UPMC: Care and Culture Starts and Ends With People: Executive Workforce Demographics (Practices)

In 2016, John L. Galley, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resource Officer, and Dr. James E. Taylor, Chief Diversity, Inclusion, and Talent Management Officer, intentionally launched a two-pronged strategy of external recruitment and internal development that became the foundation of this initiative and was designed to ensure that UPMC’s executive workforce is reflective of the communities it serves.

Although UPMC’s US healthcare workforce is about 75% women, the company’s C-suite was about 62% men in 2016. This body of work has resulted in a 19% increase in women in executive roles and a 96% increase in people of color in executive roles.

Three years after the launch, the Pittsburgh Inequality Across Gender and Race report revealed significant inequities and barriers for Black residents, particularly Black women, in the communities UPMC serves. The company redoubled its efforts to advance women from marginalized races and ethnicities. UPMC set a goal to increase the executive workforce to align more closely with labor market data.

Since the start of the initiative, opportunities for women, including women of color, at UPMC have greatly expanded, most profoundly since 2020.

UPMC’s Center for Engagement and Inclusion is the administrative hub for this initiative, working closely with Human Resources and operational leaders. Entities throughout UPMC serve as an extension of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda, leading to a distributed body of work with system accountability. Governing oversight is achieved in part by the UPMC Board of Directors Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Highlights of UPMC’s initiative:

• Many senior leaders, including but not limited to CEO Leslie Davis, as well as Executive Vice President and President of the Insurance Services Division Diane Holder, are role models for DEI across the organization. UPMC wants to reflect the diversity of the communities that it serves, and DEI is seamlessly and consistently integrated into UPMC’s culture.
• UPMC’s workforce practices aid in employee engagement and advancement. Examples include executive scorecards, talent review calibrations, a Diversity Leadership Mentoring Program in which people of color receive sponsorship from senior leaders, and various development forums for leadership and staff.
• DEI work is included in the Values and Culture component of employee evaluations, which makes up more than 50% of performance reviews. Compensation is tied directly to performance, including ‘how’ something is done, noting “how we work is as important as what we do.”
• Efforts are made to improve inclusion and opportunities for frontline workers. For example, nurses are offered lateral opportunities to expand their skillsets, such as being trained in technology to become clinical analysts. UPMC has reevaluated and altered its hiring criteria for these roles to include a wider variety of backgrounds.
• UPMC’s employee resource groups (ERGs) participate in recruitment events, school outreach, and large-scale conferences, helping to attract external talent. They aid in promoting internal development opportunities for employees.
• The company utilizes employee-led Diversity Councils that work at the business-unit level to implement DEI plans.
• The company regularly deploys an employee survey to assess inclusion within the organization. The surveys are used to gauge the success of DEI initiatives and identify where inclusion efforts can still be improved. Employee Experience Committees also survey the needs of employees, make recommendations to leadership, and instate broad strategies to improve DEI culture.

From 2016 to 2021, executive women’s overall representation increased from 38% to 45.5% (7.5 percentage points). Executive women of color’s representation increased 0.9% to 5.1% (4.1 percentage points). Women of color also saw increases in Band 1 (Executive VP through VP, 4 percentage points, 3.8% to 7.8%) and Band 2 (Unit Chief through Director, 3.1 percentage points, 6.7% to 9.8%).

About UPMC
A $24 billion health care provider and insurer, Pittsburgh-based UPMC is inventing new models of patient-centered, cost-effective, accountable care. The largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania, UPMC integrates 92,000 employees, 40 hospitals, 800 doctors’ offices and outpatient sites, and a more than 4-million-member Insurance Services Division, the largest medical insurer in western Pennsylvania. In the most recent fiscal year, UPMC contributed $1.7 billion in benefits to its communities. Working in close collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences UPMC shares its clinical, managerial, and technological skills worldwide through its innovation and commercialization arm, UPMC Enterprises, and through UPMC International. U.S. News consistently ranks UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside among the nation’s best hospitals in many specialties and ranks UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh on its Honor Roll of America’s Best Children’s Hospitals. For more information, go to UPMC.com.

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