Staff from KHSC and Providence Care together at a job fair
Staff from KHSC and Providence Care recruit new candidates to the region.
Credit
KHSC People Services and Organizational Effectiveness

In the world of healthcare, partnerships are essential to thrive and provide the best care possible, which is why Providence Care and Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) have teamed up to create a shared People Services department that spans the two organizations. This strategy has proven to have many benefits from sharing technology, learning and opening both organizations up to a breadth of new expertise and leading people practices.

It also allows for a unique recruitment strategy where the organizations team up to attract exceptional talent to the region as a whole, not just to a particular hospital or care site. Representatives from KHSC and Providence Care travel to job fairs together, sharing the costs and introducing frontline staff to potential new recruits who can boast about the perks of living in Kingston.

“Kingston and southeastern Ontario is a vibrant place to live, and it has a lot to offer new recruits across the whole continuum of health care,” says Micki Mulima, Director of Leadership & Talent Development at KHSC and Providence Care. “When we team up,  we have the ability to talk to our potential candidates about what type of care they are looking to practice because Kingston has it all."

The two academic centres regularly collaborate to optimize patient, resident and client care, and sharing a human resources department gives staff members more access to learning opportunities and work environments that can enrich their employee experience and growth.

“Working together allows us to fulfill staffing needs across the whole spectrum of care within the city and the region – from community care to acute care and everything in between,” explains Micki. “We aren’t in competition. We know it is a benefit to our patients in the whole region to bring bright, talented people here, regardless of which organization they choose to work for.”

Each organization plays its own role to serve the region.  Derived from secular and faith based organizations, KHSC is comprised of the newly integrated Kingston General Hospital and Hotel Dieu Hospital to offer complex-acute and specialty care, ambulatory and cancer care, while Providence Care provides specialty sub-acute inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, complex medical care, palliative care, and mental health services from its Providence Care Hospital site and community-based services, as well as offering long-term care at its Providence Manor site.

 “Our patients often receive care at all sites. Why shouldn’t our human resources strategies transcend multiple hospital sites as well,” says Micki. “We are all looking to improve quality and make the patient experience more seamless; this helps us make the employee experience more seamless, too.”