S4 E82 | Healthcare Recruiting Meeting Recap

Cigna Express Scripts and Merakey sit down to share some ah-ha moments they took from today's meeting


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Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:19
Welcome, everybody to another CareerXroads podcast. I am really excited. This is one of our quick recap shows. So this is just where we grab a couple of folks right out of one of our meetings. And we talked a little bit about did we have any big takeaways, any aha moments, any omgs all the way through the session and just share and chat a little bit about that. I have a few so I am excited to jump right in. And we I have with me obviously everybody knows Gerry. Gerry Crispin say hello to everybody.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 0:50
Hello

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:51
There he goes. But also to guests that are members of ours that were in the meeting. Marlon, Hazel, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about what you do at Merakey and Cigna / Express Scripts. Fill us in, who are ya?

Marlon Tatom, Merakey 1:09
Ladies first

Hazel Cormier, Cigna Express Scripts 1:11
Oh, great, thank you. Hi, Hazel Cormier with Cigna Express Scripts on recruitment director leading recruitment for our legacy Express Scripts organization primarily in the clinical spaces of nursing and pharmacists as well as non clinical so your sales, product innovation, type of tech talent, as well.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:33
Good Stuff

Marlon Tatom, Merakey 1:33
Alright, I’m Marlon Tatum I work with Merakey we, I’m a lead recruiter with the company. And we pretty much provide different service lines with IDD behavior, health. And everything that falls between that from HVAC tech to administrative assistant we hire for provide a provide needs for the for the company, and we’re roughly 15 different states. So I believe we’re in California, we’re in Texas, I’m just thinking about the different areas you guys are in. We’re at all the office states that you guys live in, I believe we have services that we offer. So yeah, definitely.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:14
So this was our first, this was our first healthcare recruitment meeting of the year. And any, any surprising moments, any sort of big takeaways for you as a result of attending today?

Hazel Cormier, Cigna Express Scripts 2:30
Yeah, I think it was really great to see companies working together. In a competitive market. It’s interesting, because Cigna Express Scripts, we’ve always been open to working with our competitors, you know, proven through our deal with prime therapeutics and our partnerships, even with our direct competitor, Humana. So it’s one thing to work from a business standpoint with your competitors, which we’ve opened that up. But it’s another thing to work with your competitor when it comes to talent, because I think there’s still a lot of, you know, me, me, me when it comes to talent. So I was really impressed to see these organizations come together and be able to come up with a program that’s really for the good of Milwaukee, and then good for their for organizations.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:17
Yeah, and I’ll just I’ll set that stage there, Hazel, it’s a great call. So what we saw today Advocate Aurora Health and Froedtert. Had partnered together with several other health care organizations to to create a nonprofit centers for healthcare careers of Southeast Wisconsin, they got a right to come together to help solve the shortage of talent that they had, whereas formerly their recruiting strategies consisted of recruiting from each other. They formed this collaboration, which was pretty interesting. And I agree with you, I thought quite incredible, Marlon about you?

Marlon Tatom, Merakey 3:55
I definitely agree with Hazel, and you as far as that, the partnerships that and sharing those trends and sharing the information that that we all experience. Now, whether it’s interesting, whether it relates to your industry or not, because I know we all have different levels that we do recruit for and need for as far as our business structure goes. But it was definitely common common practices and information that you were aware of, and it was some new things that were mentioned that were aha moments. Like, I know, you had harped on the the health career paths grid, which I you know, when I’m waiting for the share for you guys to share it with us so we can get a better glimpse of because it was hard to see size wise, but great ideas because, you know, you speak of career path, but you only touched on it briefly a lot of times when you’re talking with a candidate. So if you actually can put that in place and present it and show them hey, look, you can start here and actually climb to here. It gives them more of a visual aid. Is something to grab towards. So that was a great aha moment for me, because I’m definitely looking at ways I can incorporate something similar to that, which will give that you know, a better display to a candidate, or candidates that can possibly have them buy into the company. So it was it was Good stuff, good partnership, but good ideas, but good idea sharing the day. And it’s always good to talk to people in industry, because we all fight the same battle. We’re looking for staff, and we’re looking for ways to get the move forward as a company. So as a group, so definitely look forward to sharing information and discussions with the pack. But people like yourselves, because it’s a it’s engaging, it’s encouraging.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:38
Well, I tell you, if I were still a practitioner, I think walking out of this meeting, and this would be a blueprint for me to go try to fight the fight and get some sort of collaborative effort put together. I think they said they had founded it, I took some notes here they had, they began the work, I think she said in 20, in 2015, they really laid the groundwork for this organization. And they’re now in like their second, have multiple cohorts of people going through that. And it’s just a really interesting program. And I think, to your point, Marlon that, that career path template that they, you know, collaboratively put together, it’s just fascinating showing all of the roles and what the next logical progression is, and what education levels are required to achieve. Each of those, I think is a pretty powerful blueprint blueprint for a healthcare career.

Hazel Cormier, Cigna Express Scripts 6:34
Yeah, I’d love to understand how they broke through the bureaucracy. I know it’s taken them many years, but I think locally about the health care companies, I’d love to partner with competitors in my backyard, Mercy, Ascension, Centene, BJC, I can’t even get past the thought of, Okay, how do we even start this? Because all four or five of us have very specific legal, you know, legal teams that probably like no, no, don’t talk to them about XYZ. And, you know, just how did they get through that bureaucracy would be a fascinating probably weeks of conversation there.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 7:16
And you know, that Hazel, that it’s likely that there were some key folks at a leadership level that were open to it. And, and at some point, the statement, I’m sure of those leaders, as well as the TA folks, was to the lawyers who are there to, you know, avoid any kind of risk was your job is not to help us avoid risk, your job is to help us do the right thing and defend what we want to do. And, and that starts to change the attitude of an organization to minimizing risk and hunkering down and trying to, you know, grow that way. Versus, you know, kind of an attitude that we have to have in the 21st century, which is, look for the reward, look for the opportunity to do the right thing.

Unknown Speaker 8:14
And Gerry I touched on it when we had our breakout rooms pertaining to the pandemic, and what the outcome and the results will be once things start to get back to what was considered normal, how many how many trends and transitions and changes that we’re going to take and carry over, and our new day to day, and that’s going to be a part of that board structure change as well. Because what’s working now, what’s trending up, you know, an uptick now is going to be part of those conversations, it’s gonna help you progress as a company into the next century. Now, either you have to either you’re going to progress or you’re not going to progress. And then you want to, you’re going to have the effects of that even have that you’re going to be forced to make that adjustment, because there’s adjustment coming. And one of the things that always hinders us is to your point is that, you know, working with funders, working with, you know, working with those insurances, and no, and you have to work within those guidelines. And I can’t wait to see what those guidelines want to look like moving forward, because I know they will have to make adjustments. If because we’re not the only ones being affected. They’re being affected as well.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 9:20
It occurs to me to Hazel’s point, you know, where can you start, and it would be interesting to hear how they did it. But somewhere in there, if I were doing it, I would start looking at the costs of each of those different organizations. It that they spent money on agencies and other kinds of activities, to compete to steal from each other, versus the opportunity to invest in collaboration. Because that cost of competing with one another and just taking from one another, over and over again. has to has to be a very high number. When you add up the For an organization’s so it’s kind of be fascinating to me.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 10:04
Yeah, I’d be willing to bet that the cost of not doing it was the selling point. Right versus the expense of, of trying to put this together. Yeah.

Marlon Tatom, Merakey 10:14
Well, that makes it makes so much sense. Gerry, would you say? So? It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be right. If it made too much sense. Gerry, we’ve always talked about that, you know, why would we spend X amount of dollars for agency staff, when all we have to do is put $2 additional into our regular staff? it’ll eventually bounce out. But But is this too much red tape to get through, as Hazel mentioned, and you’re just trying to get to those, you know, what, why don’t we take this step instead of that step. So I’m just hoping that, you know, once the pandemic and things move forward, everyone comes a little bit more creative to the table.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 10:53
Sure. My takeaway for for really the in the parts that I that I saw, was, I was blown away by how many of you are investing heavily in, in taking responsibility for training people or re skilling people, if you will, or upskilling. folks from high school from whatever I mean, just a lot of the efforts to do more in that area was to me extraordinary. I remember. I remember in the days of the dinosaurs, when I was young, young recruiter that there were hundreds and hundreds of hospitals that had programs that actually were three year programs for nurses. And over the years, they were dismantled, because of the importance of having a college education. So be a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Understandable. But but they dismantled literally hundreds of quality programs that helped those nurses who are learning such information, understand what it was like to actually work as a nurse in a hospital. And, and that in itself had huge, huge value in terms of choices that nurses would make. And I see this obviously, coming back, maybe not with nurses as much as with many of the Allied areas that have emerged over the years. So I think that’s fabulous. I’m very impressed with what I’ve heard today in terms of what organizations are doing that, that combine not just recruiting but also the learning side of things and breaking down those silos. I’ve not seen that in many industries. I think it’s it’s much more evident in in your industry, and it’s very powerful.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 12:58
Good stuff. Well, Hazel, Marlon, thank you so much for joining us for a quick recap and loved loved loved seeing you in another meeting. And we’re looking forward to seeing in a healthcare meeting number two, and until then online and the exchanges at CXR.works.

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