Perspectives
2016 Healthcare Executive Imperative: Recruit, Retain and Engage Women Leaders
Women are vital players in the healthcare workforce. And yet, many healthcare organizations (HCOs) have only a few women in senior leadership positions. But why do women fail to land seats within healthcare C-Suites and boards?
Some women choose to abandon the tough climb to senior management for more satisfying, less stressful career alternatives. Others, however, fail to secure prized senior executive positions due to barriers in fellow executives’ attitudes, beliefs and values.
Women simply lack adequate organizational support. Not enough HCOs—academic medical centers, hospitals, health systems and medical groups—host structured programs designed to target and nurture women for leadership positions—specifically those within healthcare C-Suites and boards.
Johnson and Johnson, Cardinal Health, Aetna, Abbott, Lilly and Astra Zeneca were the only health-related companies featured on the 2015 list of Top Companies for Executive Women generated by the National Association of Female Executives (NAFE).
The challenge: How can larger healthcare systems, in particular, extract lessons learned by women executive advocates like Proctor & Gamble, Prudential, IBM and Marriott? How can healthcare leaders help women prepare for and transition into C-suite and board roles via talent management services, including executive development, online learning, coaching, mentoring and tuition support?
Inviting women to accept C-Suite and board roles requires more than a series of one-hit wonders like an annual forum or luncheon or a rose on Mother’s Day. HCOs can maximize the knowledge, talent, skill and leadership potential of women if they adhere to the following steps:
Pinpoint performance. Discover how the HCO performs on the recruitment, retention and engagement of women for senior management, C-Suite and board positions. Among the issues are the following:
Executive numbers. How do women compare to men in their willingness to recruit, hire, retain and engage women in senior executive positions? For example, do executives apply different criteria to the evaluation of male and female candidates? How can the HCO combat gender-based myths, stereotypes and perceptions?
Recruitment and retention. How does the HCO perform on the recruitment and retention of executive women vs. its recruitment and retention of executive men? Are men promoted to higher-level executive positions more frequently than women? How do individual and group attitudes, beliefs and values interfere with objective hiring and promotion decisions?
Compensation. How does the compensation of senior executive men compare to the compensation of senior executive women? How do benefits compare? Why do variations tend to persist over time?
Executive development. How do women and men differ in how they subscribe to talent management and executive development programs? Examples of such programs include mentoring, coaching, university-based education and special assignments.
By identifying variations between genders via focus groups, one-to-one interviews and online surveys, HCOs can begin to recommend adjustments.
For example, some HCOs may want to concentrate on disparities in compensation and benefits, while others will zero in on the attitudes and values of the executives and search consultants who screen candidates, conduct interviews and make hiring or promotion decisions.
Minimize barriers. Manage the constraints and roadblocks that prevent women managers and executives from moving forward. While some HCOs will focus on enhanced work-family balance and flexible scheduling, others may hone in on showcasing women executive role models via awards, special promotions or conferences.
Overall, women experience less career-related distress when they can look forward to organizational support in the form of services like day care, family and parental leave and concierge services or executive development services like onboarding, coaching, mentoring, education, training and succession planning.
Flexibility, which sometimes surfaces in the form of telecommuting, frequent breaks or compressed work weeks, can minimize workplace stress, improve productivity, attract Millennials and keep women in the workplace during the looming “talent war” precipitated by the retirement of Baby Boomers.
Champion women executives. While male executives often find sponsors, champions and advocates via sports and other male-oriented activities, women executives may need the structure and support of a more formal mentoring or sponsorship program. HCOs can launch a mentoring program focused on women executives by taking the following steps:
Share the business case. Explain how the presence of women executives in the C-Suite and board will help the HCO enhance its clinical, operational and financial performance and facilitate healthcare innovation and transformation. How, for example, could a mentoring or sponsorship program move the needle on issues like patient engagement, population health, clinical integration, performance management or value-based reimbursement?
Communicate the program’s focus. Advise potential sponsors and mentors that the program intends to target both women executives and women with executive potential. Women need professional mentors to help them assume and practice specific senior executive roles and responsibilities. They also need relationship mentors to help them cultivate leadership traits and a personal leadership style.
Embed mentoring. Take care not to make the executive mentoring program a last-minute add-on that operates out of human resources. Instead, embed the program’s mission, vision values and strategy into daily clinical and business operations. Incorporate mentoring and sponsorship into performance planning and evaluation, training and development and succession planning. And make sure that the HCO celebrates everyone who takes part in mentoring and sponsorship through recognition and rewards.
Moving Forward
HCOs committed to the hiring, recruitment, retention and engagement of women to senior executive positions can no longer assume that qualified women will show up at the door. Instead, they must create a culture and environment that supports the selection and selection and development of women with C-Suite and board potential.