#227 - Proven Secrets to Growing Your Healthcare Workforce

How Parkland Health Grows Its Own Workforce — And Why You Should Too

Featuring Stephanie Speights, PhD, SHRM-SCP, Senior Vice President of Talent Development, Parkland Health

What if the answer to your most pressing workforce shortage is already inside your building? Stephanie Speights has been proving that thesis for nearly seven years at Parkland Health — one of the most respected health systems in the country — by building a talent development engine that grows clinical staff from the inside out.

🌱 Start With Your Highest Turnover Role Stephanie's counterintuitive advice: don't start with your hardest-to-fill clinical role. Start with the role that churns the fastest. Identify the volume you hire annually, calculate first-year turnover, and build your apprenticeship pipeline there. The transporters, PCAs, and dietary staff cycling through your revolving door are often your best candidates for the next clinical role they never knew existed. But first — address why they're leaving. Drop people into a broken environment and they will still leave.

🤝 Commit Operations Before You Launch The most common failure point: workforce development teams that build great programs but can't get operations to hire the graduates. Stephanie is direct — before you build the cohort, get the commitment. Leaders must agree to hire from the program and to be active participants in shaping the experience, the clinical rotations, and the matchmaking that puts the right person in the right service line.

🎓 Day One Is Not Too Early Parkland starts the development conversation at orientation with a gallery walk — posters on ERG leadership opportunities, tuition programs active on day one, and career navigator resources for anyone who wants to explore what's next. The message is clear: you don't have to wait, and you don't have to leave to grow.

🤖 AI Won't Replace the Heart — It'll Require More of It Ambient documentation, predictive scheduling, and clinical AI are already reshaping what healthcare workers do. Stephanie's response isn't a technology roadmap — it's a human one. Build agility. Develop leaders who create psychological safety around change. And make sure your senior leaders are wise enough not to chase every shiny object at the expense of core mission.

The pipeline you need is already in your building. Your job is to open the door.