WEBINAR | Innovative Thinking – Creating a Pipeline for Digital Roles at Corewell Health

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: Hi, everyone! This is Janet Guptill with the Scottsdale Institute. Thank you all for joining us today. We’ve got a fun conversation in store for you, Corwell health, who all of you probably know. But I’m sure you’ll learn more about it today, will be sharing what they’re doing in the way of their digital services career pathways programs. And they’ve got a very creative approach to identifying talent

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: and different ways of bringing people into the digital health programs at Corwell health. You’ll be hearing today from Dr. Sharon, friend Robinette.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: who is the talent program specialist for digital services as part of the career pathways program at Corwell health. And as many of you know, digital health is a relatively new phenomena, but particularly digital health in healthcare.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: And what you’ll be learning today is some creative ways that Corewell health has intentionally reached out to new channels of identifying people, to to join the talent. Pipeline, finding diverse candidates, finding people with different career backgrounds. And in the process

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: building a healthy culture filled with competent people. And I know that you’ll enjoy hearing how this program came about and what kind of results they’ve seen to date. It’s been a year that it’s been up and running. So I’m gonna turn this over to Sharon. And before I do just another reminder that

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: we’re gonna be using the QA. Tab that’s at the bottom of your screen. So listen and enjoy. And any questions that you might have. Drop them in that QA. Tab, and I will pick them up at the end. Sharon thanks so much for being here to share your digital services. Talent, pipeline with us.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Well, thanks so much for have having me. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I appreciate the opportunity to present to you, and I also appreciate decrease guidance over the last few months.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: My name is Sharon Brain Robinette. I work for Corwell. Health and digital services. And I’m the lead digital services talent program specialist. This role sits in the office of the CIO Communications and Development team. Here I enjoy working with 7 strong professionals, one and a half of our roles directly support the career pathway programs. Although thankfully, we can collaborate as a whole team. So I have more folks behind me.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Today, I’m gonna talk about our digital services career pathways program. Currently, a Cornwall health digital services encompasses what you would typically think of as it. And also data analytics, informatics, program management and business assurance.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: In the past. This office used to be called students to business, reflecting a traditional understanding of how students get attracted to tech jobs.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So they go through school. They get a degree, they get an internship. And then they’re hired

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: on many levels. This model works and organizations who use this model were applauded for having the foresight to see that there needed to be some effort to get students in through a specific and intentional onboarding process.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: But time passed and organizations have become increasingly dependent upon technology and higher ed institutions have not been able to keep up with the demand for candidates

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in response. Hiring organizations need to expand the vision of what they can do to create that talent pipeline. and so to meet our needs. We have taken on the career pathway model

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: a career pathway is a series of structured and connected educational programs and support services that enable people to advance over time to better jobs and higher level of education and training. Often when they are working or in school still.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So while we have additional development opportunities in the office of the CIO, we have limited the focus of what we consider career pathways to be early digital services, career experiences.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Our program offerings are focused on internships, apprenticeships, and outreach efforts for K through 12 students. That’s under the volunteer badge. I’m going to go through each of these today, spending the most time on the internship and apprenticeship programs.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: My hope is to tell you both about our structure and outcomes, and also offer some best practices for organizations who are interested in doing something similar

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: before we jump in. I wanted to let you know that Corwell health is an integrated healthcare system. And it’s very large. Right now, we have 60,000 plus team members. In our system. We have 21 hospital facilities. It is a big place. We also are an integrated healthcare system. Priority. Health is our insurance wing.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and all of this is happening, or all of this is true, and also we are integrating to large health systems so spectrum health from West Michigan and Beaumont. Health from southeast Michigan go together into Corwell, health

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: that being said, though most of the statistics I’m referencing today come from legacy spectrum health. Although currently the career pathways programs have extended our footprint to the whole system and throughout much of the State of Michigan.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So the internship was started. Program was started in 2012. So we’re at 11 years right now. Adam Baker’s CIO Communication and Development Team manager started the program and it’s matured over the years. I’ve had the pleasure of working with it since 2018.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The digital services internship program creates a pathway for people from higher education into the professional field by providing opportunities to learn functional skills, professional competencies, and the organizational culture.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We have served around 277 students from around 44 colleges and universities overall. We have onboarded over half of them into full-time positions.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The purpose of the internship program is to establish a strong diverse talent, pipeline into Corwell health digital services

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: to provide community benefit to those served by the organization, including institutions of higher ed and community members. to complete productive work that adds value to the organization and supports the mission vision and strategy.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The process of internalocation and onboarding is pretty involved, but it starts with an announcement from the career pathways, offices that managers and directors are welcome to apply for an internship position on their team digital services. Interns are paid through the career pathways budget.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and this is an extremely important reality, because in other models, where the team has to pay for an intern, there often needs to be a plea to managers and directors to fund an intern, and this leads to a time of tenuous negotiation, either between the office of interns or a manager in their direct reports.

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and so hiring entrants, then, can be sidelined as sort of a luxury or a favor to someone rather than a strategic initiative, to build a talent pipeline.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in contrast in our model, managers and directors are incentivized to apply for an internship because it is budget neutral for them. When career pathways looks at the applications they identify, which, requesting teams should have a funding funded intern

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: teams with budgeted full time employee positions are prioritized when internships are assigned. Other things that take priority are big initiatives or well developed projects.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: because so many of our interns are hired. We want a robust hiring process for them.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Each internship is posted individually through our regular talent attraction process. Students apply to experiences that they’re interested in. In fact, I directly tell students, when I meet them at career affairs, that if you apply to all of our internships. That sort of looks like you apply to none of them, because they’re so very different. Right? We have.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: our team is almost 2,000 people in digital services. And so if you think that all the internships are gonna be the same, that’s that’s a mistake. So we have the students apply directly to the experiences that they’re interested in.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Our recruiting and hiring process is about 4 to 6 months in advance. In advance of start. We keep them engaged during that process, through sort of fun activities, through communications, through other things that through gift baskets

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: an exception here is for a winter start where it’s significantly shorter the time between the higher and the start.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Their wages are competitive and they’re based on wage information from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. They’re based on credit hours and internship numbers. So if you work more for us, and if you have more credit hours, you’ll get a higher pay.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: They can have up to 4 internships.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So we have 2 different types of internships. The academic year experience in the summer experience, the academic year and summer internships are structured very differently, particularly because during the academic year interns work only up to 20 h of week. Where in this, in the summer, they work full time.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The academic year internship evolved in response to covid circumstances. Our internship pro program had been exclusively in person on location before Covid. This minimized the viability of the academic year internships, because students would not be as free to work because of class schedules, and we also would be limited to students attending local schools in West Michigan for spectrum health.

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When our team when our teams went virtual, it opened up the possibility of accommodating a student’s schedule, and it did not limit us to students from local schools.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So, depending on the time of year and the full-time part-time status, the interns spend 80 to 90% of their time working with their functional teams and 10 to 20% of their time doing career development work coordinated by the career pathways team

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: based on studies from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. We meet educational need and student interest by giving them substantive work in the organization. No one is doing just data entry. If we were in person no one would be getting coffee for people. We also provide additional opportunities like opportunity to interact with leaders, give presentations, take time to reflect about their experiences.

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We coordinate career development sessions and help them navigate through our system

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: overall. The model is successful.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: based on their feedback. We know that of those who responded to our surveys of the year over the years, 100% of interns would recommend the internship program to someone else.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The interns write blogs about their experiences during their internships and publish them on our internal intranet. They tie their experiences to foundational principles of the organization.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: At the end of the summer some interns added this past year, some added their overall thoughts about their experiences, and here are some of their comments.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So wow! What an incredible experience! I want to thank everyone in the hybrid Cloud Services team for welcoming me this summer and letting me learn from you all. Without you I would still be sitting right where I started.

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The skills and tools I learned will be incredibly valuable for the rest of my career. I’m not sure how I can ever repay you all for that. I also want to thank everyone working with the internship program for the unique opportunities like the presentations, workshops, and guest speakers.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: another student wrote, it’s impossible to say where I would be if I had not been lucky enough to find myself in this internship. I have worked at a couple of jobs where I like the culture, but it’s not quite what I’ve experienced here. The culture. Here is one that promotes growth both for its team members and the communities that it serves.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And finally.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: as I approach the end of this journey, I can assuredly say that I’m leaving on a more confident as a more confident and skilled individual, ready to take on the next chapter of my career. Horrible health has not only provided me with a platform to unleash my potential, but has also ignited a passion for innovation and collaboration. I am excited about the future, and forever thankful for the valuable lessons and memories made during my internship.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The interns aren’t the only ones who are excited about the program. Similarly the program is supported by hiring managers. 100% of the responding managers believe that their intern grew professionally during the time they were with us, that their team member who mentored the intern group professionally, and that their team benefited from their experience.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Some pretty typical comments and sentiments from the managers are here on the screen for the past 2. So 2 summers, our intern mentor, gained the skills and experiences that were instrumental in his pursuit of advancing his career and being promoted.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: our intern was willing to jump in and try anything. He took on several day-to-day team tasks as well as a big project. The project he worked on, helped the team accomplish a significant goal for the year.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and the internship program is one of my favorite things, and I’m glad we do it keep it up?

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Clearly I had to include the last comment, but in any case,

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: intern managers are excited about what the skills that their interns learn they’re excited about what having an intern on their team means for the team. They’re excited about the engagement, and they’re excited about the leadership opportunities that affords the team mentors or the intern mentors.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So the internship pro program has a strong impact on digital services. I’ve included the timeline over the last few years to demonstrate some of our metrics. So in 2019, the intern program filled about 71% of new digital services associate level full time Fte hires

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in 2020. Clearly, a lot was happening.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: But 100% of our eligible interns were hired into digital services as a full time associate level employee

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in 2021, the entering program filled about 64%. Of new associate level FTE. Hires. and in 2022, we filled about 50% of those associate level rules, but 87% of the eligible interns were offered associate or training positions.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Now, I would also recommend, if you’re interested in keeping metrics for your organization about your internship program, that National Association of colleges and Employers has some good supporting materials to identify how to do this. Well.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in the past few years we’ve gotten more involved in apprenticeships.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And so the digital services apprenticeship programs create pathways for people from a variety of professional experiences into digital services fields by providing on the job opportunities to learn functional skills, professional skills and the organizational culture.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Cornwall. Health has been part of regional conversations about apprenticeships for many years. Well, before my tenure here.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: over the years we’ve been supportive of many programs, a good example comes from this past year, where we were a primary sponsor of a cybersecurity, apprenticeship and governance, risk and compliance through which we were important. We were fortunate enough to hire an excellent candidate.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The last couple of years we’ve gotten more actively engaged in the apprenticeship process, focusing more on our own needs and using it more strategically

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: to that end. We are currently on our second cohort of a collaborative apprenticeship program with a national partner. Step it up, slash expansion and a regional partner West Michigan Center for Arts and technology or Wimcat

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and this is the program set that I’m Gonna focus on today.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: we got involved in the apprenticeship program because step it up and Wimcat approached us and the program they will outline met some of our needs. We were interested in building a more diverse talent, pipeline into digital services in an effort to support our organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We knew that the talent pipeline from higher Ed was not as diverse as we wanted.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We also wanted to meet an internal need that organizational colleagues had articulated that folks from outside digital services were interested in moving into digital services teams, but many did not. And we knew that many did not have the necessary skills to be successful in these areas.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So we wanted to build a scaffolding for internal career advancement. Similarly, we wanted to invest in the communities we serve. And finally, we saw an opportunity for cost savings in the spaces that were heavily dependent upon contracted labor.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Our process for identifying and onboarding candidates was quite involved

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in terms of identifying needs. First, we identified where in the organization, we had a need. As I mentioned before, it was where we had significant numbers of contractors because we were going to train everyone in the cohort in the same information and skills. And so we needed a place for them to end up

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and so it wasn’t just a one person commitment. In in this case it was 7, and that was the minimum commitment that our collaborative partners could handle. But it was for us what seemed reasonable.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And of course, where we identified the needs where there was heavily areas, there were staff by contractors, and this would also impact our choices for training curriculum.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: As we continue to develop. To develop this program, we needed to choose the processes from the collaborating organizations that we wanted to use. So we each have different cultures and expectations. So we needed to make sure that cord well, health, interest, and culture were represented.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And also that sort of reflected the needs of our program. Right? So, for instance,

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: the organization that we worked with one of them was very much interested in only having applicants that had a BA. Already, and that wasn’t our intent. That’s not what’s listed on our drop descriptions. So we were interested in having a lower. Well, we wanted to get rid of a barrier to entry

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and so we had to negotiate all those things

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: we also had to check on some internal processes to make sure that the apprentice candidates were set up for success. And so one thing I would identify as a best practice was that we set up position, experience, and education requirements that would enable successful candidates to be ready for their second position in our organization at the end of the apprenticeship.

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So we wanted to avoid building in a glass ceiling for them. Immediately

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in the interview process each collaborative collaborating organization sent representatives to all of the interviews. The interviews were very competitive. The candidates went through a rigorous process, including cognitive tests, competitive screenings, and the interviews with all of us. All of the candidates were Michigan based

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: the successful candidates then became expansion employees, and this was a big risk for apprentices, and that’s true. In any apprenticeship, I think simply because they are leaving jobs for this new position.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And so that is a big risk. Right? It is they are jumping into a new experience, and they don’t know what’s coming to them. Right? So there’s a lot of reassurance that needs to be done by all the organizations involved.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: This was also a big risk for apprentices that came from Corewell health. In the first cohort we had 3 people who were internal candidates, and

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: they needed to leave our organization and be hired by expansion. Now we were able to mitigate this risk for them for a while, because we held their positions open for about 3 months in case they wanted to go back.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Now I would note that none of them wanted to. But we did hold those positions. And

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: That was a commitment both on our side, but also on the the teams that were then understaffed for 3 months. So that was a bit of a challenge.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Then the learning through training

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: during this stage, after they’re hired apprentices in this model go through training from 8 to 5 Monday through Friday with an additional couple hours of homework at night.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: They trained for about 6 months. During this time we provided engagement activities throughout. So, for instance, we did lunch and learns and had people. They were structured.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: There was structured programming to make sure that the directors and vice presidents in their spaces are in the spaces that their teams, that their hosting teams resided to make sure that those directors and vice presidents had exposure to the apprentices and the apprentices had exposure to them.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We also talked about corporate culture during that time.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Then, after that experience of that, learn it, learning through training that 6 months experience. They graduated and we had a graduation ceremony. We then started the learn at work phase, and that learn at work is when they join their teams. They’re still expansion employees.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: but they join their teams, do work with the team that they would eventually get hired into and

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: learn on the job. So it’s on the job training.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Throughout that time. Career pathways also supported engagement activities through that phase and development opportunities. We also got rid of roadblocks as best we could.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and then they become Corwell health employees at the end of that. And that’s a great celebration. The first cohort is just celebrating their first year work anniversary as Corwell health employees today. So today’s they’re all a year in

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and the second cohort has started their learn at work phase, about 3 weeks ago.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So this apprenticeship program is having increasing impact on the organization. I want to go through these sort of impacts. What the impacts I see are now and talk about the points of success.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So we’re supporting the organizational commitment to invest in our communities for some an outcome of the apprenticeship program is a significant change in economic stability.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The apprenticeships resulted a sustainable and good living wage, and this has made a real impact on real people at the recent graduation apprentice and apprentice remarked that being part of this program was the best decision she had ever made before it. She knew she wanted to go into tech and needed additional education, but she did not see how she could quit her job and also pay for education.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: This program allowed her to do what she knew she wanted and needed to do for her family.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The apprentices are people in our communities and our neighbors, and this investment upholds our geographic commitment

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in this process. 1 point of success, and also a point of surprise for us was, the educational diversity and professional experiences of our candidates and than our apprentices. So we had anticipated that we would get more folks internal in this process, and that folks would try to get into digital services sort of laterally through that career scaffolding. We were talking about

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in reality. that actually ended up happening. But from different areas of the organization than we anticipated.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: In part, it was because of the educational diversity that showed up in the applicant pool

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: the majority of our candidates and applicants had BA’s from accredited colleges and universities, even though that wasn’t the requirement.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The areas of study represented were laboratory science, graphic design education project management, biomedical engineering, economic psychology, family studies. 2 people had BA’s and tech related majors. But they weren’t the areas of technology that we were hiring in. At that time

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one person had an MA.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: A few had experience in technical boot camps and independent certifications, and a couple had their educational attainment. In terms of formal education and in high school diplomas.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Powerpoint is freezing on me right now. Here.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: just there we go. They also had diverse, pro successful professional backgrounds, and we were surprised by the diversity and professional experiences, and we had candidates who worked in labs as teachers, as social workers in customer service and call centers and supply chain

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in the mortgage industry, and as a volleyball coach what was true about each of them was that they had successful professional experiences, and this professional success is of great benefit to us. They can bring in perspectives that push us.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: They ask questions from experience and perspective. Right? So in an internship program, you often

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: could be the first professional experience that students had. Right? So you’re sort of molding the perspective. But here. These are folks who have a perspective and have that experience and can really challenge us in ours. And so managers have remarked that they ask questions that push the teams to be even better, and to think things through in a different way.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The apprentices were more demographically representative of the communities that we serve than the composition of our current teams in the industry as a whole. So, according to the pew research centers based on their research up to 2019 and confirmed by others through 2022 white workers make up approximately 62% of the tech workforce also, according to pew women’s participation in tech has declined from the 1990 s. So that by 2019 it was down to 25%.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Some sources push it to 26.7 and 2022. But the difference there is significant.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The demographics of our predisco port far surpassed these trends, and were much more representative of the communities that we serve.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Managers and other leaders have mentioned that the apprentices, apprentices have impacted their team’s positively and have completed valuable work. The current cohort is just starting to participate on projects. So much of my information is about the first cohort.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Their training was strong, and with that they did technical and functional work quickly, in fact, more quickly than we anticipated.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: They brought fresh eyes and approaches to the teams that they were on. They helped their teams complete the work and also increased team engagement overall. Each was a positive addition to the team.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We also know that the program is successful because of the success of each apprentice.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: when asked, the apprentices of the first cohort identified that they were proud of the following, that they gained confidence, that they had a growth and skills of business analysis that they had a breadth of learning that they were now proud of.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: They overcame difficulties, they were proud of their perseverance.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and they grew professionally and technically in the second cohort. There’s a great deal of pride that 6 out of 7 apprentice candidates pass their sales, force developers certificate before they started the learn at work phase.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and we’re confident that all will have achieved that mark soon.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So the first cohort each earned full time positions. 4 were hired in as associate application development analysts and 3 came in as associate data engineers.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And there’s confidence that this current cohort will be hired in April as salesforce developers.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We also know that this is impacting our organization because there’s interest in continuing and expanding the program from leaders here. So we’re currently working on this continuation for 2024.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The career pathways programs have a direct impact on the work of digital services

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: between the apprenticeship program and the internship program from 2019 to 2022, 70% of all post college associate level hires have come through our programs and to digital services positions, and we look forward to continuing to offer the programs for more candidates and improving and improving it as we go along.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The last part of our work that I want to talk about today is community outreach and education.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: In addition to building direct pathways into digital services, we also spend some time supporting our K through 12 formal and informal education systems, helping to teach younger students about technology and digital services, career paths.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We actively work with educational systems and workforce development agencies and nonprofits to support their students. So digital service members, staff members volunteer at various outreach events for K through 12 students, including but not limited to the following. So hour of code. So in West Michigan, through West Michigan works, which is our workforce development office through the state.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We have been celebrating computer science awareness weeks in the early December and going into classrooms either virtually or in person, depending on the classroom depending on the year and teaching them curriculum through code.org, talking about career pathways of our staff members and inspiring them to hopefully come and explore technical back or technical careers in the future.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We make other classroom visits or have classrooms visit us. For instance, a a field trip to the data center is often a good time. Then we are anchor participants in my career quest, which is a career exploration fair. That

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: serves about 7 to 8,000 students over the course of one day, exposing them to trends and and positions in career positions and technology.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: we work with our career and technical centers. To do practice interviews with their students. We go to collegiate career affairs, we sponsor student conferences and contests. We sponsor scholarships. So we are active building early career experiences. And we wanna make sure that our younger students know that there are many jobs that comprise the tech industry and that they might be interested in them in the future.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Now, I wouldn’t mention that a byproduct of this work is really focused on employee development or team member development. This, this work serves to engage our team members and some really fun activities. We work across teams. In these volunteer outreach opportunities. And so we work with folks we don’t normally work with. That can be fun. Also.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: All of us are talking about how we like our jobs, and that’s motivating, hearing ourselves talk so that can be exciting, too. So we come out of these experiences pretty engaged with our mission. We talk about the value of our work to the community, and we inspire ourselves at the same time as we’re inspiring students. So those those are opportunities that many of us value.

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Thanks.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So the career pathways programs offer participants guidance as to how to successfully navigate into Cornwall health digital services teams at entry level.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: It’s successfully working to build a diverse talent pipeline of strong candidates, to support the critical work of our organization and build up a strong, healthy culture filled with competent people.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The pathways we build are not the only ways into digital services, but they are pathways that make entry more accessible and direct.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So that’s the end of my talk right now, and my presentation.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Can I answer any questions?

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: Awesome? Well, Sharon, thanks. You’ve given us a lot to think about, and it’s really refreshing to hear how comprehensive your approach is to get different people at different times of their own career development and making digital services at Cornwall. Health and exciting and possible next career move.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: So now’s a great time for all of you that are listening to say, how does she really do it? What is she learned? What else should we be thinking about in our own organizations to make this kind of thing happen? So if you’ll just take a minute to jot any questions you have down in that QA. Tab. Then we’re happy to pick them up.

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and I’m gonna just start it off with just a couple. I think you did give us a good sense of all of the different career paths into digital services. But step back a little bit, if you don’t mind. And

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: how did you, when you first began? How did you even set a target? Of how how many people are you hoping to bring in. And why? How do you pick? What topic areas? We noticed that your apprenticeship focuses on

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: different digital capabilities. So what’s the bigger picture of where did this agenda come from? And how do you shape this that way? Particularly within the apprenticeship space? Alright. So it very much came out of initially. It came out of a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative. And so with that it was that was our interest.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: As we are looking to diversify our team member, staff or as we were, we were trying to figure out the how to right. And so with that, we looked at areas where those contractors were very prevalent. So

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: that suggested to us that there was an opportunity for folks to find positions in the organization right, because we couldn’t go out and hire people to make ourselves diverse, just simply without a position or just to hire. We had to make this a financially responsible decision.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And also we had to grow our workforce and make it a permanent a permanent change. So with that, we looked at those areas where there was money going into contractors and

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: typically, and, as I understand it.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: full time. Employees employed by the organization generally are cheaper in technology than in for us to hire contractors.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and so that automatically gives a financial insti incentive for this program that can be helpful. So it makes the business case for diversity, because the sort of moral and ethical case had already been made.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And so with that, we, I have to convince directors that this is something interesting to them as well

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: got it.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: So let me let me pick up the question that’s coming up in the QA. Tab from Ivan Pan and at Moreie Sloan, Kettering Cancer Center. What does the apprentice program look like?

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: Do you? Are you using mentors? Are they formal training classes are they embedded in existing teams, and I know you talked about it as an overall strategy. But make it a little bit more concrete for us. If you don’t mind of when someone first gets selected as an apprentice, and you talked about how they become a a step up or expansion person and then call, but maybe make it a little bit more tangible about

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: what are each of those steps? And who are the people on the Corwell side that are involved.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Okay? So initially, we are pretty hands off. Once I got hired my office interacts with them and coordinates. Those engagement activities of those lunch and learns, but they spend 6 months, 8 to 5 in training sessions, with expansion and expansion hires trainers to come in and teach the curriculum that we’ve said we need.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And so this, for instance, in this cohort, we’ve said that in order to be part of the apprenticeship program they need to pass the salesforce certification exam of a developer, salesforce developer. So

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: expansion hired salesforce trainers to come in and teach them salesforce

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: expansion argues that and other.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: we use expansion. So far there are many other organizations to do this sort of training for apprenticeships. But expansion argues that the time spent, and I think it’s true if you do, the arithmetic in these trainings is more or equivalent to a college major.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Right? So if you have 6 months.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: 50 HA week, because they have 40 h in training and 2 h of homework a night.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Without vacation. Really? The. It is a commitment that these folks are making they spend their time in the classroom as a cohort and they have regular quizzes and tests that they have to pass and they have to succeed really academically. In this model. Then they come onto our teams still paid by expansion.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and they do project work. They’re paired with mentors and leads and seniors, and they get told or trained on the job. So one thing that’s important in that I emphasize with our managers is that until they graduate

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: from their learner work experience so that would put them a year in training or a year and a half into training until they graduate. We don’t expect them to be at an associate level. Contribution.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: The reality is is that they’re doing contributions much earlier, right? So they provide value very quickly. Even if it’s by doing low level tasks that then free up upper more senior people to do more complicated tasks. But

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: with that we that learn at work experience is part of their education.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and then they come on to staff as the associate level. So there are mentors along the way. As

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: we would have for an intern as we would have for any new employee. Cornwall health is very large. It takes a lot to sort of figure out what’s going on for any new employees. So we’re used to supporting each other in that way.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And so that training, though that again, to just summarize it, that learn at training experience is intense and provided by our partner.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We also I I’m sorry I forgot to add, this is West Michigan Center for arts and technology has a program called Leadership by design

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: that develops professional skills and soft skills or power skills. However, you want to talk about it in a way that is very sort of

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: equity and inclusion focused, and also is well matched to our professional competencies that we expect from our employees and team members. And so we have them in that training as well.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: so that those students can get both the technical and professional training that they need before they start interacting day to day with our teams. And then that’s another 40 h. We initially for the first cohort had a year long experience of work at learn at work experience.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and they were ready to be our team members much earlier. and so with that we change that time period with the second cohort

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in order to make sure that their needs were being met

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and and that we were being fair and wages because they aren’t making as much in the training as they will as full time employees. And so we shortened that up there still will have to be some formal mentoring for the next 6 months after they’re hired in as employees to meet Department of labor standards for the year up training at work. Experience that’s required.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: Well, thanks, that was a lot of helpful information. And Ivan, if if you have further questions, or if if we didn’t quite answer all of it, just add onto that in the chat, and I’m sure that also Sharon would be happy to connect with you afterwards. Right, Sharon, to answer any further questions. Great.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: Another question in the QA. Coming from Jenni Carter at Sentara. Health around the cost of the internship program budget and how? Who? Who? Who sort of bears that cost, and Adam Baker from Corwell health has addressed some of that in terms of saying that because you targeted specifically around future deeds, and you didn’t wanna make the managers feel like requesting an intern would be a negative financial impact.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: Maybe you could just further explain, sort of how does this central funding pool work? And and therefore where do the funds come from that that helps support this process. So both recruiting interns and supporting managers and requesting some.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So I’m looking what Adam wrote, and Adam was the founder of this program. So he has a lot of good information there. So essentially

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: What Adam writes there is that we wanted the managers to have on the incentive to have an intern right. And he was there at the beginning. So he formatted this, this this structure the money comes from. And I think I’m right on this, but if Adam pops up will be, it’ll be interesting that I mean, it’s part of digital services. Budget, right? We’re in the office of CIO cause. So it comes from Chief digital

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that

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: information, Officer Jason. Joseph has said that this is an important initiative. That’s fund that he funds right, or that we as a division fund? I know that. Hr, I’m sorry. Talent, attraction pays less as because in

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: in staffing by having

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: our office do a lot of the recruiting

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and so with that there’s some cost savings there. Also, by having that centralized programming.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: those managers don’t have to do that right. Because if you think about it without a office like career pathways, if you get a man at intern on your team. You suddenly have to, in order to make this engaging, have them learn all sorts of thing about the organization, have them learn professional skills, have them learn those functional skills

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: doing that work can be a challenge. If your sweet spot, is that technical, the technical skills so here, instead of having 30 managers juggling their time, learning how to develop that other curriculum that centralized

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: as is recruiting, and so they can focus on their functional work. I can focus on the other work along with my colleague Alica. And then we can support those students in their career path. So there’s cost savings there.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: I believe

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: this is well, I know this is true, but

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: human resources believes that it costs 1.5 times the salary

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: of employee to replace them.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Alright. So our interns have longevity in the organization.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Some are managers now, right? They started as interns, and now they’re managers. They are loyal to our organization in many ways. They are connected. One of our big selling points is our mission. Right? So I recently I was

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: We were at a virtual career fair. Which was an interesting experience, and the first time I had done that, and we had the opportunity to connect with all of the

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: the participants in the career fair by email, before the opportunity, before they had a chance to interact with us. In a seminar for Matt, or as individual interviews.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And with that

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: I was able to send out an email to the 600 people involved, saying.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Hey, if you want to do technology and make a difference.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: that’s us, come, talk to me right? Because our mission to improve health, inspire hope and save lives is key right? And and I just mentioned the old mission, which is bad, so in any case I’ll work on that. But in any case, right, we have a mission to our work that not every tech agency has. And so

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: our interns are very much connected to that. They’re self selecting when they connect with us. And so

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: that recruitment work does pay for our our organization in the long column

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: well, you mentioned a lot of things in that description that I think are also worth just teasing out a little bit more. One of them is just

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: hiring interns, students, apprentice apprentices in a virtual environment. So there’s both pluses and minuses, I’m sure of that. What are what are what are some ways that you? Because so much of this is happening virtually. What does it take to prepare for that, or get the most out of that? Help us understand a little bit more about

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: that aspect in particular, of this recruiting process.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So the virtual experience which is new for all of us, right. And I think many of us throughout our society are still trying to learn. Is and I mean, I know some folks have been virtual for a very long time, but our organization is still learning because we were in person until 2020. So we’re finding that we have higher accessibility to interns, and they are more access, or they have accessibility to us.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And we can offer more flexibility. So that’s exciting. Right? So I can recruit from far away. And it’s okay.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So that’s interesting. That can help the diversity of our team as well. Just to have those different experiences come towards us. So that’s exciting.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: where it’s a bit of a challenge is that students are still trying to figure out what they want as a first experience for work

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: right? So they like it during the academic year.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: But they might wanna be in person during the summer. And they might be in person, wanna be in person when they start a position. So we’re still negotiating who this works for? In terms of the students. And they are, too, to be quite frank, right? Like they’re some of them very much. Wanna be virtual. And some of them are more interested in being in person. Then, in terms of the premises. They’re pretty excited about

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: being virtual, I think right. And so again, a little bit different in terms of sort of life, experience and career path. Little bit more mature. In terms of more mature. I don’t know, I guess. What I’m thinking about is they are older. They also have more complications in their lives, most likely in terms of

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: families and bills and and dependents, and all of these things. Not that students can’t have those, but more apprentices do, because they simply are older.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And so with that there, that flexibility and accessibility is really important to them. So that that’s a benefit.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: But we’re trying to get a good mix right? So we have offered connect to purpose events which were in person. So we’ve been in the hospital with interns, for instance, and that’s been very meaningful. For them to see where they’re connected, the work that they’re doing

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and we need to get them together so that they can meet each other sometimes, but some folks are too far geographically away from us for that to happen, and

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: then

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: and then it’s also not as meaningful to them right like that might not be the value that they’re looking for either. So it sort of works out. You know, like they’re really interested in the accessibility and the flexibility, and so that they’re not included in those events doesn’t bother them that much.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: And I think what’s what’s interesting about what you just said. And also another comment that Jenny Carter added it from Centera health in the QA. Is that this this value proposition is sometimes very much dependent on your role. In in this case, Sharon, of centralizing related tasks. So you can sort of see what that pattern is, what’s working, you know. How do you enable

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virtual? How do you enable the connect to purpose in person? How do you figure out what the right piece is? But certainly the overall.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: A goal is to reduce turnover and reduce talent costs, and it seems like you’ve definitely been able to achieve that. The other part about what you said a little earlier was engaging the managers, and that managers like to participate in this career pathways program. And so and I know you read a few quotes about some of the things that they were excited about. But if you don’t mind also elaborating a little bit more about the value back to the managers. So what does it?

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: How how do you get them engaged? In the first place, so that they they do come up with those flowing responses. But where did you know? What’s that initial recruiting process like?

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So I mean the positions post under their name, and they make the hire right? So again. I do a lot of work with my colleague, and we go out and get candidates to apply. But the managers hire onto their teams. And so they make those decisions.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: it’s less of a risk because it’s not permanent.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: It’s not their budget. And so with that it’s

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: it’s they’re willing to take that risk and make that time investment because it is an investment of time.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: At the same time they do get the benefit that they have the. They have influence over a potential candidate, and they can get to know people quite well. During those 14 weeks, and if you think that they can extend that internship up to 4 times, they have the billi, the ability to spend a lot of time with that candidate and get to know them well, see if that candidate can collaborate with their team members. It is a way to see how the team gels together.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: And so that’s good information. And you also have the ability to really make an imprint on that can’t on those interns. So you are training them in the way you want them to be trained. And so that’s really impactful and at the same time they get real work done.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Often that work is done is that lower level work so that can free up higher level employees team members so that

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: their team is more efficient. But

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: managers who are interested in hiring also are interested in having an intern right like they’re excited about this in order to have some influence over those candidates.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: it also because we make our interns go through such a formal and rigorous we make them go through the same process as any other employee in terms of hiring. So with that the move to a promotion to a full time employee. Is pretty seamless, and they do not need to reopen the position.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: So it it’s a it’s a process that isn’t encumbered. By a lot of problem steps

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: well, you’ve obviously really thought through all of the mechanics. And you’ve come up with some best practices which you’ve described here, and you’ve really made it a win win for the candidates and also the managers. Anything else that is, you just reflect back on again. It’s the program and its impact. And where you’re going next that you think that we oughta talk about here or be aware of.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: I think that to be honest, I do think that the best, the most significant, best practice that we have is that centralized budget.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Because everyone else I talked to who has a decentralized budget. Has much, a much harder job than I do. So I really do think that’s an important piece, because then you can get into these more, these nuanced areas, and more of the education

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: of the interns, and also the apprentices. And so with that. I think that’s an important best practice in terms of where we’re going. I see an opportunity for improvement and really understanding. Right now we are

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: All things that had been cancelled from 2020 to 2022 are back. and all things that we filled in

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: because things were cancelled from 2020 to 2022 also exist. And so I think we need to balance out what we’re gonna keep and what we’re gonna get rid of at this point, because some of those processes might be replicating each other. So that’s something I would like to do. I’m hopeful that the apprenticeship program can continue and grow. I think that seems worthwhile. I think there’s the opportunity for multiple leaders to come together

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: to identify skill sets that they have in common on different teams, and so that we can expand that in a little bit different way. Than we’re doing right now. And I think that’s an opportunity for growth. And again, we are interested in

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: our stakeholders, opinions, and so we’ll work to make this more accessible and more reasonable for them

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: awesome. Well, Sharon Brandinette, thanks so much for sharing your insights. And what a wonderful program you’ve got! We wish you continued success.

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Sharon Vriend-Robinette | Corewell Health: Thank you, and thanks everyone for coming today.

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Janet Guptill | Scottsdale Institute: Yes, thanks everyone, and have a great day and talk to you all soon, and thanks again. Talk to you later. Bye, bye.