Talent Development

Overview

Cleveland Clinic is a place of life-long learning, and we want to help our caregivers grow and achieve their full potential. By investing in the professional development of our caregivers, we find better ways to care for patients and fellow caregivers. To this end, we offer an extensive suite of learning and development resources through our Mandel Global Leadership and Learning Institute (GLLI), which is staffed by experts dedicated to crafting, delivering and supporting the continuous development of our caregivers. Offerings provided by GLLI include:

• New caregiver experience and onboarding.
• New leader and executive onboarding.
• Talent and performance management.
• Assessments.
• Coaching.
• Facilitation and retreats.
• Leadership and team consulting.
• Social collaboration communities and resources.

We work to ensure accessibility, inclusivity and diversity in our talent development programs. For example, we design and develop all digital content and events to align with accessibility standards and guidelines. We also develop programs with options for virtual and in-person participation to reach wired and non-wired caregivers. Nomination-based programs include cohorts that represent our organization and caregiver demographic make-up in an accurate, fair and inclusive way.

• Learn more about our efforts to hire and develop diverse talent, and our training and education programs to promote inclusion and allyship.

Development Resources

Cleveland Clinic is an organization of more than 81,000 caregivers, and the majority of them practice in clinical settings supporting patient care. To achieve our vision to be the best place to receive care and the best place to work in healthcare, we must tap into the talent and expertise of all our caregivers and caregiver teams. We do this in multiple ways, including:

• Direct Caregiver Development: When we implement large-scale learning initiatives across the enterprise, we look to our leaders to act as facilitators and teachers. For example, in the roll-out of an enterprise-wide learning program on the characteristics of a High Reliability Organization, we first trained organizational leaders. After leaders complete the program—which includes eLearnings and skills practice—we also train them to facilitate the skills practice portion of the program with their teams. When it is time for all caregivers to complete the program, we send a targeted email campaign to remind and support leaders in their facilitation. By leveraging our line-level leaders, it was possible to train over 77,000 caregivers on this important initiative within a six-month period.
  
  
• Mentoring Resource Center: By joining our Mentoring Resource Center, caregivers can request mentors and leaders can volunteer to mentor caregivers across the enterprise to share their experiences and expertise. Caregiver-to-caregiver mentoring also occurs within the Mentoring Resource Center.
• On-demand learning solutions and skill maps: These include short videos, learning competitions, articles and speaker series that caregivers can access both at work and at home, reducing time away from day-to-day work.
  
  
• Self-directed career learning journeys: Career learning journeys provide our caregivers with asynchronous learning paths that they can access both at work and at home when they have time. These journeys can be used by caregivers to enrich their role, learn more about lateral opportunities, explore other career options and seek out promotional advancement.
• Targeted, career development webinars: Through these short, informational webinars, we share opportunities available to both clinical and non-clinical caregivers at Cleveland Clinic. To improve accessibility and attendance, we host these sessions during times that caregivers are more likely to be able to step away from their regular duties. Areas with large volumes of caregivers have experienced higher engagement following these sessions, as well as increased use of development tools and resources within our collaboration spaces.
• Virtual instructor-led training courses: Our virtual instructor-led training courses are 75- to 90-minute interactive virtual experiences open to all caregivers with a variety of development topics, included but not limited to: communication, feedback, best practices for working remotely, mindfulness and more. These virtual, shortened courses reduce the amount of time needed to travel, cutting back on the time needed to participate.

The major focus of all our development tools and resources is to create simple, interactive and short educational materials to allow our busy caregivers to take the time they need and deserve to learn and grow. These short opportunities allow caregivers to learn at their own pace and encourage ongoing growth, whether to move within the same team, laterally or outside of their current role.

All instructor-led training, virtual instructor-led training, self-guided learning modules and compliance courses are tracked in our Learning Management System, MyLearning. The average hours of training per caregiver for 2022 are as follows:

Caregivers that identify as female had a higher average number of training hours because caregivers in nursing roles have more required training, and in 2022, 89% of Cleveland Clinic nurses identified as female.

Learning Culture

We have seamlessly integrated best practices to create and maintain a culture of learning, performance and engagement for our caregivers throughout their employment. We are continuously making strides not only to address widespread burnout, exhaustion and stress that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, but also to provide the value proposition for continued learning and development in the spirit of driving a learning culture. These efforts exist to make working at Cleveland Clinic an exceptional experience. The following are examples that we feel contribute to our learning culture in action:

Cleveland Clinic Essentials Learning: In 2021 and 2022, we evaluated the importance of creating annual required learning that applies to all caregivers—both clinical and non-clinical—across skill sets. After a thorough analysis to establish the appropriate guidelines and scope, we focused education on our Cleveland Clinic Values and Leader Behaviors. This learning is in addition to compliance education and provides expectations for how caregivers treat one another at Cleveland Clinic. In addition to our Learning Management System tracking, we ask caregivers and leaders to self-attest to completing Essentials Learning. Participation in and accountability for this program is connected to caregivers’ Annual Performance Review each year. Starting in 2023, we deliver these topics areas via a three-pronged approach:

• Caregiver Essentials: All caregivers are required to complete annual education on Cleveland Clinic’s values. This content is dynamic and updated on an annual basis to reflect key leader messaging and social environment updates, and to ensure that all caregivers understand expectations on living our values each day. Modalities include eLearning, email campaigns and video/blog content.

• Leader Essentials: We require our 4,000+ leaders to complete development connected to their unique needs as managers of others. This requirement is in addition to Caregiver Essentials and stipulates that leaders engage in eight hours of development annually that best suit their needs. We offer a range of classes and self-paced content that is aligned with our Leader Behaviors.
• New Leader Onboarding: We also provide required learning pathways for two categories of new leaders. This curriculum is focused on our Leader Behaviors, as well as content, resources and support that we have identified as essential to this audience.

Online Collaboration: We could not instill a learning culture without the use of online collaboration tools. Caregivers and leaders collaborate across our global locations on learning and development topics to advance the mission and vision of Cleveland Clinic. Private communities of practice and open access pages enable caregivers to engage on a variety of topics, tools and resources to support overall development. We leverage the following technology platforms:

• Connect Today: This platform empowers caregivers to share resources, collaborate, comment on content, build and maintain communities of practice and highlight expertise.
• Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams allows caregivers to work collaboratively on documents, meet virtually, screen share and actively connect in a virtual environment.

Leaders As Teachers 2.0: We have expanded our Leaders as Teachers program to 1) invite Cleveland Clinic leaders to be featured as guest speakers for our learning experiences via interview, presentation or video, and 2) provide a holistic development program for leaders across the organization who show interest in facilitating a Mandel GLLI learning experience or improving their own presentation skills. The goals of the expanded program are to develop our leaders and leverage their expertise in delivering and endorsing learning content, and engage all caregivers through meaningful content, stories and experiences shared by our leaders.

Engagement surveys and action planning: We engage all caregivers in a bi-annual engagement survey. The goal of this survey is to help us understand what we are doing well and where we can improve the caregiver experience—with development and learning being a key area of interest. We also administer a pulse survey—a modified and shorter version of the engagement survey—every other year. It focuses on topics such as quality, safety and development. We use the results of both the engagement and pulse surveys to develop action plans. Individual teams also develop tailored action plans with their leaders based on their results to improve and sustain caregiver engagement in their areas.

Feedback and Performance

Feedback is an important component of our caregivers’ development. Leaders support the creation of their caregivers’ development goals during the annual performance review process with their teams. This formally occurs for caregivers twice a year during their ‘check-in’ conversations, and we encourage leaders to support their caregivers in finding opportunities to grow or move into other opportunities to advance within the organization. We document caregivers’ career development goals in our HR system as a formal part of the review process. We also track all development resources completed by caregivers through our learning management system, which managers can view as they support their team’s ongoing development goals.

Check-in conversations

Check-in conversations provide time and space for caregivers and managers to discuss what is going well, discuss barriers, exchange feedback, develop strong working relationships and ensure that caregivers are making progress toward goals. Managers also discuss professional development with their direct reports during check-in conversations. In 2022, 87% of caregivers completed a check-in conversation with their manager.

Annual Performance Review

Annual Performance Reviews (APRs) are required and provide managers and caregivers the opportunity to:

• Formally review job performance over the past year.
• Establish performance expectations, goals and development opportunities.
• Facilitate ongoing coaching discussions.

APRs are a collaborative process during which caregivers and their managers discuss progress toward goals (OKRs) and behaviors reflecting Cleveland Clinic’s Values. During the APR, caregivers can complete a self-assessment of their performance before the manager completes their assessment. The caregiver and manager then meet to discuss the review. To help ensure meaningful dialogue, an option called ‘Get Feedback’ allows a manager to ask anyone else in the organization for feedback on their direct reports to use as part of their overall review or check-in conversation.

In 2022, caregivers had more than a 99% APR completion rate across gender (female and male), race/ethnicity (19 identities), generations (Silent Generation-Generation Z) and managerial level (managers and non-managers).

In the unfortunate event that a caregiver needs outplacement services, we also provide transition assistance to support caregivers with continued employability via Career Curves.

• Career Curves: As part of our outplacement severance policy, we provide outplacement services for position eliminations. We work with Career Curves to provide transition support services such as career planning, identifying skills and abilities, resume writing, interview preparation, retirement planning, networking and more. These services are tailored to the level of the position.

Tuition Reimbursement

Encouraging our caregivers’ professional development and career growth enables us to attract and retain top talent, and provide the best care for our patients. Through our tuition reimbursement program, caregivers can receive financial aid toward the completion of undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as other benefits, such as tuition discounts and waived application fees. To be eligible for tuition reimbursement, caregivers must have at least one year of tenure at Cleveland Clinic. Through the program, caregivers receive reimbursement at the end of each semester contingent upon completing their approved coursework.

In 2022, over 2,338 caregivers participated in the program and received $8.1 million in reimbursements.

2022 Annual Maximum Cap Allowance

Cleveland Clinic collaborates with EdAssist™ to schedule and facilitate onsite and online college fairs, and to process tuition reimbursement requests.