Dear Community Leader,

Healthcare is a people service, delivered by people to people.

There have been a lot of stories in the media about people leaving healthcare jobs, shortages and burnout so I thought it important to give you our perspective at Texas Health.

Texas Health has more employees than ever before – nearly 29,000 – making us one of the largest employers in North Texas. Our retention rate (12-month rolling period) is 85% while vacancies run less than 4%. As you might expect, nurses make up the largest group of employees, at close to 11,000.

We are fully committed to creating an inclusive environment that embraces diversity and reflects the communities we serve. More than half of our officers are female, and 50% of our care teams are ethnically/racially diverse. Our workforce is getting younger, with Gen X making up 36.1%, Millennials 43.3% and Gen Z at 6.8% and growing.

We measure engagement with staff regularly, and results exceed national averages across industries. Our core engagement, made up of five questions, achieved an 82% favorable rating. When answering “I am proud to work at Texas Health,” our employees gave a 93% favorable response as did and 89% to “Safety is a priority at my location.”

I am often asked how we retain quality staff, and my response is always “culture.”

We strive to make Texas Health a place where everyone can do their life’s best work. And we each come together to create our award-winning culture. Because our teams are our culture. We have something called Our Texas Health Promise: Individuals Caring For Individuals, Together. And we talk regularly about our Promise Behaviors centered around reliability, safety, seamlessness, efficiency, being proactive and, of course, caring.

Our culture has been recognized by Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For® and Best Workplaces in Health Care for the last nine years. In 2023, we were named one of Fortune’s Best Workplaces for Women, Best Workplaces in Texas and America’s Most Innovative Companies while Newsweek called us one of America’s Greatest Workplaces for Diversity.

And while the accolades are nice, what I’m more proud of is what they represent: how we care for the team that will care for you, and your loved ones, when you visit a Texas Health provider or facility. That’s why we focus on our people, so that they can focus on you.

As always, I also welcome your thoughts and questions at AskBarclay@TexasHealth.org.

Be well,

Barclay Berdan