Overview
Our vision is to become the best place to work in healthcare. In recent years, we have put additional focus on improving the lives of caregivers in health and wellness, professional development, burnout reduction and workforce diversity.
Support Programs
Our Caring for Caregivers team offers confidential services that preserve, restore and enhance the well-being of our caregivers. Through our health and assistance programs, we provide services such as:
- Assessments.
- In-person and virtual counseling and coaching for caregivers and household dependents.
- Education and training.
- Critical incident response and referrals.
Our well-being resources and referrals include online articles and seminars, a savings center, family dependent care search, legal consultation and financial counseling. The Caring for Caregivers team scheduled more than 9,000 counseling sessions throughout 2022.
For more information about the well-being programs and resources available to caregivers, visit the Workplace Well-being section.
Professional Development
Cleveland Clinic’s caregivers need the organization’s support to thrive, innovate and live our values with integrity.
We offer tailored learning opportunities including self-paced online classes, live instructor-led sessions and in-person educational opportunities, in addition to programming on specific roles, aspirations, challenges and caregiver needs.
Caregivers can join the online Career Journeys community to interact with colleagues exploring different career paths, sign up for LinkedIn Learning (free of charge), find a mentor or sign up for coaching services for support with achieving their professional goals. Our Mentor Resource Center had 524 members in 2022, a 60% increase from 2021.
In 2022, we launched our Loan Repayment Program (formerly Nursing Loan Repayment Program), which will soon expand to include caregivers in surgical technologist roles. Through 2022, 1,432 caregivers have enrolled, with Cleveland Clinic contributing more than $4 million to the program to help eligible caregivers pay back their student loans. Loan repayment helps caregivers navigate the complexities of debt repayment, reduces associated stress, encourages future caregivers to consider nursing as a profession and helps close gender and racial wealth gaps.
Workforce Flexibility
The healthcare industry is facing a crisis of burnout. We are taking steps to alleviate and distribute the workload for our caregivers.
Workforce planning
Cleveland Clinic’s Strategic Workforce Planning team works across the organization to address workforce supply gaps in nursing, respiratory and pharmacy (with more specialties to follow).
One example of this team’s recent work is the Medical Assistant role, which had a limited talent pipeline. The team identified many tasks could be performed by individuals with less training, which resulted in reduced time to fill positions and reduced overtime for caregivers by 31%. Through 2022, we have welcomed more than 100 new caregivers into these revised roles.
Flexible work models
Cleveland Clinic has increased efforts to support a mix of remote, hybrid and onsite work models to provide additional flexibility and better work life balance. Prior to March 2020, 3% of our workforce was remote. In 2022, we increased our remote and hybrid caregivers by 30%, with 14% of caregivers working fully remote or in a hybrid role.
Cleveland Clinic nursing leaders also created the Nursing Workforce Flexibility Taskforce, which evaluated flexibility initiatives across the enterprise and recommended options for nursing caregivers. The group created a flexible workforce resource guide for leaders with scheduling options, as well as guidelines for selecting options and conducting unit and caregiver needs assessments.
“I love my 12s so far,” says Melissa Buser, RN, a surgery nurse at Cleveland Clinic Medina Hospital who switched to 12-hour operating room team flexible shifts in 2022 and is going to school to earn her BSN. “I can make appointments and plan things in advance. I have more time for homework and spending time with family.”
Workforce Diversity
Cleveland Clinic values a culture where caregivers integrate diversity and inclusion throughout the organization. As a result of our commitment, DiversityInc. recognized Cleveland Clinic as one of America’s top hospital systems for diversity in 2022, noting strong employee-resource groups, and Forbes named Cleveland Clinic among top employers on the Forbes 2023 America’s Best Employers for Diversity list.
Cleveland Clinic is a strategic partner of OneTen, a coalition to train, hire and promote one million Black Americans in ten years into family-sustaining jobs (earning a minimum of $46,000/year). In 2022, we hired and promoted over 1,000 caregivers into OneTen-eligible jobs.
We also developed two apprenticeship programs in Pharmacy and IT, with more to follow. These “learn and earn” programs offer on-the-job experience leading to a meaningful, fulfilling career and promote career mobility in underserved communities. In 2022, 41 apprentices graduated from these programs.
