Millennial challenge: Different HR approaches needed for new generation of doctors

Meet Drs. Lisa and Nicholas Batson.

The Batsons, both 33, met on their third day as medical students at the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Maarten. They've gone through residencies and fellowships in lockstep, in general psychiatry and adolescent psychiatry.

When it came time to look for a medical practice opportunity, the Batsons wanted to stay close together. They hoped to land near Lisa's family in Ulster County, N.Y. They considered several opportunities, but didn't like that some medical groups wouldn't hire them as a couple or did not offer flexible work arrangements. They wanted regular hours with minimal on-call time for when they had a child. Then there was the joint vacation issue.

But they found that not many medical groups were open to their request for flexible hours and joint vacations. Big mistake.

The Batsons are part of the so-called millennial generation, whose members started hitting adulthood as the new century dawned. Medical groups, health systems and other healthcare organizations are trying to figure out the needs and desires of millennial doctors and other healthcare professionals so they can more effectively court them for jobs. Recruiters say it's a quite different challenge than hiring the workaholic post-World War II generation of health professionals, who often didn't have the term “work-life balance” in their vocabulary.

Crystal Run Healthcare, a multispecialty group medical practice based in the Hudson Valley outside New York City with more than 350 providers, made the Batsons an offer they couldn't refuse—positions as co-leaders of the group's new psychiatric division. They get to vacation together and have an after-hours call schedule that allows balance for family. They also like being within an hour of Manhattan for entertainment.

Bob Just, chief operating officer for the Northern California region of Santa Rosa-based St. Joseph Heritage Healthcare, said physicians and health professionals from the millennial generation are different from their predecessors. “They want to work hard when they're here, but when they're off they want to be off,” Just said. “They don't want to have 24/7 call responsibility.”

But there's one thing millennials share with previous generations of healthcare professionals—they want to be paid top dollar.

Bob Collins, managing partner at the Medicus Firm, a physician recruiting company based in Dallas, contrasted the boomers with the millennials. “Twenty years ago, when you were recruiting baby boomers, their first question typically was: 'Tell me about the practice,' ” he said. “Today, with millennials, the typical conversation starts with: 'Do I have to be on call? If so, how much? How much money can I make? Where is it located?' And lastly, 'Tell me about the practice.' So this is a shift.”

Monique Valcour, an executive coach and faculty affiliate at the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College who has studied millennials in the workplace, urged healthcare executives to use their own common sense in thinking about millennials. “There is a huge industry of consultants out there who are making tons of money because senior leaders don't know what to do with their young employees,” she said. “Essentially, what millennials want is what everybody wants.”

Millennials, she said, get a bad rap for being difficult to manage. In fact, she said research shows they are very team-oriented. But they want to understand why they are being asked to perform tasks. No military-style “sir, yes sir” for them.

Damon Beyer, a partner at A.T. Kearney, a Chicago-based management consulting firm, said millennials “tend to think of career flexibility and skill acquisition as a long path with lots of flexibility in it.”

That's quite different from people in his baby boomer generation who thought they just had to decide at the outset what profession they wanted to pursue and get the necessary education, he said.

Fred Horton, vice president at AMGA Consulting Services in Alexandria, Va., which helps manage medical groups, said that while millennials often are portrayed as job hoppers, they want to find meaning in their work. Boomers typically expected to have ownership stakes in their practices, while millennials expect to be employed. That fits well with the current healthcare marketplace, where more than half of physicians today are employed compared with 30% only five years ago. Younger doctors generally don't want the headaches of administering a practice, preferring to focus on their clinical work, he said.

When she completed her residency at UCLA-Kern Medical Center, Bakersfield, Calif., obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Garima Loharuka, 32, had a list of “musts” for any job. Loharuka wanted to live in Northern California where she attended medical school. She wanted flexible hours and limited on-call time so she could pursue her interest in hiking and biking. She wanted to minimize administrative tasks.

About a year ago, she joined a new OB-GYN practice at Santa Rosa (Calif.) Memorial Hospital, a 278-bed hospital run by St. Joseph Health in Sonoma County. “I wasn't interested in seeing 40 patients a day and having five minutes with each one,” she said. “I really wanted to build relationships with people.”

And she enjoys Santa Rosa, in the heart of Sonoma wine country. “There is a big arts movement here, which I love. And there are a lot of younger people who don't necessarily want the crazy city life and are really connected with what's going on in the world.”

Beyer said healthcare employers shouldn't worry about the quality of the millennial professional workforce, which is well-trained and brings a lot of assets. “The future of the healthcare system is in pretty good hands,” he said. “These kids are asking the right questions. We are better off to embrace them than to challenge them and complain about idiosyncrasies.”

Howard Wolinsky is a freelance writer based in Flossmoor, Ill.

Correction, Sept. 24, 2015: