Truman Medical Centers (TMC)

Need:

In 1999, Kansas City's Truman Medical Centers (TMC) realized that it had a serious employee retention problem. Turnover stood at more than 30 percent for the entire organization and was as high as 67 percent in some areas. TMC's difficulty in hiring good people, and retaining them for the long term, had the potential to affect the organization's business performance, to undermine its community reputation, and, most importantly, to threaten its ability to provide consistent patient care.

Solution:

TMC worked with DDI to identify the competencies associated with job success and to implement the Targeted Selection® behavior-based interviewing system to select the right people for the right jobs—increasing the likelihood that employees would stay in the those jobs longer. TMC management met with and attained the support of its frontline managers. With this support solidified, DDI certified nine TMC managers, associates, and HR staff members to deliver the Targeted Selection® training. There are now 200 trained hiring managers using Targeted Selection®.

Results:

The new selection process began to produce results almost immediately. Within the first year, there was a significant decline in the turnover rate and by 2003 turnover had dropped 46 percent, with some departments' annual turnover rate dropping to zero. TMC also has become an "employer of choice for choice employees," and is attracting a growing number of applicants from among the highly recruited graduates of the region's nursing schools.