One-Quarter Of Workers Plan To Leave: Keep Gen Z By Knowing Them

More than one quarter of workers (26%) say they say they plan to quit their job in the next 12 months, up from 19% last year, according to PwC’s latest Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey. One of the key challenges facing leaders, according to PwC: many skilled people are more reinvention-ready than their company cultures are.

Why stay in a place where there’s no room to grow or transform?

I’ve been saying that for a while. Your organization is only as resilient as the least-resilient individual in your workforce. Your most-resilient individual is only as resilient as the organization will let them be. That last part is the key: you can have resilient workers and leaders with skill and vision, but if you don’t build a culture where they can actually use that skill and vision, what’s the point?

These are some of the topics addressed by a panel of Gen Z leaders at the Healthcare in the Age of Personalization Summit. In May 2023, top healthcare leaders gathered virtually for a two-day summit to address the challenge of personalization in a field that admittedly needs a lot of standardization. Thirty-two thought-provoking speakers participated in keynotes and panel discussions covering topics such as patient centricity, consumerism in healthcare, data analysis, digital transformation, inclusive patient care systems, and population health management.

This article is the fourth of five that will share highlights from that summit. In the first article, I addressed unleashing personalization in healthcare: beyond DNA, embracing individuality. In the second article, I summarized insights from sessions addressing transformation and consumerism in healthcare. Article three focused on the need to center individuals rather than the organization.

Speaking of putting individuals at the center: this article starts off by centering Gen Z, with highlights from a conversation among four healthcare leaders under 40.

Unlocking the Next Generation’s Workforce: Insights from HR Leaders on Talent Management and Workplace Expectations

In part three of this series, I shared insights from human resources leaders about how they approach talent management in this age of disruption. To expand on that discussion, here are first-hand accounts of what the next generation wants from their workplaces and from the work itself.

Trevor Brand is chief operating officer at City of Hope Atlanta. He stressed the importance of giving people room to figure out who they are and what they can do. “We’re trying to find our place. We’re looking for an organization that sees us for who we want to be and for who we want to become.”

John Baldwin, III, is chief operating officer at TriStar Southern Hills Medical Center. He said the younger generations want specific career ladders, to have the mobility to move within an organization and the opportunity to have different experiences. “You have to be willing to create environments where failure can occur and people can still maintain their jobs, maintain their viability. In order to achieve innovation, to achieve greatness, you have to fail multiple times at things.”

Sam Boadi is chief operating officer at HCA Florida Lake City Hospital. He said leaders must have the versatility and the agility to be able to connect and work with anyone and have a genuine care for those who have a different background. “The only way leaders can do that is really being able to walk in their employee’s shoes, but also to take a deep dive to understand where they’re coming from and why they’re coming from that perspective.”

Vaughn Williams is associate administrator at Valley Health System. He said that as much as we talk about hospital metrics and how to grow and improve the organization, we also need to ask people: “How’s your day going? How are your children doing? I heard you just got this new house, how’s that going for you? As people understand that you care about them as an individual, they’re more likely to bring their full selves to work and incorporate themselves into the mission.”

Watch this short video of highlights from their session.

Unveiling the Power of Personalization in Healthcare: Stories of Transformation and the Journey Beyond Treatment

During the summit, we enjoyed an example of bringing your full self to the mission: Ed Kim, MD, gave a keynote address in which he shared a very personal story about the experience that transformed him from never wanting to be a physician to now serving as physician-in-chief and senior vice president at City of Hope Orange County, a national leader in cancer treatment. For that story, watch him in this short video here.

In addition to his own story, he also expanded the idea of personalization to include the part of the healthcare journey that comes after treatment – and even after being cured.

“Anyone who’s worried about cancer all the way to curing it, we want to make sure we can address these vulnerabilities and make sure that people feel personalized not only during their treatment, but in their recovery, in their walk back to a new normalcy,” said Dr. Kim. “We have to not only cure them of their disease and their illnesses, but get them back to a point where we support them back into society, back into their family.”

Everyone you work with has personal stories that formed them and shaped them into the person they are. Those stories don’t have to be dramatic to have influenced someone in the career they chose or in the ways that they work. As we learned from the Gen Z leaders, it’s worth the investment to be more open to each other as individuals and more intentional about trying to know each other and understand each other.

One of the biggest barriers we face is our institutions are not designed to facilitate this level of knowledge. We must learn to look for ways to allow people to be and share themselves, and you make it clear that it’s not only safe – but also beneficial – for people to share who they are and what goals they have for their own futures. This is a crucial leadership skill in our age of personalization – and that PwC research underscores why: people will leave.

The next article is the last in this series, and it will cover the role of technology in advancing personalization in healthcare.

Register here to watch the entire sessions on demand. Download an executive summary of the summit, to gain access to a roadmap for operationalizing inclusion in healthcare.