What happens when your strategic plan meets an unpredictable reality?
Rose Sheehan, Chief People Officer at Hartford HealthCare, knows all about pivoting under pressure. From leading her team through COVID-19 to addressing the Great Resignation, Rose has built a dynamic HR function focused on agility, innovation, and purpose.
In this episode, Rose reveals the strategies behind her success, including how she’s transforming talent acquisition through technology, partnerships, and storytelling.
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[00:00:00] Rose Sheehan: I think the key and any leadership role, but especially in HR or in a people function is you have to remain agile. You have to respond to the needs of the business and you just can't be tone deaf and think that you can have your own plan and think that that plan can work in isolation of the rest of the organization.
It cannot.
[00:00:19] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter and on Talent All-Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses.
Today's Talent All-Star is deeply familiar with the power of community engagement. Rose Sheehan is the executive vice president and chief people officer at Hartford Healthcare. A leading healthcare system in Connecticut. And not only that, she's also the chairperson of the board at Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts, an organization focused on youth mentorship.
[00:00:59] Dave Travers: Rose Sheehan, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:01:01] Rose Sheehan: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.
[00:01:03] Dave Travers: Excited to have you here. One of the interesting things that I would love to start at is that your path to being a chief people officer was not always in every step along the way. A traditional path you went and worked in operations and in revenue cycle operations, talk about what some of that operational background you have and how do you, in addition to your HR background, how do you bring that into your role today?
[00:01:26] Rose Sheehan: Yeah, thank you so much. That's such a great question. And honestly, it's been such a wild adventure transitioning from finance and revenue cycle operations into HR. But in many ways, it's all about leadership. I led a ref cycle at MGB, uh, Mass General Brigham for about 18 years. And, uh, and then the chief administrative officer, um, asked me if I'd be interested in taking on the role of their C.H. R. O. And I was, of course, not at all expecting that question. It was not on the career path. Uh, but what he said to me is the team really needed a strong leader, that they had terrific skills and very technically oriented people, but they needed to really have someone who could bring the team together.
I thought long and hard about it and, you know, sought out my mentors and, and asked people what they thought. And they thought I could have real impact from within, um, HR. I was really humbled by it. I knew it was something I was going to have to do a lot of my own deep learning and I was going to have to leave the scene with tremendous humility.
I was not an expert. I was leaving people who have who had spent 30 plus years in HR. and here I was coming in. I'd been at MGB for a long time, 18 years at that point. And I built a really great reputation, a reputation of really executing and getting work done. And I think that's actually what allowed me to take this risk.
And that's actually what I would tell other people in that same position. You're never fully prepared for any role. If you're, if you are, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. So I felt like. I had the right raw skills, capabilities. I knew I loved leading. I knew I had successfully led a lot of work, major efforts at Mass General Brigham, and I knew that I was ready, even though I knew I didn't know everything.
And so I had to learn from all of the team members who reported to me. I had to do a lot of learning on my own. And what really helped me is I really leveraged all of the skills that I had honed over the last, uh, 25 years. It was all about being a really good leader, assessing the situation, developing a strategic plan, and then executing that plan.
And so that's what we did. And, uh, we were incredibly successful and really became a system. We were very I would say decentralized function, very fragmented when I took it over. And when I left in 2023, we really were one HR team supporting the entire system, which was over 80,000 colleagues at that point.
And, uh, and we had successfully turned around, uh, the function and had led through COVID, which was incredibly difficult but very rewarding as well. And we did really great work. It was amazing.
[00:04:09] Dave Travers: What I love about that story is the duality as you're taking that big leap and that unexpected opportunity comes along the duality between you clearly said, I knew I could do it.
And like, sometimes that starts with like saying the words, I think I can do it. I know I can do it and to start believing it, but you knew you could do it. And at the same time, you were very humble that this wasn't a job that you had prepared for your entire. Yeah. Career. And it reminds me earlier in my career, I was a CFO, and the first meeting I had with my team after becoming CFO, when I hadn't prepared traditionally for that role is saying, I don't know how to do any of your jobs.
Yeah. So, uh, and what's interesting about that is I have a vague memory of saying that, but it's been repeated back to me by several of the people who were in that room. And what's interesting is I have a vague memory of. In that meeting, feeling like I was really putting myself out there and it was a risky thing to be vulnerable.
Um, but interestingly, it was confidence inducing in the people receiving it because they all of a sudden felt like, Oh, this person doesn't necessarily know how to do my job, but they're not going to come in and pretend like they are. And so that is a powerful framework, I think, for thinking about when opportunity comes your way.
I love that. So now you're leading an HR team or leading a whole HR organization. How do you approach day one? How do you approach taking on that new challenge?
[00:05:33] Rose Sheehan: Well, first, I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that I was really nervous. I really started with just getting to know them and at their individual strengths, what they brought to the table, their perspectives about the strengths and weaknesses of the function.
I partnered with each of them to really assess where we were on the journey of becoming one centralized HR function, one really highly effective HR function. And so it just took time. We had some significant challenges we have to fix right away. And so we prioritized the work and we tackled those issues that really were top of mind for our business leaders.
We prioritize those first. We got pretty far down the path of getting, making a lot of progress in those areas and then unfortunately a pandemic hit and then COVID really changed what we were focusing on instead of focusing on our strategic plan, we had to focus on supporting our colleagues through what was a very scary time for them.
It delayed a little bit of our execution of our of our broad strategic plan, but ultimately, we were able to do it. It probably took us about two years longer than we had expected, and we were significantly derailed by the great resignation and all the same issues that everyone else was dealing with in health care and beyond.
But the beginning was really just about learning, understanding the organizational needs, understanding the team, developing a plan and working with each leader to identify what are the right things that need to be done first. And prioritizing that
[00:07:01] Dave Travers: I think this is so interesting for so many people who are leading the idea that I'm a new leader.
I'm taking on new leadership of a new challenge. I'm going to come up with a really great plan or a strategic plan is something that really resonates and sometimes that plan meets reality in the form of a pandemic, a natural disaster, a business change, whatever. How do you put all that work into this great plan, get buy in, and then how do you handle it when something bigger than the plan, you know, hits, and you have to adapt to the new reality?
[00:07:34] Rose Sheehan: When I think about the role of HR, our role is to ensure that the business objectives can be achieved. And I always say to the team here at Hartford HealthCare that our balance scorecard is the system's balance scorecard. We're successful when the system is successful. So we built a plan back in 17 and 18 and 19 that was about meeting the needs of the system in 17, 18 and 19.
And then when 2020 hit, March of 2020 specifically, the needs of the system changed. And so you need to be agile. You need to respond to the needs of the system and what the system needed from us as a HR team in 2020 was we need to develop protocols. We needed to support our colleagues with gotten COVID.
We needed return to work protocols. We needed a work-from-home approach and policy. We needed to ensure that we could take care of our people by providing them hotels and making sure that we provide them food and we were having restaurants deliver food to our hospitals in support of our. Really, our healthcare heroes, and so we did everything that the system really needed us to do at that moment in time.
And as soon as we could, um, really begin to take a deep breath and recover from COVID, we then needed to be agile again and respond to the next major need. And what happened in 2021, as everyone knows is we had a massive disruption of resignations all over the country. We had nurses retiring early, nurses deciding to become travelers.
We couldn't hire fast enough. We couldn't retain our nurses. And so the focus really became talent acquisition. What do we need to do to recruit faster, recruit more talent, attract more talent, develop more talent. And that was our key focus. So we had to pivot. And we really focused on that truly for about.
A good year, year and a half. And behind the scenes, we were working on other things. We were working on harmonizing our benefit programs. We were working on harmonizing jobs. We're working on a implementation of a new ERP, but the focus had to be to meet the needs of the business. And that ultimately was making sure that we had people to care for our patients.
And so I think the key and any leadership role, but especially in HR or in a people function is you have to remain agile. You have to respond to the needs of the business and you just can't be tone deaf and think that you can have your own plan and think that that plan can work in isolation of the rest of the organization.
It cannot. And so it was difficult to know that we had to put on pause programs that we had begun to develop, things that we thought were really important to our colleagues and our leaders. But we had to do it. We had to put it all on pause to focus on the needs of the organization. And as soon as we could get back to what we did and we still accomplished it, we had to work faster and a little harder, but we were able to accomplish almost everything before I left in 2023.
And it was really remarkable, but it could not have been done. Without the team, you know, leaders get to talk about the work of their teams, but we really need to be forced multipliers, and it's really leveraging the team to do so much of the work and to really drive innovation and creativity. So, I was very lucky to have an incredible team.
[00:10:58] Dave Travers: I love how you put your team at the forefront consistently when we talk, when I see you talk elsewhere, when I see you on social media, you're really a team first leader on. I love learning that from you. So let's talk about that, that pandemic experience. Specifically, you had to dive into talent acquisition, which for you was not a lifetime coming up through as a recruiter.
Um, so you brought a fresh perspective, which is really interesting. So what did you learn that surprised you? And now that we have, we've, we've emerged from the great resignation in the pandemic, what is talent acquisition as a function need to do tomorrow that it still isn't doing today?
[00:11:36] Rose Sheehan: Yeah. I mean, we are in the middle of a major transformation here at Hartford Healthcare of our talent acquisition function.
Um, we have a strong leader of our talent acquisition team, but we have not invested effectively in the workflows, processes, technology, automation. Or even people to really make it a world-class function, and that's what we're on the journey to do now. I think the bottom line in healthcare is the demand is so great and the supply is limited.
I think that's fundamentally the biggest challenge we have in healthcare. We are, we have an aging population in many states across the country, not all, but there's a migration out of talent and and that has happened in Connecticut as well, and we're not developing enough talent through our academic partners.
And so our focus here has been really to create a strategy, and it's a multi-fold strategy. The first is we are doubling down on our academic partnerships. We are identifying those talent segments for which there's not enough supply. The pipeline is just dry. We can post a job. We can have as many recruiters thrown at a particular job as possible, but if there's not the supply in the marketplace, you're only going to drive up wages, and you're really not going to attract and be able to retain, um, the right talent.
And so our focus has been first on identifying those areas where we have a supply. Challenge and really focus on developing real partnerships with Quinnipiac University with our Connecticut State Colleges with UConn and really trying to ensure that we can have proper development of our future workforce.
So that's the first thing that we're doing. Second thing we're doing is really relooking at all of our technology, supporting our talent acquisition function. So we're implementing a new CRM. We're going to be leveraging some AI, rebuilding all of our candidate pages and really talking to. Our candidates about how we want to care for them when they come.
We talk a lot about purpose, and of course, in health care, so many people come to health care for the mission for the purpose, and that that will always remain the case. But we want to talk to candidates to our future workforce about what it means to be a colleague at Hartford HealthCare and how we truly embody care in all of our actions. We have an incredible culture. We have an incredible set of values and they are. We live by those values every single day. And, but we're not telling that story effectively enough. So that's the work of the next, uh, five or six months to really be able to rebuild the technology to be able to tell that story more effectively.
And then we're really shoring up our EVP, making sure that we have the right compensation structures that we have the right benefit structures and making sure we tell the story of equity and wellbeing, which is so important to our colleagues. So we're really looking at the whole structure of talent acquisition.
I'm really hopeful. That we're going to find ourselves here a year from now in a much better position, and it still will take the development of the pipeline. I think the old ways of just posting a job and expecting you're going to get so many resumes um, to apply that you don't have to worry about sourcing candidates or finding candidates that are passive in the marketplace or developing talent.
It's, it's over. We can no longer have those strategies. We need to be so much more proactive and so much more active in terms of driving pipeline into the organization.
[00:14:59] Dave Travers: I love how you just framed that entire description of your talent acquisition strategy because you, you lay out each pillar along the way, but at the beginning you talked about the candidate and the future talent first. And then you talked about what you were going to do to address that aspect of being a future candidate. And what I think I hear so often from talent leaders who've come up through the talent acquisition world is that you start with the process and say, well, we have an old CRM, but we're going to upgrade to a new customer relationship management, but the candidate gets lost in there.
And when you start from the first principle in healthcare, that's the patient in talent acquisition, that's the candidate, um, it really grounds. Yeah. And I think that's a really powerful framework. I love how you talked about that. One of the, you also touched on the mission and, uh, I heard there was even a change in tone in your voice that I loved as you talked about the mission.
I can feel you feeling it. And I love that. And I can see that through your, through your career of sticking with healthcare. I also see that in that outside of your incredibly busy job. You're also taking on this very big nonprofit leadership role with Big Brothers and Big Sisters. Talk about that mission and talk about how you juggle, um, the impossibility of having a family and having a career and also being connected to the community through Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
[00:16:22] Rose Sheehan: Thank you so much. I mean that during the darkest days of the pandemic, that work with big brothers, big sisters of Eastern mass that filled my cup, I have. Always valued supporting the youth in our community, and I did it in small ways within our own community where we lived and raised our children and that as my kids grew up, I had always been attracted to being a big sister, but I was really worried about being a big sister because I I felt like I would want to probably over care, over love, uh, which, you know, I think is, is, uh, as I was describing that to the CEO, he said to me, we have programs for people like you, Rose.
So I started, um, by being on the board, and the way I started is, um, I was doing some pro bono work for them. So I was helping them with some HR strategy work. I really fell in love with the CEO. Her name was Wendy. She was wonderful. And, uh, got to know the organization, and she said to me, you love this work, come be on our board.
And I said, yes, I'd be thrilled and honored and humbled to be part of this incredible board. And the mission of the agency is to provide one-on-one mentoring to youth. And they're almost always in underserved communities in and around Boston. And so I've loved that work. I love the work that that agency does.
The people who work for Big Brothers Big Sisters talk about purpose and mission. I mean, they are so driven by what they do. And so I just feel honored to be a part of it. I've been on the board for five years, and I've been a big sister for two years, and I have a big sister in Massachusetts. She's, she's wonderful.
And I've been the chairperson for almost three years. And so it's been really great work. But I will say that the balancing act is challenging, and I think every leader finds themselves in the same situation, really trying to prioritize work, home and nonprofit or community-based volunteer work. And so, you know, when I was asked to be the chairperson of the board, I actually at the beginning was like, it might not be the right time.
We were still in the middle of. You know, the great resignation and dealing with a lot of difficult times post-COVID. So I delayed it a little bit. And so I wanted to, when I became the chairperson, give it my all and, and I knew I had to wait until work eased up a little bit so that I could do that. And so it's been an incredible experience.
I absolutely love it. And I look forward to being part of other nonprofits. Organizations here in the city of Hartford and I'm an empty nester officially, uh, this year. So our third child, our youngest, um, is now working in New York city. And so, um, my husband and I can give back a lot more now that we've raised three kids, and they're off on their own.
[00:19:07] Rose Sheehan: So,
[00:19:07] Dave Travers: wow, that's I've three at home still. So it's unfathomable to me to think about that. Um, that change that's coming, coming someday, I bet, I bet. Okay, so we always finish off, uh, our episodes with a bit of a rapid-fire run and I want you to imagine that I'm a fellow C-level executive or the CEO of your healthcare system.
And we're in the elevator, and we just have 60 seconds to answer, even though it's an unfairly, uh, long and abbreviated time for an unfairly detailed, um, question. So the first question in, in the elevators I step in is like, Hey Rose, what's the biggest challenge that people function faces today?
[00:19:44] Rose Sheehan: I would say it's the development of our talent pipeline.
It's the hardest because it's not just within our control. And I think that's what makes it particularly challenging. So we've incredible partners, as I've said. But that is by far our biggest challenge and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
[00:20:01] Dave Travers: What is the most effective strategy for maintaining a mission-driven culture that helps retain and attract that talent that's so critical to our healthcare system?
[00:20:13] Rose Sheehan: I would say the most important thing is to ensure that we have common values and we have a common set of values and everyone knows them. You could ask anyone in the organization, and they could recite the five values. And just as importantly, we have common leadership behaviors. And so there are 10 leadership behaviors.
They're on a card. People carry them around. At the beginning, when they first rolled these out over a decade ago, they used to carry them around either in their pockets or in their notebooks. And that common culture, the common language about how we should treat each other and how we should behave in a meeting, in a room, in an interaction in the hallway, how we treat our colleagues, that is probably the most important the reason that this culture is so differentiated from any other culture that I've actually been able to work in, it is really remarkable. I like to talk about the culture here and the operating model. It's called H3W, how Hartford HealthCare works. I talk about it as the air we breathe. It's just in everything.
And when I talk to colleagues, when I round in our hospitals and in our organizations I ask them what they think about their jobs. Hands down, the thing I hear the most, and I was just rounding at one of our behavioral health organizations just last week, and the thing I heard the most is this is a place where I feel supported to do my best.
[00:21:39] Rose Sheehan: And that is the way you retain talent.
[00:21:41] Dave Travers: Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Rose Sheehan, Chief People Officer at Hartford HealthCare. So clear why you're a Talent All-Star. Thanks so much for sharing so much wisdom with us today.
[00:21:53] Rose Sheehan: Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Take care.
[00:21:59] Dave Travers: That's Rose Sheem. She's the Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Hartford Healthcare. We'll put her LinkedIn profile in the notes below. And a reminder, we put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube also on the official ZipRecruiter channel. And if you have feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email at talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com. I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars. We'll see you back here next time.