Exclusive: Texas Children’s Hospital expands L&D offerings with BetterUp partnership

HR professionals have long wrestled with how best to train employees for leadership positions. In 2015, 39% said “developing the next generation of organizational leaders” would be their biggest human capital challenge over the next decade, according to SHRM.

Texas Children’s Hospital, headquartered in Houston, has invested in leadership development for 20 years, but its employees’ needs shifted during the pandemic, according to EVP and CHRO Linda Aldred.

“Trying to develop leaders, it no longer feels like one size fits all, and we don’t think it should anymore,” Aldred said. Her team, which oversees HR operations at the largest children’s hospital in the US, started exploring ways to make their leadership development offerings more scalable and flexible, in the interest of responding to individual employees’ needs.

The result is a partnership with BetterUp, a virtual platform offering coaching and mental health resources. Aldred spoke exclusively with HR Brew about the investment.

Boosting leadership investments. Texas Children’s employs more than 16,000 workers, 1,200 of whom are leaders, meaning they oversee a team of people, Aldred said.

Since 2003, the hospital has offered learning and development (L&D) through a curriculum called “catalyst leadership,” including a transition program for employees who are taking on new leadership roles, and talent review processes focused on helping workers identify their next career move.

Under the new partnership, which was announced on Oct. 4, Texas Children’s 1,200 leaders will also have access to coaching through the BetterUp platform. The hope is that the platform will deliver training that aligns better with leaders’ schedules, as well as their specific needs, Aldred told HR Brew.

“They have the scalability and flexibility for a 24-hour operation,” Aldred said of BetterUp. Whereas Texas Children’s may have previously scheduled leadership training to take place in a classroom, before or after a night shift, now “they can do it on their own,” with employees selecting times that work best for them.

Aldred said she envisions employees tapping into leadership coaching, as well as lifestyle resources through the partnership. They might seek out a coach who can help them prepare for a big presentation at work, while also seeking guidance on sleep or nutrition, for example.

While Aldred didn’t disclose the size of the new investment, she said Texas Children’s makes a “substantial investment” in its leaders each year, and hopes this one will have a bigger impact than traditional training.

Addressing HR healthcare challenges. The healthcare industry faces acute HR-related challenges today, due to factors like staffing shortages and overwork. A study published earlier this year in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found around one-half of US healthcare workers have reported burnout in the wake of Covid-19, with particularly high rates among nurses (56%) and clinical staff (54%). Some 29% said they intended to leave their jobs.

Aldred said Texas Children’s saw turnover rates tick up during the pandemic, though apparently not as high as the industry average, which was around 20% in 2022.

For Aldred’s team, “retention is our number one recruitment strategy,” and leaders can play a major role in an employee’s decision to leave or stick with a company. She said investing more in leadership training may have a ripple effect of boosting engagement and retention across the organization.

“Your leader sets the tone for what happens in your unit. Your leader is the guide for your own career development,” she said. “So, we feel a lot of responsibility to actually give back to those leaders to make them feel as strong as they possibly can.”