At ThedaCare, our 7,000 team members are the heart of our mission to improve the health and well-being of our communities and to empower all to live their unique best lives. To achieve our mission, our system is dedicated to reinventing health care, attracting and retaining the best team to build a culture of engagement, ownership and learning.
As such, ThedaCare developed our ThedaCare Human Capital Strategy to address the changing needs of team members and the organization in light of our mission, vision and today’s challenging environment.
The ThedaCare Human Capital Strategy outlines all aspects that affect our team members before hire and throughout their journey as a special member of the ThedaCare team. The Human Capital Strategic Plan is aligned with our ThedaCare Strategic Plan and our Population Health initiatives. It aligns and positions our people resources to realize our mission, vision and goals.
These investments include:
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Providing a work culture that encourages engagement and “ownership”.
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Developing learning opportunities to enhance skills including leadership.
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Attracting and retaining the best talent.
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Re-designing our workforce to work at the top of their license.
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Investing in high performing teams and offering competitive wages, especially in this highly competitive environment.
Investing in our Team
Our Human Capital Strategy encompasses and prioritizes our team members and calls for investing in our team to build our future together. It includes offering competitive wages aligned with the market and competitive benefits aligned with our Population Health strategy, especially in this highly competitive market. Through ThedaCare’s Human Capital Strategy, we invested $59 million annualized in 2022 in our team to build our future together.
A competitive market analysis was conducted that covered both local and national comparisons, and included more than 300 positions, which reflects approximately 60-65% of our workforce. The compensation team, which included operational leadership, nursing leadership and our compensation partners, reviewed a myriad of data. The analysis of the remaining 35-40% of roles will continue in 2023.
We are committed to all team members and ensuring a thorough review of salaries. We invoked a stepped-based approach to ensure financial viability to serve our community. Once market adjustments are provided in 2022 and 2023, going forward, we will routinely review the market to remain competitive. To maintain internal equity with our wages and so not to erode the progress we have made, we will develop a structured process for future wage reviews. Our goal is to create a preferred workplace in our communities.
The next element of the strategy included Merit Pay and Performance-Plus Pay. In 2022, nearly all our ThedaCare team members were eligible for 2021 performance pay, with minor exceptions. Performance plus is awarded to the top 15% of our performers, as decided by his/her leader and based on outcomes/evidence.
Developing Opportunities to Enhance Leadership Skills
At ThedaCare, we aim to enhance value, engagement and fulfillment by how we interact with each other. We want all team members to feel valued in our work, every day. While we understand pay is important, value and reasons for being invested in our ThedaCare team come in many ways.
Attracting and retaining the best talent to deliver on our mission and empowering a highly engaged workforce requires building a culture of leadership and team member experience, creating opportunities for team member input and decision making on how to reinvent our work to be more efficient and optimize technology. We must also adjust the way we do our work so team members are working at the top of their license or skillset.
The Human Capital Strategy includes supporting the development of team members. Examples of development opportunities include providing sessions for leaders to learn more about building a healthy culture, advancing problem-solving skills, and developing leadership effectiveness.
Benefits
Several enhancements that align with our vision were made in the benefits package offered to team members. It is another commitment ThedaCare is making to empower our team members and families to improve health and well-being and live their unique, best life. If team members are fully optimized, they are going to be able to help our patients and communities do that as well.
Some of the enhanced benefits include:
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$0 Copays. As part of our Population Health strategy, we helped remove barriers to routine, preventive and illness health care by implementing a $0 copay for those covered by our health plan who visit a ThedaCare primary care provider, and who meet requirements. The focus is to enhance easy access to high-quality health care that aligns with each person’s goals and needs and help avoid the need for urgent care or unnecessary Emergency Department visits.
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Team Member Cost Sharing. To ensure team members have access to affordable health care tailored to their well-being needs, ThedaCare revised team member cost sharing based on annual base salary in 2021 and continued that practice in 2022 where our full-time lowest wage earners pay the lowest amount for their health insurance. With the addition of a new tier for team members and their dependents, we strengthened our commitment to providing the best opportunity for all team members and their families to participate in our health plan and have their health needs addressed in the best way possible.
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Better U Through Ripple by ThedaCare. Team members can reap both physical and financial rewards from a commitment to living a healthy life focused on prediction and prevention. Through our Better U program, team members can participate in education and personalized health tasks to earn premium reductions, cash rewards at year-end or points/rewards for gifts and continued $0 copay in 2023 to support the journey of wellness.
Investing in our employees’ own health and well-being as part of our Human Capital Strategy is supported by partnering with team members to live well by offering benefit enhancements that align with our Population Health focus and make health care easier and more affordable.
There are several elements to engage in team members’ own health, including:
- “ThedaCare first” – seeing a ThedaCare or ACO primary care provider. We are the highest-quality, lowest-cost provider.
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Fill prescriptions at a ThedaCare pharmacy.
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Seek appropriate care. Reduce unnecessary Emergency Department visits.
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Encourage completing a comprehensive wellness visit. Early detection leads to the best outcomes, quality of life and reduced costs.
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Support preventive screenings, such as colonoscopies, mammograms and other recommended screenings.
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Providing tobacco cessation programs which are available at no cost to team members on our plan.
ThedaCare is always striving for ways to provide team members with information and choices as we partner to improve health and well-being and help each person live their unique, best life. All team members at ThedaCare are important to our mission. It is through their compassion and expertise that we improve the health and well-being of the communities we serve.