Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (Cincinnati Children’s) is a large, urban, academic, Magnet recognized institution nationally ranked as one of the nation’s best pediatric hospitals. Cincinnati Children’s employs more than 15,000 people caring for 500+ inpatients daily and greater than 1 million ambulatory visits yearly. Cincinnati Children’s goal is to attract, retain, and further develop a diverse frontline workforce. A key factor driving its success is the development of an embedded job coaching and mentoring program, leading to sustained and significant frontline worker retention and an especially notable impact on its diverse workforce.

Cincinnati Children’s is distinguished as a pioneer in providing job coaching and counseling for its frontline workers. Over a decade ago, the organization developed an improvement team to address burgeoning turnover rates, which were ultimately determined to be the result of employee tardiness and absenteeism (80% due to childcare and/or transportation issues). Embedding employee support through job coaching and mentoring not only completely reversed this statistic, but it also allowed Cincinnati Children’s to retain more than 400 diverse frontline employees at a savings of $400,000 annually. Utilizing a problem-solving, rather than punitive, approach to employment barriers has yielded as much as $4 million in savings in turnover costs over the past decade. Now, more than 300 frontline employees participate annually in the program.