it's a five-year plan, you think about e- getting a four-year degree or a two-year degree, and you need to onboard them, you're really gonna have to make sure that you're meeting the business and the strategic needs of the organization, or they're gonna say, "What did HR do? Where were you when we needed to do that?"

So building out that five-year plan as the organization builds out that five-year plan from a workforce

Moderator: Mindy Spigel: perspective. Thank you. And I wasn't planning to do this, but my big take- takeaway, one thing that you said was pilot. That's always a great word. When I wanna try something new, I al- always say, "Can we just pilot this?"

Mindy Spigel: Yeah. 'Cause it's a lot easier for people to agree to a pilot than a whole new program. Thank you all so much. Thank you. We are out of time. Thank you. But wow, that was wonderful. Thank you.