Hello, everyone, and thank you for tuning in to the Becker's Health Care podcast. My name is Mariah Muhammad. I am a writer and moderator with Becker HealthCare. I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined today by Tyler Meisenheimer, Senior Vice President of Talent Acquisition and Workforce Planning at Heartland Dental. Tyler, thank you so much for joining us today. Let's jump right into today's conversation. To get us started, can you share an overview of your role?

Yeah, absolutely. At its simplest, I lead our talent acquisition workforce planning function, as the title would imply. And really, we're essentially responsible for all the forecasting of what we need to do from a hiring standpoint and then the actual hiring and selection of the talent that ultimately staffs the company. So last year, we hired around 8,500 folks. So it's a pretty big team, pretty big model. It takes a lot to keep all that humming.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that. So the first question I really I wanted to ask you today is, can you share some key strategies that Heartland Dental employees have to attract top talent?

Absolutely. I mean, obviously, you got to be competitive on your total rewards offering. That's comp, that's all the financial stuff that folks are looking for with employment. But we're finding that with hard to source talent and a smaller pool of the talent that we're really trying to go after, that's just table stakes. Having a super competitive comp package is a must have, but it's not really the differentiator that's going to bring folks in the door and make you an employer of choice or make you have a really attractive employer value proposition. What's attractive in our value proposition, I think, really tries to speak to different phases of someone's career. That's what we like to think about it. We don't really want to go after just one niche of talent and say, Hey, we're the employer of choice for this particular group. We really want to a menu of options of how a different candidate might be attracted to Portland Dental. So think about a doctor, maybe early in their career, they're really interested in strong mentorship, best in class, continuing education. So invest a lot of time and money and energy and ensuring we provide those things better than our competitors.

Maybe mid or later in their career, they're starting to think about, they're starting families, they're looking to better work-life balance. We feel like that's one of the key pieces of our model is let us do the back office work so you can, you went to school for practice dentistry and go home at night not having to worry about accounting or payroll or some of the other stuff that you maybe learned a little bit less about in school. So I guess just to summarize that, I don't think it's good enough to have parts of your value proposition that speak to one group or another. Really, it has to be robust in a bunch of different areas. And again, the financial stuff has really just table stakes in competitive market like this.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that insight. As you know, a lot of organizations, especially throughout the year and around the holiday season, there are a lot of lay cost, but there are also a lot of hiring. How do you differentiate your recruitment approach to stand out in a competitive market?

Yeah, I think you nailed it. This is a competitive time of year, and frankly, the market seems like the competition gets a little bit higher every year. I think one thing that's unique about our approach is it's really flexible based on both the candidate's needs and the company's needs. So we almost run multiple recruitment shops within our team based on what talent we're trying to go after. So you think it's really hard to find talent like doctors or hygienists. We really have a white glove experience. They're led through the entire process by the same person. Really high touch, a lot of communication back forth between those folks on my team and the candidates. So you can almost think of that part of the model. It's almost like dealing with a headhunter or an executive recruiter. It's really niche. And then you have on some of our business-facing roles where maybe the volume is a little bit higher and the talent is a little bit less scarce. For those folks, we want to make it as simple as possible to apply on our jobs. One click wherever possible to be able to apply to our role, to be able to learn about our company and just not make it cumbersome on the candidate, make it almost more of a push versus pull experience for them, or I guess us pushing what they need to get through the process quickly and effectively, especially around the holidays.

Folks are really busy. So any friction you have in your process is going to be one area where folks might decide to drop out of your funnel, which, in scarce town, we really simply want to avoid.

Yeah, I completely, completely agree. I love how you called it a white glove experience. Making it an easier process is definitely what candidates are looking for nowadays. What initiatives or programs has Heartland Dental implemented to ensure the long term satisfaction and engagement of its workforce. Could you explain how do you create a workforce culture that really encourages employees to stay and grow?

Yeah, I think one, the value proposition has to be one that's lasting. So we sell this vision of the future to a candidate, we can't let that vision diminish over the life of their career. We can't let what brought someone here ever degrade or go down in value. So it's really important that we're constantly not just maintaining, but building on those strengths, the value proposition over time, not resting on our laurels. We're from believe it's best way to have great retention is to encourage employees to stay and want to build our cultures, to build great leaders. I know it's a cliché, but people don't leave companies, they leave bosses, and We find that to be really true. We think the best way to have an engaged workforce is to have leaders that can create that environment for them that they want to stay in. We make huge investments of both time and money into leadership development. We've had an ongoing relationship with Bell leadership out of North Carolina for over 20 years. Also recently started using Lindsay only programs and Arbinger tools to add to that toolkit. So we really take multifaceted approach to building leadership.

And you talked a little bit about the longevity piece. We think becoming a great leader is a lifelong pursuit. And we found that our folks are really attractive to constantly honing that graph and wanting to participate in this type of programs. I think if you look on the clinical side, I think maybe there's some selection bias in here, but I think we attract folks that are constantly wanting to build their business goals. Even very late in their career, they're wanting to add new procedures they might be able to do or new technology that might be in the market. For us, constantly having higher and higher levels of clinical education offerings is a huge way to keep people engaged in both growing the company, but also growing their skill set and their ability to serve their communities.

Yeah. Thank you so much for giving us that explanation. Consistency is definitely important for employees nowadays, and the ability to grow within an organization is essential. I think you said people don't leave companies, they leave managers. The next question I wanted to ask you is, what role does Harland Dental's culture play in building and maintaining a collaborative, thriving workforce?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to hone in on the collaborative piece of that question. But first and foremost, I think our culture is the key competitive advantage we have. I know a lot of folks, my companies say that. I've said that with other companies I work in, but we really need it here. It's something we take really seriously. And collaboration is one of the key tenets of our culture. And so you think about dentistry. Dentistry in the private practice world can be really lonely. It's a lot of weight on the shoulders of one doctor. You're running a small practice or even a large practice, and there's not a lot of opportunities for collaboration outside the four walls of that practice. And one of the key components of our culture is that interaction between practices, between regions, between teams that you wouldn't normally experience in dentistry in that private practice setting. So we do this through a lot of different communication vehicles. We're constantly experimenting with new ones, whether it be video, chat, text, email, et cetera, but different venues where folks can share ideas, can compare notes. But also we found a really key place where we see collaboration is in our large trainings.

I know I've been, even in a short time, harping on our We're continuing ahead a lot, but it is a backbone of our culture and that it brings people together. It's not unusual for us to have a thousand people at a leadership training from all over the company, and our hundreds of doctors participating in a continuing how to get together. I think we learned firsthand during the pandemic that being able to put people in a room together and doing so frequently, there's no substitute to that when it comes to building that collaboration in that collaborative culture. I think one of the really unique things about Heartland Dental is that you take a doctor out of a situation where they used to be competing with other doctors, and now they're in this huge community, frankly, the best dentists in America, and able to get advice and share ideas. We see that every day through our all doctor email thread where folks are, Hey, can you help me identify this implant? Or, Hey, I've got a patient in the chair, and I've got this issue that I could some help with. I think that it's just a huge piece of the culture as these doctors running and driving together, collaborating.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for giving us that information. And Speaking of the trainings that you just discussed, how does Harland Dental approach talent development and continuous learning to not only recruit top talent, but also foster ongoing growth?

Yeah, I think our company is filled with a lot of... They're already high-achieving folks by the time they get to us. But it's folks that are really motivated by continued growth and achieving milestones and these accomplishments throughout their careers. So we put together very customized tracks for providers at different phases of their career to say, Okay, here's the next things you can focus on to broaden and deepen your skill set. A lot that will be marching through these different leadership and clinical tracks. But then towards maybe the apex of someone's career, they can often step into mentorship. And we find a lot of folks get just intrinsic value out of the ability to mentor their younger peers. And so, again, I guess in a way, our continuing Ed is a big piece of how we develop talent, but also how we keep people motivated to want to grow. It's We're able to march it out in this linear fashion where folks can see these milestones, and I think it's really motivating.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for those final thoughts. I want to thank you, Tyler, for sharing your time and insights with us today, as well as Heartland Dental for sponsoring today's content. To our listeners, thank you so much for joining us, and please be sure to check out the other Becker's podcast. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and thank you again, Tyler.

Thank you.