Innovative Healthcare Workforce Strategies with MJ Ryan

Work Forces

MJ Ryan is Vice President for Workforce Development and Economic Opportunity at Mass General Brigham, the largest health care system in Massachusetts. She shares her transformative journey from a direct healthcare role to a pioneering position in workforce development. The discussion explores how MJ’s innovative strategies and collaborative, cross-organizational efforts have helped to build a nationally recognized workforce development model. Through partnerships and a commitment to continuous learning, MJ and her team tackle workforce challenges, developing scalable solutions to address workforce challenges.

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Transcript:

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin Lemoine: And I'm Kaitlin Lemoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin: Let's dive in.

Julian: Today we're joined by MJ Ryan, Vice President for Workforce Development and Economic Opportunity for Mass General Brigham. MJ leads a system-wide team addressing high demand roles across the largest private sector employer in Massachusetts. Her team fosters collaborations with key partners and stakeholders involved in skill development and job readiness training for community residents, ranging from youth to adults, and career advancement opportunities for Mass General Brigham's incumbent workforce. MJ has co-chaired the Boston Health Care Careers Consortium since its inception in 2009. She was a member of the Massachusetts Health Care Collaborative, where she co-chaired the Direct Care Workforce Subcommittee. She sits on the Mass Hire Boston Council, the JVS Boston Advisory Council, and is a former member of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. MJ Helped to launch and provide technical assistance for the CareerStat Healthcare Workforce Academy, an initiative of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions to help develop healthcare workforce development leaders and teams. And she's also worked with Business Leaders United to advocate for legislative support for national workforce development funding and system change. On a personal note, Kaitlin and I have both had the opportunity to partner with MJ over the years. She is truly a leader in workforce development and sets a model for employer best practice and workforce development. MJ, we are just thrilled to be able to speak with you today.

MJ Ryan: Thank you, Julian. And thank you, Kaitlin. It's so nice to see you again. It always feels like a home week to get back together. And also congratulations on your podcast and all the work you're doing.

Kaitlin: Thank you so much. We appreciate it. And thanks so much for joining us today. It is always so nice to be able to get together. To kick us off, can you tell us a bit about how you got into workforce development and the story of what you developed at Partners Healthcare and now at Mass General Brigham?

MJ: It's quite accidental that I find myself here, complete accident and just necessity. So back in the early 2000s, 2001, I was a director of imaging services at one of our hospitals, one of the Partners hospitals, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and we found ourselves in a big systemwide dilemma of a rad tech shortage. And it wasn't just, it was radiology techs, it was ultrasound techs, it was MRI, CT, all of the techs. We were having a hard time keeping up with patient volume and staffing our departments. And we had to do something pretty desperate to try to fix that. The school's capacity was fairly low. And long story short is we decided as a group of leaders across the system that we would start a loan forgiveness program or a rad tech scholarship program and then try to get people interested in the field. We're able to get a Department of Labor grant that went through the Boston Private Industry Council to help dislocated workers, Boston residents, to get training and into jobs, as well as we could use it for helping incumbents who were able to raise their income and their professional status. So we went after that grant. We also had some internal funding. But then the reality was a group of volunteer radiology administrators wasn't going to make this happen because we realized quickly how much work it is. And so somebody asked me if I would write a job description and we would hire somebody. So I wrote the job description and then they said, well, why wouldn't you just do it? And I said, because I have a day job and why would I do this temporary job? And I don't know anything about it. But neither did anybody else. And I picked the straw apparently, and I was promised that if I did this for a couple of years and we got us out of this mess, you know, I'd always have my job back, which of course never really happened because this just grew. And so, again, the accident. So we ended up after a few years of learning the hard way, because I had no clue what I was doing. They decided the position report through human resources and through radiology, which was interesting. Human resources' response was “don't get in my way, we won't get in your way”. I didn't have an office. I was driving around in an old Volvo with all this paperwork in the back trying to get people to be rad techs. So thankfully I met, that is how I was forced into meeting a lot of people in the workforce development system because I needed to do reporting and work with Karen Shack, Rebekah Lashman, and others from the Boston Private Industry Council, and Neil Sullivan. And so they kind of adopted me and let me hang around in their office. And I learned so much there because at least I had my people. And that's how it worked out. I worked with them. They helped me figure it out. We had a senior advisor, Harriet Tolpin, my good friend and mentor still, who helped drive the work from the MGB side, as well as the radiology folks driving it. So it was a big collaboration of people driving work that HR wasn't sure we actually needed. So it was interesting. But, long story short, within three years we saved $6.6 million in traveler [temporary staff] costs. We reduced our demand to almost nothing. We had about 200, 250 new imaging techs in the system, and I guess they would consider it a success, but I successfully pretty much worked myself out of the need for a job. Though that wasn't the case because it worked so well, we had other places with high demand coming to us and saying, okay, what about medical coding? We need that. We did a little bit of work with them, and then all the different hospitals had different needs and then we like kind of repurposed the loan forgiveness program and they could use it for their high demand areas. So I kept advising, again, accidentally as time went on I was advising on some of our community programs and working as a group with with community health as well as HR and radiology and at one point, the director of the community programs moved on to a position in New York, and suddenly I found myself overseeing the community workforce development work as well. And again, just learning over the years, mostly from community-based organizations and partners that I worked with. They were very welcoming and they were very kind to me and taught me the ropes. And then most recently, you know, I would counter, I would be coordinating with the local hospital workforce development units and departments. And I was basically central, helping with some of the most centralized programs. And then as we continue to make this, make Partners transition into Mass General Brigham, which is a more consolidated system, I'd say in 2019, 2020, we united all of the workforce development efforts into one central area, which I now oversee. And some of their team members came under the Central Workforce Development Group and their budgets came and we just grew it as a central service. Still trying to respect what is needed locally, but trying to scale things more system-wise.

Julian: So interesting to hear how you described your kind of learning and your peeps being the workforce system people. I know you from very early on in this process and didn't realize how much of that was happening because I was sort of more from the other side of the table where it looked like you were teaching them. But, hey.

MJ: I knew though I knew the health care part right because I was a leader in a clinical area. So that was a really, I can't underestimate the importance of that. That was important, not because it was me, but the idea to pick somebody from that knew the subject, at least in that small area. But then I really get out of my depth. I mean, I'm out of my depth every day now because I was a nuclear medicine tech and I knew what we needed, but now it does transfer and you do realize that bottom line is once you get the right subject matters, experts at the table, you can work with people and figure out who are the right schools and who are the right partners. And I think the most important thing is how do you get the money? How do you work with state and city and local leaders and national leaders and funders to get things done? And I learned that trial by fire with the radiology stuff and it did just transfer. But yeah, the people that I think that I communicate most directly with and understand the work best are external partners and our CBO leaders. We have such a tight system in Boston, especially since we created the Consortium, that what used to be our competitors and I would consider our really unique system in Boston because what you know typically my friend Joanne Pokaski who leads the...who's the vice president of Workforce Development for BIDMC, would normally be our competitor and the enemy, you know, but she's my on speed dial and I'm on speed dial for her. And we work with Kristin Driscoll from Boston, from Boston Children's Hospital. We work with colleagues from Boston Medical Center. So the people that at one point we will be, you know, hiding and trying to grab our staff and come up with an idea that they can't come up with, we just figure out if there's a bigger pool, we can all, you know, benefit. So we all work very closely together, which is very interesting. I probably work more closely externally than I do internally.

Julian: Yeah, that notion of partnership is really powerful, both with the other employers and with the workforce, the workforce partners. MJ, talk a little bit about the problems that you're looking to solve in your current work.

MJ: So, typical, I don't think there'd be any surprise in that health care has severe shortages, especially since COVID. So, we're trying to fill high demand roles. We're trying to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels. So employing Deb Perkul from, formerly from The Democracy Collaborative and now the Healthcare Anchor Network, would always say outside in, inside out. That's really the strategy that we're trying to follow. And we do believe that healthy communities are built on healthier economies and offering the people in our service areas the opportunity to enter and advance in a healthcare career, especially in Boston. We're the largest employer in Massachusetts, largest private employer, and we do have good jobs. They're not all great, but they're good. And the good ones can turn into great ones with the right coaching and the right work. So that's what our goal is. On the HR side, fill the jobs. But on the humanities side, help the people fill the jobs.

Kaitlin; Mass General Program is so focused and committed to these innovative workforce development efforts and among other initiatives, your work, as you said, is so focused on increasing access to higher ed and career advancement for current employees through digital learning, coaching and flexible options. So what are some of the successes and challenges that you've experienced in your work implementing these initiatives? Cause I feel like it's one thing to talk at a high level and it's a whole other thing when we get into the details.

MJ: Any start is the challenge. Any idea has 100 naysayers. So I think it was, you know, I mentioned the success we had with the rad tech program and the medical imaging scholarship, but that didn't just jump off the shelf as a good idea. I mean, when we told, you know, radiology managers that we were gonna, you know, train the housekeepers to beard techs, it wasn't always popular, but in fact you can. And so I think it's the challenge of, you wanna try something new, and you have to convince somebody that it will work. And the best way to do that for us has been through other people's money. And so that also worked that, you know, you mentioned our College for America partnership. That was fabulous. But initially, when we took the idea of College for America to Harvard, blue blood, you know, Prudential Center tower and said, this is what we're going to do. And they're like, what is that? That's not even a college. We're not…That's ridiculous and all of that. But at the end of the day, bringing in the right people who people can trust, so we brought in Kate and others from College of America who could actually, you know, speak the right language they were. You know, she was the head of the academic piece and, you know, a lawyer, she could speak-the-speak. So, you know, she could talk to the right people and convince them that it wasn't just, you know, a crazy idea that it's possible. And then from there, you know we continued to build it and we had hundreds of people get degrees and certificates from that program so that was great. Over the years, because I've been here so long, I've got a really strong relationship with funders, with colleges, with other organizations, Project HOPE, the people that are in the neighborhoods with the people we want to serve. So I think that building those and then finding the right people to copy, like Kelly Aiken, you know, when I was a member of CareerStat, well we still are members of CareerSTAT through the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, Kelly knows everybody, knows everything. So it's always like, okay, now I know Kelly. So then you know everything because as soon as I need something, I call Kelly. And thankfully now she's back in Massachusetts at UMass up in Worcester. But, you know, so the people that I've met through those, you know, through not saying no, you know, through saying yes, because I knew nothing, I said yes to everything. So, you know, I've always been able to get to the table and thankfully, you know, if you do enough right, they'll invite you again. And just learning from so many people just helped us to, you know, succeed where you weren't sure it was going to. Just knowing the right people and having the right communication.

Kaitlin: Absolutely. And building on one point you made in there about, you know, you just need the money to do these things. How have you moved some of these initiatives from being grant funded to really like institutionalizing the program and making sure it's funded year after year? And what is it? What does the process look like to make that happen?

MJ: What I have learned now is I don't chase the money. I figure out what I need to do and then find out if there's money that matches that. I've also learned it's easier for other people to manage the money and you to partner with them. So if I see something that looks like it's going to be relevant for us, I call JVS. What do you think? Do you want to go for the money and we'll work with you? Or I call Bunker Hill: what do you think? Do you want to go for the money and we'll work with you? So that you know let the people do what they do best if they have grant writers and they have the ability to manage the funding and we can work with them as an employment partner that makes the most sense to everybody stay in your lane and it works a little bit better so I've had my own grants that I've certainly managed and I'm sure there'll be more but right now I like to have like stay in our lane and what do we offer, what do they offer and how do we make that work together? We learn from our community-based partners over the years and from a lot of funding opportunities how to actually build a program that works and include the right partners to support that work. So I think it's just proving that it works, just putting up the metrics and then going through our regular budget process to try to add things as new initiatives.

Julian: So with all the bruising experiences and all this incredible body of work that you've built over the years, how do you ensure alignment and consistency as leadership and organizational changes happen, both internally within the system, and then also externally with your partners?

MJ: So this is a time where being humble does not work. So in order to keep things aligned and keep them consistent, and them moving, blowing your own horn is the way to go. So the programs have to be highly visible. You have to be able to track your metrics and your outcomes. You have to make sure they're in everybody's view. So you need to have the stories. You need to have a portfolio of success stories that you can show to people so you can prove the value at any given time. Because if somebody turns over who's a leader who respects the work, and now somebody knows there, you have to be in front of them as soon as you can to show them what the value is of the work, what you're doing, how it goes, constant and open communication internally and externally. Honesty, you know, don't blow it up if it is what it is. You know, like I just said this yesterday in one of our, going back to that EDA grant, I'm like, you know, we learned that this program doesn't have enough clinical training. Let's just say we learned it. They gave us money to try something. We learned that we need probably, we're going to train less people, but we're going to need more training for them. So we learned that, that's okay. But just being open and honest with that or if you have a partner that isn't aligned with the values of the work you're doing, you have to be honest with them, and know when to cut ties if you have to. But typically you can just work with somebody and be honest with them.

Kaitlin: If you don't mind, MJ, I just wanted to circle back on one thing you had mentioned earlier in the conversation about collaboration versus competition. And I was just really intrigued about, you know, you said like, we're all collaborating now and what a big difference that has made. I'm just wondering, along that theme, what other factors do you think really lead to that good collaboration across the system, across the city, across an industry rather than the feeling of competition? And what do you think can help breed that or foster that?

MJ: Back in 2008, the Boston Foundation launched the Allied Health Initiative. And when they launched it, they were going to select three employers, to, for whatever model they were going to propose. And their stipulation was, and you will meet regularly and talk about what you're learning. It'll be a shared learning experience, which we were like, what? Because seriously, we'd be trying to sneak a little program under the lines that nobody else would know. So we'd have the advantage, right? So we had to actually, the people that we might have seen as them suddenly became us because we all had to work together at these meetings uh... and then because that went so well there was funding put out and and the PIC [Boston Private Industry Council] used it to coordinate the Health Careers Consortium and from then and we've been working together so the Boston Foundation kind of forced us, and I would say that even when the allied health initiative was launched The Boston Foundation and others doing some research (Jeff Oxendine was involved in some of that research), In trying to design the program and the initiatives, they went to leaders who were not willing to work together, were not willing to share what they had, were holding it to the vest. And then we said, well, that's okay at their level, but at our level, if we don't start working together, we're never going to get anything done because together we can work with the schools because there's, you know, power in numbers. We can work and say, all of us need this. What can you do to help us? And so the Consortium has education, community-based organizations, and employers all at the table. And it's an interesting group because clearly there's power to either you don't want to miss it because you might lose out or for whatever reason, it's been going since like 2009 and we still get 70 or 80 members each meeting. Everybody comes and people keep being added to it. The meetings are run well. They're interesting because the PIC really helps coordinate it. It's really about we don't want to miss out and everybody just shows up. So we work with each other very closely now where, you know, I don't know if it's because you don't want to be not at the table, whatever reason, everybody's there. And we include them in what topics they'd want to know about or hear about. And so I think that, yeah, we were kind of forced to work together and it turned out pretty well. We ended up, we went from, well, I guess they're not too bad. Well, they're all right. Well, their program's okay, but ours is better, to, I wonder what they're doing about this. And now it's like, as I said, speed dial. But initially it was like that, I don't know, I'm not going to say too much, you know, and it turned into like oh they actually could be helpful.

Kaitlin: Right seeing each other as resources rather than competitors.

MJ: And then that's exponentially even more exciting when you bring it to like Kelly Aiken who brought it to CareerSTAT level and no one really thought that was going to work either. That was great, I had those people on speed dial. I’m, calling people in like Washington state and you know Kelly really created a kind national group of friends like they bring us together in various you know forums and they had great meetings, but you really get to know people and then when we did the academy you know we were all advising each other and mentoring and we really get lifelong you know colleagues and friends from from that kind of work and so Kelly saw the importance of it nationally and even then i was like eye roll what are we gonna do with that and actually ended up being quite helpful because i'm like what do i care what they're doing in California that's not gonna be Boston but i did care. It was interesting. The Boston arrogance can be tamed.

Julian: It's like note to funders, force the competitor employers to work together in your regions or nationally.

MJ: Right.

Julian: So, so MJ, what is your, you know, so this is Work Forces, this is our podcast. What's your advice regarding the one thing that each of us who cares about workforce issues should be doing regularly to make ourselves forces on these matters too?

MJ: I think I go back to visibility. And in some of it when I didn't even see because I'm not, well I didn't certainly start out very political or even knowledgeable as I said I'm a nuclear medicine tech, you know but when Business Leaders United asked me to come speak at the various you know Representatives office and the Senators offices and I'm like what am I gonna do there like I have no clue but they would take you into Washington DC and prep you and then you see over time because they really know what they were talking about so again you learn from them but you could give them on the ground like my value was I could give them on the ground stories of what we were hoping to get…well…how why it matters and why is important, and so i think initially when they asked me I'm like well that's not really my thing like I’'m not gonna go sit in the senate is office and you know that's just not my thing and then they convince you to go and once you do something that you realize it is important because months down the line you see funding or initiatives that actually come out of those conversations and you realize that there is power in joining with the right people and in those meetings with like Business Leaders United, we'd have leaders of manufacturing, leaders in education, leaders in workforce and hospitals, and you got to know them and then you did feel like you had the power to talk because you think I always came out I was like I don't know enough to do that, I can't go in lobby, I don't even know, but could I speak to my experience in the hospital and what works and what doesn't maybe and so they gave you the confidence to do that so I think that you know. Number one is the visibility and the ability to speak up and be active in the forums, even if you think that you don't know, you kind of do, and work with the right people who know how to harness that and make change. So I feel like the work that we got done through National Fund for Workforce Solutions, the work that we got done through Businesses Leaders United, and Jobs for the Future and other forums, you know. Even though it might feel like it's bigger than you and it's unrelated to the little work you're doing at Mass General or whatever hospital you're at, the fact is that they can bring about change and you can help with your story. So I think it's about being visible, you know, and then also paying it back, you know, paying it forward. Like I really enjoyed the work with the Career Stat Academy because there were people that were very new to the work, and they could learn, you know, so much often from what we did wrong, often from what we didn't know, you know, because nobody goes to school for workforce development. I don't wake up one day and say I think I'll be a workforce development, you know, leader. Being around other people is important. Going to those, whether it’s virtual or in person, into forums. Helping when someone contacts you and asks you about how you do things you know let them know so that you they can learn from your mistakes as well as your successes and and I think it's really important it's a very small group of people in the United States I think that do this work and and knowing each other and helping each other is very important to the people that will eventually get served.

Kaitlin: As we begin to wind down our conversation today MJ, how can listeners learn more about your work? How can they follow you, your efforts, efforts happening on workforce development at Mass General Brigham?

MJ: Well i was recommend that people go to the CareerSTAT site for the National Fund for Workforce, because they highlight our work as well as some of its older because they have something called the Frontline Champions and we were grateful to be honored that way early on, but they will describe what other hospitals are doing around the country as well as they have tools and toolkits that that people can work with. Also, the Healthcare Anchor Network does a lot of work around local hiring, and there's a lot of great examples in there of how this work gets done. For us, if you went on MGB career site, you should be able to see some of the workforce stuff. Again, we're in transition, so we have some stuff that you can see internally, and we're working on more of an external page. But eventually, if you go to MGB and careers, I think you'd find more information on what we're actually doing. My team is incredible and many of them have been with me for many years and have learned and taught me so much. And we have newer members that bring freshness to the table as well. And you know it's a very small team. We have like 13 people and we have an 82,000 person, you know, that's our staffing is 82,000 across the system, and we range from New Hampshire to Western Mass to Cape Cod and the Islands, and this little team is responsible for all of that and multiple programs. So they are like just an amazing group of people that you have to have the passion and really want to do it because it's a lot of work. So I appreciate them and I think that you know I keep trying to get them more help and hopefully I will next next year but right now they just they take it on because they want to do the work they want to help people so it's good. But also if you go to the health careers consortium Boston Health Careers Consortium website under the Boston Private Industry Council there's plenty there as well.

Julian: Well thank you so much MJ it's been such a pleasure talking with you as always.

MJ: Sure. Happy. It's always good to see you. Always good to see you guys. Kaitlin: So great to see you too. And thanks for this great conversation.

MJ: Sure thing.

Kaitlin: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. Workforces is available on Apple, Amazon, Google, and Spotify. We hope you will subscribe, like, and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends. If you have interest in sponsoring this podcast, please contact us through the podcast notes.