Sr Director - Labor Management & Benchmarking

If you are looking to make an impact on a meaningful scale, come join us as we embrace the Power of One!
 

We strive to be an employer of choice and establish a reputation for being a talent rich organization where Associates can grow their career caring for others. For over a century, we’ve served the health care needs of the people of Memphis and the Mid-South.
 

The Senior Director of Labor Management & Benchmarking and Productivity drives organizational efficiency, labor optimization, and workforce engineering across a complex health system encompassing Academic Medical Centers (AMCs), high-acuity Pediatric Hospitals, and Community Hospitals. This leader aligns diverse clinical staffing models with varied patient care demands through advanced benchmarking and operational metrics. You will own the corporate strategy, data governance, and execution for productivity standards across the entire enterprise, directly leveraging Premier for competitive benchmarking, UKG for core workforce productivity, and driving the implementation of the corporate WFM Playbook to standardize practices system-wide. Models appropriate behavior as exemplified in MLH Mission, Vision and Values.

 

Working at MLH means carrying the mission forward of caring for our community and impacting the lives of patients in every way through compassion, a deliberate focus on service expectations and a consistent thriving for excellence.

A Brief Overview
The Senior Director of Labor Management & Benchmarking and Productivity drives organizational efficiency, labor optimization, and workforce engineering across a complex health system encompassing Academic Medical Centers (AMCs), high-acuity Pediatric Hospitals, and Community Hospitals. This leader aligns diverse clinical staffing models with varied patient care demands through advanced benchmarking and operational metrics. You will own the corporate strategy, data governance, and execution for productivity standards across the entire enterprise, directly leveraging Premier for competitive benchmarking, UKG for core workforce productivity, and driving the implementation of the corporate WFM Playbook to standardize practices system-wide. Models appropriate behavior as exemplified in MLH Mission, Vision and Values.

What you will do

• Productivity Strategy & Operational Standardization • Define the health system strategy for workforce productivity, capacity planning, and operational efficiency across specialized clinical environments. • Lead the deployment, governance, and updates of the corporate WFM Playbook to ensure unified, standard staffing and scheduling practices across Academic, Pediatric, and Community hospital divisions. • Maximize operational efficiency by designing dynamic, demand-driven staffing models that account for nursing acuity, teaching-hospital workflows, resident schedules, and community care dynamics. • Leverage UKG modules to optimize daily labor allocations and ensure strict schedule compliance across specialized units (e.g., PICU, NICU, trauma, and community medical-surgical wards). • Partner with finance and clinical operations leaders to eliminate structural waste, manage agency utilization, and reduce labor friction.
• WFM Education & Onboarding Leadership • Design, build, and deploy an ongoing WFM education curriculum for existing health system leaders to maintain high operational and productivity literacy. • Standardize and deliver dedicated WFM training pathways for all new clinical and operational leaders as they are onboarded into the organization. • Ensure all leadership cohorts understand, adopt, and execute against WFM Playbook guidelines, Premier data inputs, and UKG scheduling tools. • Establish metrics to measure the adoption rate and proficiency of clinical leaders utilizing the organization’s workforce management resources.
• Advanced Benchmarking & Analytics • Own the corporate relationship, data architecture, and validation pipelines for the Premier benchmarking platform. • Map health system operational and financial data to external peer groups—specifically targeting Academic Medical Center (AMC), Children's Hospital, and Community Hospital cohorts—using Premier metrics to identify performance gaps. • Build predictive financial analytics models to forecast productivity trends and surface clinical labor cost-saving opportunities. • Convert complex labor data, position control metrics, and variance reports into clear, actionable financial and operational insights. • Present key productivity and Premier benchmarking metrics regularly to the VP, Finance Operations.
• WFM Technology & Governance • Govern enterprise-wide engineered labor standards and scheduling compliance within the UKG platform. • Direct system-wide audits of scheduling efficacy to balance labor cost with patient safety and service delivery standards. • Lead data integration, optimization, and continuous improvement for both Premier and UKG tools. • Manage technology vendors to maintain software scalability, clinical data compliance, and standard compliance.

Education Qualifications

• Required - Bachelor's Degree Healthcare Administration
• Preferred - Bachelor's Degree Business
• Preferred - Bachelor's Degree Finance
• Preferred - Bachelor's Degree Industrial Engineering
• Preferred - Master's Degree Healthcare Administration
• Preferred - Master's Degree Business
• Preferred - Master's Degree Finance

Experience Qualifications

• Required - Leading workforce management, workforce engineering, or productivity initiatives within a healthcare setting 10+ years
• Required - Leadership 5-7 years At least five (5) years in a leadership role managing large-scale, system-wide operational initiatives with verified experience spanning Academic Medical Centers, high-acuity pediatric hospitals, and community hospitals.

Skills and Abilities

• Deep functional expertise with UKG for healthcare workforce scheduling, timekeeper, and productivity tracking.
• High proficiency with Premier benchmarking analytics, specialized pediatric/academic/community peer-group mapping, and operational dashboards.
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with a demonstrated ability to educate, coach, and influence clinical leaders and physician stakeholders.
• Advanced understanding of healthcare-specific workloads (e.g., hours per patient day - HPPD, midnight census, acuity-based staffing) and industrial engineering principles across diverse hospital types.
• Strong financial acumen with experience managing multi-million-dollar healthcare labor budgets and analyzing labor variances.
• Proven track record of developing and delivering training or educational curriculum to clinical and operational leaders.
• Extensive experience submitting data and executing labor strategies via Premier and UKG platforms.

Supervision Provided by this Position

• Manages assigned Associates.

Physical Demands

• The physical activities of this position may include climbing, pushing, standing, hearing, walking, reaching, grasping, kneeling, stooping, and repetitive motion.
• Must have good balance and coordination.
• The physical requirements of this position are: light work - exerting up to 25 lbs. of force occasionally and/or up to 10 lbs. of force frequently.
• The Associate is required to have close visual acuity to perform an activity, such as preparing and analyzing data and figures; transcribing; viewing a computer terminal; or extensive reading.
• The conditions to which the Associate will be subject in this position: The Associate is not substantially exposed to adverse environmental conditions; job functions are typically performed under conditions such as those found in general office or administrative work.
• The Associate is subject to call back at all times.
• The Associate may be required to travel occasionally to MLH facilities or other locations as needed.

Our Associates are passionate about what they do, the service they provide and the patients they serve. We value family, team and a Power of One culture that requires commitment to the highest standards of care and unity.

Boasting one of the South's largest medical centers, Memphis blends a friendly community, a thriving and growing downtown, and a low cost of living. We see each day as a new opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the people in our community.