Dr. David Ferreira, Provost of Charter Oak State College: Turning Employee Tuition Benefit On Its Head

EP72 WorkforceRx Dr David Ferreira

Although most US employers offer some form of tuition assistance, it’s estimated that less than 5% of employees use the benefit. There are several reasons for this, but according to Dr. David Ferreira, provost of Charter Oak State College, paying the upfront cost of tuition is high on the list. “Fifty-seven percent of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings account. They cannot commit to an upfront tuition cost especially if they’re living paycheck to paycheck,” he tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. Inspired by an idea outlined in Van’s book WorkforceRx: Agile and Inclusive Strategies for Employers, Educators and Workers in Unsettled Times, Ferreira and colleagues decided to turn the traditional tuition reimbursement model on its head and adopt a disbursement model instead in which employers pay the upfront cost and get reimbursed through a federal tax credit for employee tuition benefits. He calls it a ‘win-win-win’ approach. “There’s no money out of pocket for the employee, there’s no cost on the employer side because they’ll be reimbursed, and Charter Oak is going to get more students.” In working to sign-up employers as the new Charter Invest program rolls out, Ferreira is also highlighting that it will help companies with the important goals of employee retention and diversifying their workforce. Get all the details, learn about the program’s ‘all you can eat’ design, and find out how employers are reacting to the idea in this eye-opening conversation.

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Lupe Alonzo-Diaz, Physicians for a Healthy California: The Doctor Shortage Is About More Than Numbers

EP71 WorkforceRx Podcast Lupe Alonzo

Like all states, California is facing a shortage of physicians — in its case a gap of 10,500 by the end of the decade — but today’s WorkforceRx guest says the definition of shortage needs to go beyond just numbers to include their practice location and cultural diversity. “Oftentimes, we don’t have enough access to physicians in particular areas or to culturally dynamic physicians,” says Lupe Alonzo-Diaz, president and CEO of Physicians for a Healthy California. As she explains to Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, PHC tackles the issue by expanding physician training opportunities in underserved areas and by incentivizing early career physicians and dentists to accept Medicaid patients through loan forgiveness. “Those physicians come from geographically underserved communities. They also speak a second language and they’re committed to staying in those communities after they finish their service obligation.” This engaging conversation also explores addressing social determinants of health, trends in team-based care and previews a new report on how physicians who are women of color fared during the pandemic. “Women physicians of color are such a key core component to how we deliver culturally dynamic quality care and we need them to stay in their profession and continue to advance.”

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Laura Beeth, VP for Workforce Partnerships at Fairview Health Services: Tips for Reaching Untapped Labor Pools

EP70 WorkforceRx Podcast Laura Beeth

In the struggle to fill ongoing gaps in healthcare staffing, the days of waiting for people to apply for openings are over, says human resources veteran Laura Beeth. “We’re going out deeply into the communities, especially communities with high social determinants of health, and really working partnerships to help them move into healthcare careers,” says the vice president for Workforce Partnerships at Fairview Health Services, which is the second largest private employer in Minnesota. Beeth tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan that hiring officials need to start meeting people where they are at in their careers instead of passing them over if they don’t meet all of the specific qualifications. “There is space for everyone. Let’s figure out if it’s a perfect match. If not, let’s find out what they can do in our organization. That’s the kind of flexible mindset we need.” This conversation is loaded with useful strategies and insights on leveraging learn-and-earn programs, re-credentialing new Americans with healthcare backgrounds, reducing employee education costs, building employee loyalty and diversifying your workforce. Tune in for a valuable dose of hard-earned wisdom from the woman known as ‘the godmother of healthcare workforce development.’

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Jamie Merisotis, CEO of Lumina Foundation: The Robot Zombie Apocalypse is Not Coming

“We know from history that technology both creates and destroys jobs, and we don’t know what will happen this time around,” says Jamie Merisotis, author of the new book Human Work in the Age of Machines, “but I do think we should be more interested in the work that humans can do, because that is clearly something we can control by better preparing people for that human work.” That preparation needs to focus on nurturing “foundational human capabilities” that set us apart from machines – compassion, empathy, ethics and creativity to name a few. As he reveals in his book, Merisotis believes the end result can be a collaborative relationship between workers and technology. As President and CEO of Lumina Foundation, Merisotis has been a driving force in increasing access to post-secondary education not only for its economic benefits but because of the role education plays in cultivating the critical thinking essential to a functioning democratic society. Check out this revealing conversation with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan about rethinking how we can restructure education, work and benefits to better meet the challenges and opportunities upon us.

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Dr. Ashwini Davison, Director of Strategy and Transformation for the Informatics Education Program at Johns Hopkins University – Data’s Big Impact on Care and Careers

For someone interested in the interplay of technology and healthcare, the timing has always been right for Dr. Ashwini Davison. Implementation of Electronic Health Records was just starting to take off when she was an internal medicine resident at Johns Hopkins a little over a decade ago. As the adoption of EHRs and digital health applications rose, so did the potential for big data as a tool to advance medicine. Opportunities opened for her to help healthcare companies analyze data to enhance efficiency and improve patient outcomes. “My career naturally progressed to being at the cutting edge of the ‘next big thing’ whether that be clinical informatics or, subsequently, online education and precision medicine.” She’s now at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine and the School of Public Health creating learning programs and opportunities for students at the intersection of healthcare, technology, education and research. If you’ve wondered how AI, precision medicine, cloud computing and other innovations are impacting patients, you’ll want to check out this dynamic conversation with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. You’ll also learn about a collaboration between Johns Hopkins, Futuro Health and Coursera to create a new entry level path into health IT careers, how virtual reality and mobile technology is applied to healthcare, and what she describes as the “challenging, exhilarating and rewarding” experience of helping professors and students successfully manage the abrupt transition to online learning made necessary by COVID.

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Dr. Soon Joo Gog, Chief Futurist at SkillsFuture SG – Staying Ahead of the Skills Curve

“We want to empower every citizen to be able to make a decision about how they want to invest in themselves and the kind of career they want,” says Dr. Soon Joo Gog, Chief Futurist at SkillsFuture SG in Singapore’s Ministry of Education. That’s obviously an ambitious goal, but this small city-state has a reputation for pioneering new approaches to building a skills ecosystem. To achieve it, the government gives every citizen 25 years of age and older $1,000 in credits toward education and skills training. That jumps to $1,500 in credits once you reach 40. The credits belong to the person, not an employer, making them portable throughout their life. She describes SkillsFuture, where she is also Chief Skills Officer and Chief Research Officer, as a national movement that later developed into a government agency offering job skills insights for individuals, businesses, education and training partners, and policymakers. One of her most important strategies is engaging with companies considered innovative to find out how their use of technology changes worker skills over time so SkillsFuture SG can work with educators to align training programs with future labor needs. Check out this fascinating conversation with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan and one of the world’s leading workforce innovators to learn about the “trinity of partners” essential to her work, and the role smart dustbins are playing in Singapore’s high-tech, high-skill economy.

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Marsha Sampson Johnson, Diversity Advocate and Former CHRO of Southern Company: Diversity Can’t Just Be a Program

Spurred by heightened activism in 2020 against persistent racism in the U.S., many business leaders are engaged in a reckoning of their own policies, behaviors and corporate culture to determine how those might be contributing to systemic inequity and exclusion. Marsha Sampson Johnson, a leading diversity advocate and veteran corporate leader, has advice for those undertaking this work. “Diversity and inclusion can never just be a program. It can never be a department. If it is not incorporated into every aspect of the organization, it will never be successful.” Sampson Johnson, a retired senior executive from Fortune 200 energy giant Southern Company, has had an extraordinary career as an executive, mentor, writer and international speaker. In this trenchant conversation with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, she shares insights gained from decades of providing leadership in HR, Talent Management and Diversity, discusses the impact of the pandemic on women in the workforce, and touches on the value of leadership development programs such as those sponsored by the International Women’s Forum where she spent many years as a Global Director.

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