Texas Diversity Council Board Member Profile

Trennis Jones, Senior Vice President Chief Administrative Officer, Corporate Responsibility Office, Seton Healthcare Family Looking around the boardroom in 2006, his was the only face of color. Trennis Jones and his fellow Seton Healthcare board members chatted about hiring practices from pools of familiar people. "We were hiring qualified candidates to say the least," he says, "but I posed to the Board, 'How do we know we're hiring the best qualified applicants?'" That seemingly simple question opened a dialog about broadening the scope of Seton Healthcare's recruitment efforts. They widened theirtalent acquisition net to include outreach to diverse organizations and to provide development and training to engage Seton associates in all facets of the healthcare system. "Our goal is to ensure that our workforce reflects the community across central Texas within our service areas at all job levels, not just entry level," Jones says. Seton dove in and became the second healthcare organization in Texas to establish an internal department dedicated to diversity and inclusion. Jones transitioned from volunteer to head up Seton's Corporate Responsibility Office, where diversity and inclusion are a strategic part of meeting organizational goals. "13,000 Seton associates live out our mission every day," Jones says. "We believe every individual is endowed with dignity and should be treated with respect. It speaks to diversity and inclusion for us to provide culturally competent care to the multi-cultured and global community we live in today." During Jones tenure, the face of Seton Healthcare has changed to reflect the communities it serves. There is greater gender, ethnic, and generational diversity. Some 18% of leadership positions are now held by once under represented groups, an increase of 5% in six years. In 2007, Seton adopted an employee-led, internship model for young adults with intellectual disabilities called Project Search. The program originated at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and focuses on building marketable and professional skills. This program illustrates the broad brush that Jones uses to paint the portrait of diversity and inclusion at Seton. After all, we all gravitate toward work that gives us the best opportunity to succeed, Jones says, but most of us have fewer limitations that these young interns. "We look for ways to put these individuals in places where the things they 'can' do are more important than the things they 'can't' do," Jones says. "These individuals compete with others who may not have disabilities and they wind up being the best qualified. We can show that this program has added value to our organization. There is less absenteeism and fewer errors in certain types of work that they perform," Jones says. Seton's Project Search has to date graduated 49 young adult interns. Twenty-three were hired to work at Seton and 16 used their experiences to find competitive positions in the community. In a public/private relationship with the Texas Department of Assistance and Rehabilitative Service, Seton will expand Project Search to include five sites in 2014. Obviously, no single person has all the answers, but "as we learn more about each other, we begin to embrace each other and respect thedifferences that we each bring to the table," Jones says. Every Seton leader and associate has a story to relate and best practices to share. Some of these translate into diversity skills workshops that focus on cross-cultural communication, managing generational differences, caring for the spiritual needs of a multi-cultural community, and providing person-centered care by recognizing patient health literacy issues. "With Seton, we've had challenges along this journey and expect to have others as we grow in an ever-changing healthcare landscape. But we are one step closer to addressing the healthcare needs of our diverse community," Jones says. Whether it is focusing on language services or cultural competencies as a way to reduce healthcare inequities and disparities in quality of care or the impact of Project Search on the lives of the interns and their parents who never thought they would see their child working independently, Jones says, "I think diversity brings people together and only makes the organization stronger at the end of the day."

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