Health-care organization Baylor Scott and White Health’s Leadership Journey is its leadership development process based on a comprehensive, current needs assessment and designed with accelerated adult learning strategies. The company realigns it annually to the organization’s strategies and direction. In fiscal year 2014, there was a corporate goal to increase the leadership skills of Baylor Scott and White Health’s first-line supervisors and managers. The company exceeded that goal by 3 percent.
Program Details
The Leadership Journey is based on leadership competencies that are stratified by leadership level. The competencies were developed in-house. Knowledge domains for each level were added, along with experiential activities and ways to learn through relationships, feedback, and formal curricula. These were placed into roadmaps for each leadership level. Roadmaps contain the current role, as well as the path to the next level up.
The Leadership Journey Portal is an online, on-demand leadership learning center. The leadership roadmaps were placed on the portal, with links to each section for self-paced learning assets. In FY’14, nearly 2,000 unique leaders accessed more than 12,000 learning assets such as videos, e-learning, simulations, books, and job aids. The vendor related that such usage is a best practice and asked Baylor Scott and White Health to share its tactics with others.
Baylor Scott and White Health created 31 formal leadership training programs (blended use of self-study, leadership interviews, classroom, Webinars, action planning, and learning circles). New-to-role leaders have 12 months to take 40 hours of required programs. Tenured leaders are required to take 16 hours of annual leadership development based on their own needs.
The 180 Leadership Checkpoint is required for all supervisors and managers. It’s an online assessment of competencies by their immediate manager. They meet, discuss, and create an online individual development plan (IDP). This also allows for leaders to be exempted from required training based on their strengths. Some 1,294 supervisors and managers completed the 180 Leadership Checkpoint and IDP programs.
Baylor Scott and White Health also formed a Leadership Development Council, populated by a cross-functional group of executives to steer the Leadership Journey. They meet monthly to plan and evaluate the Leadership Journey.
A different executive participates in each leadership course as a subject matter expert. They facilitate two Learning Circles after class to help leaders apply the learning. In FY’14, 376 Learning Circles were completed.
Results
In FY’14, there were 188 classes held, with 8,201 leader completions. Kirkpatrick Level 1 evaluations averaged 4.86 out of 5. Some 96.3 percent of knowledge gained was retained, and 98 percent of the learning was applied to the job.
One of the required classes for leaders in FY’14 was Building Organizational Talent, to support the company’s retention goal. Baylor Scott and White Health exceeded its retention goal by 1 percent, and 92 percent who attended the Leadership Journey in FY’14 have been retained. In addition, 32 percent of open positions were filled through internal promotions, which was a 16 percent increase from FY’13. Supervisors and managers had a 2.32 percent higher performance rating from FY’13.
