Dr. Carole Bennett, VP of Talent Management and Development at Sutter Health: Fostering an “Every Day, Everywhere” Learning Culture

Van Ton-Quinlivan

Hello, I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan, CEO of Futuro Health, welcoming you to WorkforceRx, where I interview leaders and innovators for insights into creating a future-ready workforce.

According to the American Hospital Association, more than 50% of US hospitals have implemented workforce development programs aimed at filling skills gaps and preparing employees for new roles. Research shows this grow-your-own approach not only helps in recruitment, but also boosts employee retention and satisfaction by providing clear career advancement pathways.

We’re going to take a closer look at this very important workforce development trend today with Dr. Carole Bennett, vice president of Talent Management and Development at Sutter Health, a Sacramento-based health system serving Northern California with twenty-four hospitals and 200 clinics, and I understand it’s also growing.

Carole is an accomplished HR executive with deep experience leading employee development programs at Sutter Health and elsewhere. She is also the creator and director of the Professional Coaching for Life and Work program at the University of California at Davis.

Thanks very much for joining us today, Carole.

Carole Bennett

Yeah, thank you, Van. It’s really exciting to be here. Thank you for having me.

Van

Absolutely. Well, let me start by inviting you to give an overview of your role at Sutter Health. It’s quite comprehensive, I understand.

Carole

Yeah. So I’m really lucky to be serving as the leader over talent management and development, which is enterprise-wide learning, effectively, and learning as it applies to people developing over time, and that’s really about helping Sutter be the best place to work, practice and receive care. We really believe in investing in people and their career journeys as they go forward wherever that might take them: up, lateral, or becoming great in the work that they do.

Van

And how did you come into this role? Was it a planned journey or what was your own journey to get to this role?

Carole

You know, it was not a planned journey, I would say. I have always been interested in human behavior. I was teaching at California State University, Sacramento and one of the classes that I was teaching at the time was organizational behavior. The more I talked to the students in that class about what they were learning about — how relating to each other, relating to themselves, relating to the business in which they work and how their minds are kind of just really like sparked and their thinking was sparked — I got really fascinated by this piece of the work.

I remember when I was getting my MBA, my favorite class was leadership, but I thought, is that a business? Like how do you go into leadership? And so here I am so many years later actually having done that. So, that was kind of a happenstance, but it’s been growing over time and I’m really fortunate to do this work. I love coming to work every day to be with someone else on their learning journey.

Van

Well, I’m sure the organization is quite pleased to have you in this role. So, I was wondering if, from your vantage point, you could you give us a big picture take on what the factors are that are driving the need for health systems to have an extensive internal education programs?

Carole

It’s really that the pace of change is just so rapid right now, and not only in the environment, but also within the organizations that we work and within how we’re relating to our own personal environment, such as the beginning stages of generative AI. These types of changes in technology, changes in regulation, and what our patients expect from us really require our organization to have people at all levels throughout the organization to be agile and to continue to learn and grow over time.

I see it as a personal responsibility to provide the conditions — the programs, the opportunities, the support structures — to help people learn and grow as the world changes around them so that we can serve our mission of patients first and people always.

Van

And Carole, you mentioned programs and opportunities to train and grow. Are there other conditions that would then bring them to you?

Carole

Yes, it’s not only programs and classes. We also think about this as a kind of holistic approach. So, we also support internal capabilities around mentoring and around coaching. We offer an annual certified coaching program where our leaders can come in and others can come in and learn those skills so they can support each other with those. We have a ‘leader as teacher’ model where we bring our leaders into programs to teach so that when they go back to the places that they lead and the people that they work with, that they’re bringing those skills back.

So we really kind of see this as all feeding itself. The other one I would say is having a really thoughtful performance management system that includes career development, career aspirations, and growth within it, not just a reflection on the year behind, but what’s ahead.

Van

Since all of these systems are reinforcing employees and their supervisors to come to you, let’s now talk about how Sutter Health is investing in career growth and internal mobility for its workforce.

Carole

Of course there are students coming in and people being hired every day, but when we think of our existing workforce, those people also move around the organization and we really want to create a career home so that people can grow whatever aspirations they might have. Some people want to become the CEO, some people want to be a leader or a manager, some people want to try a new type of skill within the organization. Maybe they’re a medical assistant and they want to become a nurse. Maybe they’re in information technology and they want to work in my team in leadership development.

There’s all kinds of movement that can happen for a career within the walls of an organization like ours. So part of what we’re really trying to do is help people map their career aspirations, find those opportunities for growth, and then provide programming and development opportunities so that they can achieve those goals over time.

Van

Carole, I’m curious, traditionally when budgets get tight, training and learning always gets the first cut. I’m wondering how you advocate for the resources to do this good work, especially building out the learning and development programs, and do they tie back to retention or employee engagement or some of the other metrics of the organization?

Carole

You’re right. I do think that this space is traditionally one that does get cut when things get tight. I would say there’s a couple of things that we’re focusing on to really tell that story. One is we have senior leadership engagement all the way to the CEO of the organization, Warner Thomas, who really believes in learning and development as a way towards our future. Having that stakeholder engagement of the most senior leaders all the way through leadership really makes a huge difference. So, I see it as a part of my role to continue that conversation by constantly bringing back data and metrics and stories of the students and the pathways and growth that they are undertaking so that we keep that in front of mind. Just like we do any other business, running our talent is a huge part of the work. So for the business folks, keeping that in mind.

It’s also telling that story you just mentioned around employee engagement. Organizations that have a lot of internal growth and development have higher engagement. We know that people, when they come to work, want to learn and grow, maybe not every day, but most of the time and to have it available to them. And so we know it affects engagement, and it affects turnover so that the more that we can do for folks and the more that it can be available to them, the more we think we can help them be successful.

I think the other side of that too is really investing in developing leaders because we know that people stay when they have great leaders and they can achieve the goals that they want in their career with great leadership. So, we’re investing in those skills in our leaders too, and how they interact with their teams every single day.

Van

So, you have a lot of volume of activity going on at all different tiers of the organization and all different strategies. Tell us about Sutter Health University and what role it plays in shaping a future-ready talent workforce.

Carole

So, Sutter Health University is what we call our corporate university. It’s our learning arm for the organization where we develop the careers of people coming into the organization, such as students or new employees or new leaders. We develop folks within their career, and then we develop our leaders. And so by having kind of this multifaceted approach, we feel like we’re really creating a robust learning organization that really helps us become a talent destination for people really around the world at all different levels in their careers.

We’re developing this opportunity and keeping it in front of people so that we have an every day, everywhere learning culture. There is no done. We are always learning and we’re really working with our entire organization to see that.

I presented at all of our big team meetings to talk about that. We are communicating out with the organization constantly. We’re sharing the stories of success of the folks who have attended a program or even the experience because sometimes we just need something to help our plant grow. We just need a little time to be together and learn something new, and so we also tell those stories because that’s equally important. We’re talking about meeting business outcomes, but also meeting personal goals and professional goals.

Van

I love that phrase, ‘every day, everywhere, learning culture.’ I love that. What would be the biggest challenge for another organization that’s thinking about setting up a corporate university?

Carole

I think it requires commitment because learning programs aren’t a light switch — not only in when they’re developed and available, but also the affects you see — so there’s a certain amount of commitment and investment that needs to be made and kind of trusted within the process. And then I would also say leader investment in that. So not just the dollars, but the time to really support the work, but also be able to see what they get from it in the engagement or retention of their people and the skill sets of their people. And so the more leaders can be involved throughout the process and the more that we can let the process work and continuously hone and develop it, the better impact we’ll see.

I think what I’ve seen different corporate universities who have tried to program, they run a program, then they end the program and it’s over. But really, I think this is longitudinal and we need to grow over time and then add to develop and change. I think that’s really a key to be able to make these corporate universities successful. I think many people know in the back of their minds that this is needed, but they also need to be able to see it. They need to be able to see it in the behaviors of the people that they lead and they need to see it in the behaviors of their peers and within themselves.

So, the more that we can continue that investment, the more people can point to it and they can see the difference it makes and they’re going to continue to be involved and come to the classes and support the classes.

Van

And nothing you’ve said actually said, ‘we’re going to build a building that is the university.’

Carole

Yeah. It’s an idea. We have a space, but we actually deliver classes around the system. We do have one central space in the middle of the system where we deliver a large percentage of the classes, but we also see the need and opportunity when we have a large footprint. We bring classes to the local areas and divisions or our professional areas so that they can also learn together. So we do a little bit of both.

But I also think there’s this third classroom, the third wall, which is the virtual learning space, and we do a lot of hybrid learning. We do a lot of in-person. We do hybrid, and we do virtual only. We have a formula that we kind of look at every year to ensure that we’re balancing that and the needs of the organization and by level. What the program is also determines how we deliver. So Sutter Health University is an idea. It’s a concept. It’s in the actions that we do every day, but you can also come visit us in person.

Van

It’s a concept for the modern world, the modern delivery system. Well, it’s always been said that it’s more cost efficient to be able to groom somebody internally into the open roles than it is to bring someone external and pay the recruiting fees and also have the risk of retention. Are you finding this to be the case at Sutter, and do you have a story to tell of individuals who have been able to move up?

Carole Bennett

Yes. To me it’s a balance. It’s great to inject new ideas and experiences into an organization. It can change a team’s attitude and it can change the way you’re approaching problems. So I always think it’s a good balance. It’s not an only one or the other. But it’s also the folks who are internal to the organization, they understand the culture and the context of which they work within the organization.

Our organization is complex. I think all organizations are complex. When you have more than one person, it’s quite complex. And so that historical understanding and knowledge affects speed and effectiveness and efficiency as well. So, I do think it’s really important to have that right mix, which means you need the internal programs to help develop people over time in that space.

I have a lot of stories. We collect them all the time. I personally have been at Sutter Health for fifteen years and when I started, I was a leadership effectiveness coach for nurse managers. These were early career nurse managers who were working out in our entities and they were coming to their first leadership development program and it was great to be with them in that space. I worked with them individually. I led and developed a program that really is still the foundation of our manager level program we run today.

I see them now out at our leadership team meeting and they are chief nurse executives of hospitals, they are directors of really complex units, and they are just doing amazing things and I feel so proud of them. And even saying that isn’t quite right because they did this, right? But it is just really wonderful to see that career growth. I see that every day. I have the opportunity of that history to kind of see it.

But I also talk to folks who come in. We have an administrative fellow who was able to come through our program as an MA. She started with Sutter Health as a medical assistant. She received a grant that we have for internal folks to have their masters paid for and then they attend our administrative fellowship. Now, she’s a director over an ambulatory unit and she’s doing amazing work. We have lots of stories like that. They kind of happen every day, and my job is to help try to tell those stories and share those with others.

Van

Back to the individual you talked about who became a CNO…part of the mix is that she had the resilience to weather all the storms of the industry. And as you know, many, many nurses have called it quits. Many doctors are calling it quits. How do you build resilience within your workforce?

Carole

I think having the opportunity to learn and kind of step outside of your active day-to-day life is a huge part of that. I do think our programs are resiliency programs as well. To be able to learn something new and apply it in a new way gives folks a good feeling of accomplishment and gives them a new perspective so that they can go back to their work with not only new skills, but also a new perspective.

I do think resiliency has brought a lot of people through this career. I think back to some of those early nurse leaders and the majority of them at the time wouldn’t have told me they wanted to be the CNO. What they wanted to do is a great job for their patients. What they were continuing to learn over time is how the way they changed their career gave them more ability to have an impact. So I think it really was mindset over time and staying deeply connected to the mission of the work that they do.

Van

So Carole, Futuro Health is focused on the allied health and allied-adjacent roles.  I wanted to get your thoughts as more care moves into the community base or into the home…how do you see some of the skills shifting as the healthcare model evolves?

Carole

I love our home health people and all the people who work in allied roles. They’re such a huge part of the work that we all do. They make all ships rise. We all work better together when we all are learning and developing together. So all of our programs include, we work, we do it together. We do have some programs that specialize for individual professions, but as we move through the career, we like to bring people together to be a bit of an ecosystem of what their working life is like, because we don’t all work alone in the work that we do.

So, when I think of a lot of our folks who work outside the hospital walls, they are learning skills such as agility, problem solving, they really need to be able to think on their feet. And they also need to be able to trust and work with their team who may not be right next to them at the time. So how do you build those connections? There are a lot of new skills that we continuously bring in to the organization just based on what the external context is.

Right now, we’re all really interested in learning about generative AI and how that might change our working life or how we can start to become comfortable with it, and that means our caregivers as well, not just the folks who sit behind a computer. So yeah, I think it’s really about learning together. It’s about agility and problem solving, and it’s about the resilience that you had mentioned earlier and being able to count on yourself and others.

Van

So let’s just pull the thread a little bit on the skill set of agility. How do you build agility or how do you strengthen the ability for people to stay agile?

Carole

I think learning itself is agility. Trying something new and doing something differently helps build that muscle, I’ll call it, of agility. One of my teachers one time said to us as a thought question is, ‘what if every problem was a learning problem?’ And I really think about that a lot.  If we can take any situation that we’re in and really think about what could we learn from it? How could we do something differently? What else might we need to know?

So, when I think about agility, it’s really about having those frameworks and the skill to know when you don’t know, or the way that you did it before may not be the right way forward. And then how do I figure out how to learn? What do I need being able to identify that?  So we teach agility, I think, across classes, not as ‘this is a class on agility’. It’s really across different programs and classes to hone the muscle and the skill and the application of being agile.

Van

I think you alluded to this, but in most meetings, we want everyone to know that we know our domain, right? And so in a way, there must be language being introduced in the culture and a space created where ‘we don’t know’ or that ‘I don’t know’ and that it’s okay for us to figure it out.

Carole

Yeah, I think the first step to learning something new and to being better is to admit what we don’t know or that we don’t have all the answers. In some ways, it’s an unknowing that’s required so that we can try something new, hear new voices, do things differently. All of that sometimes requires us to set aside what we think we know and what we think we’re supposed to do or answer in a meeting and instead to say, ‘let’s hold on, let’s pause and see if there’s a different way to look at this.’

Van

I like that. Well, I’m going to give you a chance to tell us what is the latest thing that you’ve learned that is new. And I’m going to give you a little example from my life to give you some time to think about it. I actually took up some drumming lessons recently just to challenge myself to see if I could take up music again.

Carole

Nice.

Van

That was a very humbling experience, I have to say. I’m wondering what was the last thing that you did to learn something new?

Carole

It’s funny you ask that because just this week, I hit my 365th day on Duolingo. I decided I wanted to try to learn Spanish. I grew up in Maine in the Northeast and I’ve only spoken English through my life and I’ve always had such admiration for people who can speak multiple languages. This is a skill that I’ve always wanted to do, though I was not successful in class. So I said, I’m just gonna try Duolingo and do this.

So 365 days later, I was in the elevator at our corporate office on that day, and someone got in the elevator and started talking to me in Spanish. And I will say, I did not know how to answer at all, but I understood what he said. So, I’m feeling like it’s a really great accomplishment, and I’m going to keep going and keep trying.

Van

It’s a process, it’s a journey. All right, we’re cheering you on. Well, why don’t we close with this question: you’re in such an important and big position right now. What advice would you give to your younger self about workforce education based on what you’ve learned in your career?

Carole

I think that I love this idea of ‘don’t wait for permission to grow.’ Like, own your own development. Seek out mentors, ask for feedback, say yes to a stretch opportunity that may seem scary or hard or that you don’t have all the answers to because it’s in those opportunities that you grow. There will be times that people will ask you to grow, but it’s really yours. We own our own development and we own our own career, and the organization, our manager, are to support us.

So I would say, don’t wait for permission. Just figure out what you’re interested in. I also don’t think learning is an event. It’s a phase and it’s a practice. It’s a time. I think we just never stop being students. I admire our CEO because he will talk about that a lot, that he’s still learning every day, and if that belief is held at the top, we can all hold that belief and I think it’s really true.

Van

Well, Carole, we so enjoyed having you here with us today and certainly appreciated your philosophy on learning and personal growth. Thank you very much for spending the time with us.

Carole

Well, it’s been a great pleasure. Thanks for asking and anytime I can support the idea of learning and growth, I will do it. So, thank you.

Van

And we wish you the best on your Spanish.

Carole

Yeah, look, I need it.

Van

I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan with Futuro Health. Thanks for checking out this episode of WorkforceRx. I hope you will join us again as we continue to explore how to create a future-focused workforce in America.