Gabriel Figureroa is administrator at Manhattan Reproductive Surgery Center in New York City.
Mr. Figueroa will serve on the panel “Best Ideas to Balance Patient, Surgeon and Employee Needs Without Breaking the Budget” at Becker’s ASC Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference on Oct. 27-29 in Chicago.
To learn more and register, click here.
Question: What is the smartest thing you've done in the last year to set your organization up for success?
Gabriel Figueroa: Our philosophy drives us to invest in our most important asset: our people. We became dedicated in developing a process that would identify and recruit talent we thought would best fit the culture we had and wanted to continue to build rather than making quick decisions to beef up manpower to meet case volume demands. Once these candidates are selected, the initiative then shifts to place a significant amount of time and resources into training each of them to form a foundation we can hopefully build on for years to come. I think we’ve had a successful year doing that, it certainly hasn’t come without its challenges or lessons learned, but we feel really good where we’re at right now and how we are positioned for the future.
Q: What is your strategy for recruiting and retaining great teams?
GF: Our process and strategy is based on the evaluation of core characteristics. Things we can’t teach someone. We were finding candidates that had all the ideal qualifications and education on paper, but didn't always seem to work out the best. This pivot in our strategy, to not place our primary focus on related experience and/or education, gave us a better chance at identifying if we believed the candidate would align with who we are as an organization. We built a multi-tiered interview process that requires the candidate to shadow the position they will be filling if they become a member of the team. This gives the candidate the opportunity to see firsthand what the job will be like and allows them the opportunity to interact with the team they will be working with. We actively seek out feedback from the team to hear their thoughts of the candidate, this provides us multiple perspectives of the candidate which adds value to the decision-making process. Following this strategy has produced less turnover in staffing than I have experienced in the last 10 years.