CVS Health has a sophisticated talent management system founded on four objectives. Leaving nothing to chance, the company begins cultivating talent at all school levels while developing and engaging talent in-house.
By Gerald Donald

CVS Health is leaving nothing to chance in the area of talent management and ensuring its talent pipeline is filled for years to come. Strategies cover the gamut, beginning with introducing elementary children to pharmacy to leveraging Colleague Resource Groups (CRGs) to ensure all employees have opportunities for development and career management. The groups also serve as links between CVS and the diverse talent marketplace, helping CVS better connect with people in the marketplace, and once employed, better manage talent in a way that benefits employees, customers, and the organization. CVS serves as a role model for embedding CRGs (employee resource groups) in organizational strategy.

Leveraging Colleague Resource Groups
David Casey is the VP of Workforce Strategies and Chief Diversity Officer for CVS Health. For the last five-and-a-half years, he has overseen the corporate diversity management team, the EEO and affirmative action team, employee relations, and a group called Workforce Initiatives. He manages this broad set of talent strategies within the context of meeting four objectives.

“Our first objective is workforce representation that reflects communities,” Casey explains. “The second objective is workforce engagement to ensure we have an inclusive culture where people can be their authentic selves. The third objective is having talent systems in place that enable everyone to have equitable access to growth and development. The fourth objective is marketplace diversity.”

A key talent and retention strategy that encompasses the four objectives is the leveraging of 12 Colleague Resource Groups (CGRs). Though some are along the lines of traditional Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) – Black, Hispanic, Asian, Women – there are also nontraditional groups focused on things like fitness and health, and the analytical role of people in the organization.

Each group helps CVS meet the four objectives. For example, the Latino group helps Casey and his team understand where to go to recruit more Latino talent and how to bring them into the organization, ensure inclusiveness, and encourage career development. Some groups have mentoring programs that help human resources professional understand the nuances of managing a particular demographic.

The CRGs are so core to CVS’ talent management strategies and objectives that the CEO, Larry Merlo, and his direct reports serve as sponsors.

“A sponsor is charged with helping the CRGs get connected to business objectives,” Casey explains. For example, the CEO is the executive sponsor of the Women’s Success Network (WSN) which has a thousand members. Since he has full insight across the entire organization, the CEO was in a position to help WSN members get plugged in to some of the work being done in the digital space, a strategic area of focus for the company.

“The majority of our customers in the retail space and our health care decision makers are women, so having the CEO chair that Colleague Resource Group is a perfect match because he can tap into that demographic and leverage that resource group to help us connect to a majority of our female customers,” says Casey.

Leveraging a Multigenerational Workforce
Growing and developing talent involves several strategies.
One is annual talent reviews with a twist. All the leaders in the organization have an opportunity to identify current and potential high performers and get 360 degree feedback from the leaders’ peers on the high performers.

The next step is mentoring which has been in place for quite a while. “Quite frankly, I think sponsorship is actually where the effort needs to go next,” Casey said. Mentoring is an excellent method for meeting the needs of the one-on-one relationship, but sponsorship is when someone is willing to advocate on an employee’s behalf across the organization. When an organization has 200,000 employees spread across geographies, it is challenging for employees to get recognition outside their work area.

Like most organizations today, CVS had to find a way to leverage a multigenerational workforce. In a unique approach, CVS utilizes an online tool in which employees can play one of two roles – learner or advisor. Learners come in to gain knowledge of certain topics or issues. Advisors share information across the organization. Anyone in the organization can utilize the tool, meaning a lower level employee could be an advisor to a senior executive, in technology for example. This approach recognizes that someone at a lower level may have more knowledge on a particular topic than a senior leader.

The online tool is an effective engagement tool that enables people to showcase their knowledge and competencies. There are also internship programs and programs for tapping into current and potential talent pools.

“Over the last 20 years, we have introduced pharmacy to more than 1 million people from elementary school to high school to post-secondary institutions, introducing them to the industry and career tracks,” Casey said.

The Pathways to Pharmacy program is being expanded into Pathways to Healthcare to attract a broader and more diverse talent pool. CVS also participates in the Department of Labor’s Registered Apprenticeships program in which prospects can go through a combined classroom and on-the-job pharmacy technician program and earn certified credentials, even if they have no prior training. The apprenticeship program is a great way to introduce diverse people to STEM careers, letting them learn while they earn a paycheck. This is particularly attractive to people who cannot afford to go right into a college degree program.

Measuring and Enabling Through a Diversity Lens
To keep these many efforts on track, CVS measures results in many ways.
Casey elaborates by saying, “We measure along the four objectives – demographics, engagement, CRG participation rates, promotion rates, retention rates, and so on. Under the marketplace diversity objective, we look at market share and a program called Project Health which has provided over $100 million of free health-care screenings in predominantly Black and Hispanic communities identified as having health-care disparities.” Casey looks at all metrics through a diversity lens and does not just produce diversity metrics.

Having recently acquired the pharmacy chain, Drogaria Onofre, in Brazil, CVS has become an international company. The organization leverages opportunities for two-way learning by leveraging relevant U.S. centric business practices in operations abroad, while simultaneously bringing what is learned abroad back to the U.S. There is a learning curve with Brazil serving as the learning lab. Expansion into Brazil brings a whole new aspect to diversity, but CVS’ approach to diversity management is different than most organizations anyway.

“Most companies that say they practice diversity and inclusion are focused solely on their workforce. We focus on the workforce and how our efforts impact the marketplace,” Casey explained.

It is a holistic approach in which diversity management is not a series of initiatives but rather an enabler to meet objectives in the marketplace. To further diversity goals, Casey’s teams manage more than 500 relationships with community and faith-based organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions.

The CVS talent-focused strategies are designed to ensure the organization is able to attract top talent in a shrinking labor force and to retain that talent once onboard. The organized approach Casey has taken is proving to be highly effective. Most importantly, it keeps CVS prepared to adapt to the future as the global population ages and technology advances, changing talent requirements and the makeup of the marketplace talent pool.