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Bill Klaproth (Host): This is a special podcast produced on site at SHSMD Connections 2024 Annual Conference in Denver, as we talk with keynote speakers and session leaders direct from the show floor. I'm your host, Bill Klaproth. And with me is Maria Belli, she is the Recruitment Marketing Manager at Sheppard Pratt; we also have Kristina Schiller-Chaki. She is the Director of Content Strategy at Sheppard Pratt, as we talk about Beating The Workforce Blues, How to Tackle Your Health System's Biggest Problem. Maria and Kristina, welcome.

Maria Belli: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: Thank you so much for having us.

Host: Yeah. Great to talk with you both. Happy conference. How's it going so far?

Maria Belli: It's swinging. Things are going.

Host: I like it. It is another great SHSMD Connections Conference in process. So, let's talk about your session. Cristina, can you share an overview of the current staffing challenges your health system faces, particularly in behavioral health and how you're preparing to meet the community needs.

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: Absolutely. So nationwide, we are actually experiencing a shortage of four million healthcare workers. And as more and more physicians, nurses, PAs age out, that problem is getting worse and worse. Sheppard Pratt is an exclusively behavioral healthcare organization. And so, we have this niche focus, which makes our shortage even more dire. So, we have been partnering with our talent acquisition team, with our operational excellence team, and with clinical leaders all across our health system to figure out how can we take a marketing-first approach to solving this recruitment problem.

Host: I like how you put that, a marketing-first approach. You don't usually hear that when you talk about recruitment and staffing. So, Maria, as Kristina was saying, you've taken this marketing-first approach. Can you explain what that looks like in practice and why it's been effective in attracting top talent?

Maria Belli: Absolutely. So, recruitment has its own sets of needs, just like any part of the organization. And they need a marketing strategy to drive that. So with the recruitment marketing function, we're able to take a look at those unique challenges. In my role, I work really, really closely with recruitment. I mean, I meet with them like three times a week at least, talk to them all the time. I really intimately understand what they're dealing with every day. I'm able to take that back to my amazing marketing team. We all brainstorm, get together, figure out how we can tackle those challenges. And it's been successful so far.

Host: So, talk more about that collaboration between marketing and the internal stakeholders. How does that help drive success in your system?

Maria Belli: I think that just having everybody at the table, the right people at the table. You want to have the operational excellence team who's going to understand the different sectors of Sheppard Pratt. You want have the recruitment team who understands what they're dealing with out there in the recruitment world. It's challenging out there right now. And then, you know, you want to have the leaders of the actual programs, schools, units, themselves, and they really understand what's going, you know, on the ground level.

Host: You said you meet often. Tell us about one of your meetings. What are those like? What are you talking about?

Maria Belli: It's different every time. We're really going through identifying. I think, at this point, I've been with Sheppard Pratt almost two years now. And we're starting to take from the moment that a person sees Sheppard Pratt and defining Sheppard Pratt and going through what we can address at each stage of that. At each meeting, it's identifying what's next, what's next, and it never ends. So, I have a lot of job security.

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: I think that's a great synopsis. And I think the other great thing about having all of these parties involved at every step of the process is that you have buy-in from everyone at every step of the process, and I think most people can empathize with the problem of, you know, getting people to buy in and participate in a project can often be the hardest part of getting an initiative done. So, having buy-in from the very first step has been critical to this succeeding.

Host: Yeah. That's really important to get everybody on board, same page, all of those things. So, great job for you on that. So, Kristina, what specific tactics then have delivered the most ROI in your recruitment efforts, and how have you measured the impact?

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: Yeah, definitely. You know, the tactics that we've taken have been, honestly, really wide-ranging. So, it's everything from building awareness. We actually didn't have an employer brand before we started this. So, we obviously had Sheppard Pratt, the healthcare brand. We didn't have an employer brand. So, we started soup to nuts. We built personas. We did focus groups with our own employees. We would have loved to do them with outsiders as well, but we were working with a few resources, small budget. But, you know, we took that, we built out what our employer brand looks like. We have been rolling that out across every facet possible from videos to what our job descriptions look like. We completely redid our job descriptions. We've taken an SEO-first approach to how we are putting together job descriptions and even job titles as well. And then, we also think like marketers too as we're doing this. So, when organic efforts aren't enough, that's when we start looking at things like lead gen efforts as well. So, you know, just paid search makes sense. How can you justify that kind of budget?

Host: So, can you talk more about employer brands and what you had to do so somebody understands what that is? Obviously, there's a consumer forward-facing brand and an employer brand. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Maria Belli: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's about just defining who your organization is, and there's this marketing-first look at it where, you know, mission-driven and all the buzzwords. But it's really about at the heart of it, how our employees see us, who Sheppard Pratt is, and then also where we want to move in the future. So, with taking all of those aspects, like Kristina said, we developed personas. We were able to kind of bucket our employees into four different personas. And then, through that, we could pull out pieces that we really wanted to attach ourselves to in order to build this employer brand.

Host: Okay. So for someone listening to this podcast facing similar challenges you all have faced, what are some actionable steps they can take to begin implementing kind of this same recruitment-type strategy addressing staffing shortages? Kristina, let's start with you.

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: Yeah, definitely. I would start by building the case for it. So, you know, what can marketing do to help solve a problem, put together that pitch essentially, and then see where you're able to get buy in with leadership. So, we were talking not only with our HR teams and our talent acquisition teams. But we were talking with strategy, we were talking with finance, we were talking with hospital leadership to figure out what can we implement to immediately move the needle. And that's how we were able to start getting buy-in.

Host: So for someone listening to this podcast facing similar challenges, what actionable steps can they take to help their recruitment strategy that's addressing staffing shortages?

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: Yeah. So, we started by-- and this is actually before Maria even joined Sheppard Pratt-- we started by quantifying the problem. So, we knew that we were getting so many requests from talent acquisition. We knew that there was this huge need and it was going to be impacting other areas of service like, how many patients could we serve if we're facing a healthcare worker shortage? So, we're impacting all these different areas of service, so putting together a proposed solution based off of where we saw the greatest impact. So, we made the pitch for a full time resource dedicated to focusing on recruitment marketing. We were able to hire Maria on and then I set her loose on the organization.

Host: I love it. So Maria, tell us, what do you do?

Maria Belli: What do I do do everyday?

Host: You're the recruitment marketing manager. So as Kristina was saying, they found you, our guiding light, and then you've taken over. So for someone that wants to do the same strategy, it sounds like you have to have a dedicated person really running this, right? So, that's kind of where you come in. So, tell us more then.

Maria Belli: It really is. I mean, it's a full time job. So, I came in and I started assessing each sector of Sheppard Pratt, started meeting with the recruitment leaders, the recruiters themselves, all the way to the coordinators, understanding their challenges every day, understanding how we could apply that marketing-first approach, taking a look at job descriptions, and what was out there online.

What did our career microsite look like? What kind of videos were we putting out there? How were we spotlighting our employees? So, taking a look at how we could kind of flip that, especially with the implementation of our new employer brand, how we could pull that into all of the messaging.

Host: So, you kind of did an audit of everything. You kind of pulled everything together and said, "Okay, here's where we're at, and here's where we need to go."

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: Yeah. And, beyond that, I think what was also so important for your role was you spent so much time boots on the ground. And I don't think we can overstate the importance of that enough, you need to be there experiencing. So, you as a marketer can really convey that message to other parties.

Maria Belli: I always say that, that beginning, and I want to get back out there, but being in the programs, the units, seeing the way that these employees light up as they're doing the work that they're doing, that's what really started to make me excited about this role and excited about all the possibilities and things that I could do beyond.

Host: Absolutely. So, where do you see this going in the future? You've got amazing results so far. So Maria, do you see yourself taking this down the road?

Maria Belli: I would really love, and we're starting to do this already, to expand this throughout the entire employee life cycle. There's so much overlap between recruitment and then the retention piece. I mean, it starts inside. That's how you sell your organization. So, there are gaps and there's things that I want to take a look at culture-wise and just the way that things are working amongst the different entities of Sheppard Pratt. There were four different entities that came together to create the Sheppard Pratt of today, and we're still working to define ourselves beyond that, or as one Sheppard Pratt.

Host: I know we talked about internal buy-in, but from the other employees seeing what you're doing, saying, "Hey, this is a great place to work." Is that what you're talking about?

Maria Belli: I mean, there's a lot of our employees who feel that way, but we're not identifying them effectively, I don't think, right now, and making sure that we're telling their stories of career growth. In some of the focus groups we did, Sheppard Pratt was coming across as an entry-level position. You start there, you get your early education, and then you move on. But it's not like that. There's so many people that have grown, and those stories aren't being told. So, working with leaders talking to people ourselves, identifying those people, and then really pulling out what other candidates are interested in, and also making sure that we're making those opportunities available to our current employees.

Host: Well, I want to thank you both for being here. This has been a ton of fun and great job. So, as we wrap up, I'd love to get some final thoughts from each of you. Kristina, anything else you want to add?

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: Yeah, I mean, to quote the wise words of High School Musical, we're all in this together. So, cross-functional partnerships and cooperation, I think, are really critical to success. I don't think that we would have gotten this initiative as far as we could have if we weren't effectively partnering with different departments all across the organization. I think that's really the key to it.

Host: Thank you, High School Musical. Who knew? When I got up today, I didn't think someone would reference High School Musical on a podcast. Kristina, you win.

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: I'm glad I could check that off your bingo card.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Thank you. You are amazing. Thank you so much. Maria, final thoughts from you.

Maria Belli: Yeah. So, while the recruitment marketing function is definitely a unique one, I think that it's really important to work with your company to get that buy-in, because I know recruitment is not marketing's problem. But ultimately, our unique skills and viewpoint is really going to drive that message home, and that's what recruitment needs, I think. And get a recruitment marketer.

Host: I love it. Very well said. Perfect way to wrap up this podcast. So Maria and Kristina, thank you so much for your time today.

Maria Belli: Thank much you so much.

Kristina Schiller-Chaki: Thank you.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Once again, that is Maria Belli and Kristina Schiller-Chaki, and we hope you enjoyed SHSMD Connections 2024. For those of you who are unable to attend, you can access the presentation recordings at shismd.com. And then, you'll be able to see this great presentation from Kristina and Maria. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and please subscribe so you get every episode chock-full of goodness, people. And to access our full podcast library, visit shishmed.org/podcasts. Thanks for listening.