Laudio, an Ascend Learning brand and a leader in frontline healthcare workforce solutions, in partnership with the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA), today released a new report, Reconnecting HR to the Frontline: How Leader Standard Work Translates People Strategy into Results. The report explores trends affecting how healthcare HR leaders partner with frontline managers and provides new approaches to strengthen this connection and drive successful system-wide people strategies.
Frontline managers play a critical role in employee experience and engagement, converting health system strategy into daily actions on the frontline. However, they face rising strain as their roles expand in scope and complexity and health systems navigate financial pressures and workforce shortages. This new report, based on an analysis of the Laudio Insights dataset – including 15,000+ managers across 150+ hospitals – and interviews with healthcare HR executives, provides insights into how HR leaders can best support today’s frontline managers and enable consistent leadership practices that enhance human connection and culture.
Strengthening Connections Between HR and the Frontline
Key insights about the impact of frontline managers and trends affecting people strategy include:
- Manager relationships are a key factor in retention: The quality of employees’ relationships with their managers has a strong influence on their experience and desire to stay; regular, meaningful engagement is especially essential for Gen Z.
- Leadership variability is increasing across organizations: More than half of support service managers have six or fewer years of experience, contributing to inconsistent leadership practices and people outcomes across organizations.
- Industry pressures and evolving models are reshaping manager support: as health systems adopt shared service models and self-service tools, HR leaders need to reassess manager support to reduce administrative tasks and create more space for connection.
- Workforce stability depends on consistent, human-centered leadership, not additional programs: Executives emphasize the need to refocus on foundational leadership behaviors, such as presence and communication, to drive engagement.
“Healthcare is not short on strategy – the challenge is execution at the frontline. As HR models evolve, this report reinforces the importance of keeping human connection at the center – with managers positioned to provide the consistent engagement, coaching, and recognition that bring people strategy to life,” said Jill Ragsdale, Chief HR Advisor at Laudio and former CHRO at Mayo Clinic. “Leading CHROs are advancing their people strategies by prioritizing leadership models that are partnership-focused, human-centric, and sustainable, using technology intentionally to amplify connection, not replace it.”
Translating Insights into Action
Drawing on interviews with CHROs and other healthcare executives, the report provides proven solutions to empower frontline managers and drive sustainable people outcomes. Chief among these is “Leader Standard Work,” a structured framework of daily leadership behaviors designed to help HR and other leaders translate people strategy into meaningful manager actions that are consistent both over time and across the system.
Four priority actions covered in the report include:
- Aligning the C-suite and HR around Leader Standard Work at the frontline
- Freeing managers and HR from administrative burdens to focus on people
- Reducing variation in frontline leadership practices
- Investing in workforce development to strengthen long-term talent pipelines
Rather than adding complexity, leading health systems are focusing on intentional efforts to simplify work for managers, reduce administrative tasks with technology, and create structures to help make regular, personalized staff interactions feasible.
“Healthcare’s frontline leaders form a key bridge between the big picture goals HR seeks to drive for their organizations and what actually happens on the frontline,” said Jeremy Sadlier, CEO of ASHHRA. “As times have changed and HR teams navigate new constraints, this report brings clarity to what effective frontline leadership looks like and offers useful insights into how today’s HR executives can operationalize leader best practices that elevate culture and promote engaged workforces.”
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