By Kara Marante
Working for a children’s health system is special. What could be more rewarding than taking care of the health and well-being of the youngest and often most vulnerable members of our community? At Nicklaus Children’s, our vision is to create a healthy future for every child. My colleagues and I take that goal very seriously, day in and day out. As the chief people officer, it is my job to ensure we create and maintain a culture that recognizes the importance of the work we do, that focuses on the people in our organization, and that furthers our brand as the trusted health system for children in South Florida.
Everyone who comes to our facilities notices that our focus on people is deliberate. When I started my role back in 2020, we made a conscious choice to call the role chief PEOPLE officer, not human resources officer. This truly means something for us because our culture is people first. Everyone who comes to work at Nicklaus Children’s joins a family, and I mean that both figuratively and literally. I am a mother myself and my children come here when they need care. In many ways, the community we serve is also the community inside of our organization. They are not separate.
What many may not know – Nicklaus Children’s is one of the largest employers in the region. Our Nicklaus Children’s family currently consists of almost 5,000 employees. Together, we take care of close to half a million patients each year. What defines our culture are six values and guiding behaviors: collaboration, responsibility, empowerment, advocacy, transformation, and empathy – CREATE, for short. Every employee of our organization knows these and does their best to live them every day, at work and beyond. From the perspective of the chief people officer, they also guide our planning and recruitment.
Furthering and developing our people pipeline is one of the key areas I have been focusing on since I started this position. Not only do we fill open or new positions with candidates from outside of the organization, we also look internally to see who may be best suited or who may be looking for new roles and responsibilities. An additional important element of that is succession planning. While we hope to retain as many of our Nicklaus Children’s professionals as possible, we understand that some may want to move on, and others move away. Therefore, we are actively planning the succession processes for a whole variety of roles within the organization.
A second key theme is organization and workforce development. This means we need to ensure that our physicians, nurses, other professionals, and staff are ready to fulfill the duties that are necessary today and in the future to take care of the kids in our community. How we best upskill our workforce is something I take very seriously and we need to consider it regularly as healthcare evolves and new technologies such as artificial intelligence become more important and used in our day-to-day roles.
Lastly, fostering and enhancing our culture, built around the six values and guiding behaviors stated above, is critical. Not just since the global pandemic has the role of the employer evolved and changed. Employees, more than ever, value and expect healthy lifestyle and financial wellness programs, among others. At Nicklaus Children’s, we introduced and expanded several of these programs including, for example, mammograms for female employees on-site. We also recently started providing fertility support as part of our employee programs.
Overall, our people efforts have been largely successful. Our turnover rate, which is slightly over 12 percent, is lower than our industry average. We have a high number of employees with above-average years of service, and our employee engagement scores are encouraging. All of this illustrates the importance of fostering a people-centric culture. That is important at every organization. It is even more important at a pediatric healthcare organization that is dedicated to ensuring the health and well-being of the youngest members of our society.
Kara Marante is vice president and chief people officer for Nicklaus Children’s Health System where she leads the human resources and organizational development teams for the health system.