Arkansas Children’s Hospital leads state listings on Forbes’ ‘Best Employers for Diversity’ list

Four Arkansas companies made the Forbes magazine list of America’s Best Employers for Diversity, released this week.

The list of 500 organizations was compiled through a survey of 45,000 employees of large businesses who ranked organizations based on treatment by age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality and general diversity. Researchers also considered whether companies have employee resource groups or publish diversity data and by what percentage women comprise board and executive roles.

Of the four companies in the state, only Arkansas Children’s Hospital ranked in the top half, in 193rd place. The others are Murphy USA (360th), Walmart (399th) and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (450th).

Crystal Kohanke, Arkansas Children’s chief people officer who heads human resources, said there is an active effort to recruit employees who reflect the demographics the hospital serves. There are also development programs designed to get a sense of workers’ perspectives to foster “inclusive environments that create belonging for our employees.”

“It’s about how we create an environment where people feel like they belong, and then we create inclusive leadership — regardless of demographic or gender — to create an environment where people feel like they can give and be seen,” she said.

Arkansas Children’s Hospital has employee resource groups that provide employees support. Kohanke said employees who take part in the groups have stronger engagement and sense of belonging with their workplace.

The groups also make recommendations on changes to employee benefits. They include a group of working mothers with young children who drafted a policy of benefits for parents who adopt children and a group for veterans working on ways to help the hospital recruit employees with a military background.

The hospital has a diversity, equity and inclusion director who oversees two employees, one full-time and one part-time. The administration also does ongoing evaluations to ensure pay equity across demographic lines. “We look at it 37,000 different ways,” Kohanke said, “to see that we’re creating fairness and equity from a pay practices standpoint, from a promotions and opportunities standpoint.

“We’re very fortunate that health care is a female-dominated workforce, and you don’t always see that match in leadership. We’re very fortunate that we have a female CEO and other female leaders and physicians who are not traditional,” she said. “We have really great role models, and there’s proactive development to help people in all different areas grow.”

Researchers continually find that members of different race or ethnic groups have disparate health outcomes in the United States, with Black people and American Indians faring worse as groups. To that point, a study published this month in an online American Medical Association journal found an association between the number of Black primary care physicians working in an area and increased life expectancy and lower mortality rates for Black people living in the area.

Kohanke said the hospital, for its part, actively recruits Black doctors, adding that it is a goal of the affiliated University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences as well.

“We identify sources that can help us promote and create pipelines for talent in those different demographics,” she said. “We support historically Black colleges and universities and emerging Hispanic organizations as well to try to help create the opportunity for us to recruit various staff, based upon the demographics of our community.”

Kohanke said employees were recently surveyed about engagement, how their bosses are treating them and whether they feel like, as employees, they have a voice in the organization. The data is analyzed by demographic to check for any significant differences in specific groups; more research is done if they find something.

Kohanke noted that millennial and Generation Z employees are the hospital’s largest workforce cohorts and that they have “very different perspectives and very different needs,” necessitating data analysis by age to determine what kind of work environments and benefits they want.

“I do think we have some opportunities in that space to get ready for that next generation that’s coming in and create that environment that they’re going to love and want to stay with,” Kohanke said.