Healthcare HR Leadership Before, During & After COVID-19

Kara Greer is the Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Tufts Medical Center, where she leads human resources efforts for the Medical Center’s 6,000 staff members. Her responsibilities include talent acquisition and management, employee and leadership development, strategic workforce planning, employee and labor relations, and total rewards.

Before joining Tufts MC in October 2019, Kara served in roles of increasing responsibility at Liberty Mutual Insurance and Ochsner Health System. During her career, Kara has led strategic HR efforts to increase employee engagement and implemented a nationally recognized Leadership Institute that advanced performance metrics in patient satisfaction, employee engagement and leadership effectiveness. She’s also served as adjunct faculty for a number of universities, including Tulane University.

In your opinion what are some of the biggest changes that the pandemic has caused HR teams to do as a result? 

Several themes have emerged as a result of COVID-19 - the first of which is speed. We have had to respond faster and with greater agility than ever before. Gone are the days of having six or eight months to shape and develop workforce programs in response to business needs. Today, we need to be innovative, embrace time constraints and present novel interventions that are also practical and easy to implement.  

Being efficient and effective in executing HR solutions will continue to be the expectation of high performing HR teams. Agility and the ability to function in a “test and learn” environment will become the new normal, especially in healthcare.

How have you managed to move with greater speed given the need for quality and the high touch nature of health care?

Starting last March, we very quickly came to appreciate that time is our most precious asset, whether it was time to care for patients, to work collaboratively with colleagues, or at home with our families. One of the ways our team has embraced this is through actively engaging the business, our customers, in prioritization exercises with outputs for what is essential, what is important to have and what is nice to have. Determining what’s essential and decisively putting solutions in play at the right time within the organizational cadence are ways in which HR is both moving with agility and adding value. Additionally, ensuring that there is diverse and inclusive feedback built-in throughout the organization allows us to design and modify those solutions based upon the voice of our customers. 

Speaking about that prioritization: what have you been prioritizing, and why? What have you had to de-prioritize, and why?

One key area we have prioritized is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. We committed to conducting a search for a Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer and to building an inclusive culture where people can thrive and bring their authentic selves to work. Our rich history centers on the Good Samaritan sculpture, which is displayed in our hospital’s lobby, as a symbol of our mission and work, since 1800, to provide the highest standard of innovative patient care and service to all in our community.  

Another area we have prioritized and embraced is remote work. Pre-pandemic, we did not have a remote work policy. As a result of COVID-19, we designed and deployed in March 2019 a remote and flex work policy, which has resulted in our ability to retain workers during the throes of the pandemic. It’s also improved our ability to recruit talent from around the US, expanding our base beyond the greater Boston area.

When looking at how the pandemic has changed the role of HR, what element do you think you will carry forward most post-COVID, and why do you think it will be something truly transformative?

I view the disruption of work as we know it as an acceleration point for HR to innovate, and propose new ways to attract, engage and develop talent to support organizational growth and performance.

A key area of change is the employee experience. Our focus on the changing needs of our workforce will definitely continue. We intend to continually develop those channels where our employees’ voices are heard and where they play a role in shaping work experiences that motivate, unlock potential and help advance the Medical Center’s mission and vision.  

Do you have any programs or success stories you’d like to share?

Certainly! I have two to share, the first is talent acquisition which has been an area of focus over the last several years. The problem we were faced with solving included improving workforce planning and strategy, building a contemporary Talent Acquisition (TA) function and operationally improving core service level agreements (SLAs), time to fill, quality of candidates, and the overall hiring manager and candidate experience. 

After conducting six weeks of discovery through various stakeholders, we made a business decision to shift our in-house TA model to an outsourcing model or RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing). This was a bold decision that would allow us to emerge from the pandemic in a better position to compete and recruit talent. Through our extraordinary partnership with Cielo Healthcare, and leadership support across the Medical Center we stood up an entirely new talent acquisition organization in seven weeks. That is, for me, an example of the high trust that Tufts Medical Center places in the HR function to successfully navigate and incorporate this change, and a willingness to test our collective mindset as we adopt a new approach for HR delivery. Throughout this change, we not only kept our commitment to improving the employee/leader experience, but also ensured that we didn’t lose any of our cultural strengths related to how we recruit. We took a risk that is already paying dividends six months into our new structure and I remain confident that this is a strategy that will help us thrive. It’s something I’m extremely proud to have been a part of, and I’m grateful to my team for their dedicated hard work and to our executive team for trusting us. 

The second receipt to how HR is adding value is the speed at which we stood up our DEI effort over the past year. We became a partner in the PwC’s CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion collaboration program, which brings together over 2,000 organizations across the globe through a commitment to four areas along the DEI journey: 1) unconscious bias training; 2) board education; 3) days of understanding, where you bring your community together for discussion on challenging topics for growth in this space, and; 4) sharing of best practices. 

We began that program at the end of 2019. However, throughout 2020, we had four ‘days of understanding’ featuring high-level speakers for our inaugural effort. One of our guests was Dr. Camara Jones, who is well known in both the health care and DEI space. The entire Medical Center was invited to participate in these days of understanding. We also deployed unconscious bias training from the board through to the front lines in partnership with Cooke Ross. We hired our first Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer, who will also support our entire health care system.

What have you learned through these pandemic-induced challenges?

Our HR team is here to be of service to our organization during a time of enormous upheaval and yet, my team is just like everybody else, with full lives and real challenges of their own that were significantly amplified during the pandemic. What used to be controllable became uncertain this year. As a result, we’ve been acutely focused on helping our people to balance those priorities.  

While we're thrilled to be on the other side of the worst of the pandemic, we'd be remiss not to recognize that this has taken a toll on our people. As we move beyond the pandemic, we’ll continue to encourage our people to take time off, and to embrace the need to rest and repair from this unprecedented time. We recognize that we all need time to properly process how difficult the last year has been, whether through an Employee Assistance Program or other services. These are important steps to ensure we have a healthy and thriving workforce for the future. Organizations that deliberately acknowledge their workforce needs, including intentional self-care, will come back faster and stronger. The work environment has changed, and we need to embrace these changes as progress – and not view them as threats.

Which parts of the new ways people have approached work and engaged with companies will stick most? Why is it important they do stick? 

One is clearly the openness to design organizations in new and innovative ways. Whether that's outsourcing, insourcing, remote work, or leveraging AI. Creativity in how we design the right hard and soft structures to support organizations will remain instrumental for our future.  

Acknowledging that wellness is an important variable to a productive employee is now considered table stakes. Mental, emotional and physical wellness are contributing factors to high performing teams. The pandemic brought that to light, and I’m glad to see that it's now part of the global conversation. 

Something that will also remain is our openness and courage to learn more about DEI. It was not just driven by the events of last year, it's our social responsibility as leaders to ensure we create inclusive environments and opportunities for all people, and that we reflect the communities we serve within our own workforce. At Tufts Medical Center we have a rich history and we believe it is our responsibility to leave our world better than we found it. While this will most certainly remain a part of our organization, I hope it is a part of every organization.

Thank you for your time today! Is there anything else you would like to add?

I’ve been at Tufts Medical Center for a year and a half. I was on-boarding into my new role just as we entered the pandemic. But I trusted that what I experienced – collaboration, innovation and kindness –at the beginning of my interviews with Tufts MC, was true, and that trust was eventually rewarded. I, along with many other leaders, learned to be vulnerable and accept that we did not have all of the answers, because there were no playbooks for the pandemic. I have a very strong HR team, an amazing executive team, and I trusted and leaned on them as much as they leaned on me.

I am enormously grateful to have had the opportunity to lead the growth of our HR team and our organization during this transformative time. There is a consistency of culture here that resonates with all of us. I’m brought back to a quote from Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei, who said “A leader’s role is to make everyone better in your presence so they can thrive in your absence.” 

This is a succinct and generous quote that has special resonance in health care, a complex yet rewarding industry. In health care success is achieved through teamwork. I love being a part of an organization built on a foundation of collaboration, caring and kindness; essential qualities very much in demand as we continue to provide exceptional care to our patients and our workforce.