I’m Robin Vazquez. I use she/her pronouns, and I’m the Employee Resources Division (ERD) director at the Health Care Authority (HCA). I manage or oversee facilities, safety and wellness, mail and imaging, and human resources (HR). One of the things I do for the agency is work with my team to make sure our hiring and recruitment policies and practices are efficient, supportive of division needs, legally defensible, fair and equitable.
Over the last few years, HCA has made a number of improvements to our recruitment program, including:
- Increasing the number of recruiters from three to five.
- Training our recruiters to provide Equal Pay and Opportunity Act (EPOA) compliant salary guidance during the hiring process.
- Offering resume writing workshops and interview clinics.
- Training hiring managers on the use of our online recruiting application Neogov.
- Providing resources and training to reduce implicit bias in the hiring process.
This has been a team effort. Michael Otter-Johnson and his recruitment team have been continuously on the lookout for ways to strengthen our practices.
Why is recruitment important for equity?
Recruitment is a key function within the agency because it’s the doorway. This is how we bring in excellent staff who will serve our customers, craft health care policy, and ensure we’re optimizing our use of public funds for the benefit of our communities. To do all that important work, we need a workforce that is representatively diverse with lots of different backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives. Having a workforce reflective of the communities we serve results in better outcomes; it builds public trust in our institutions.
HCA has been exploring how to balance the requirements of our state classification structure—the way we assign and pay for work in state agencies—with our need to bring in people with lots of different backgrounds, including lived experience in specific areas. The state of Washington has also been working to reduce barriers to entry.
A new executive order
There is a draft of an executive order from the Governor in the works that may push us further. The executive order may include new direction for state agencies to remove specific required years of experience, or a specific degree or educational credential. This will change the way our agency screens for positions and drive us toward a more skills- and competencies-focused approach to recruitment. Hiring managers will need to take an active role in helping to design ways to measure skills during the hiring process and may need to review more applications than before.
The best way to practice inclusion is to practice
Hiring managers are really busy. They may not know where to begin if asked to develop a skills test for a vacant position or to screen candidates without using years of experience or a specific educational credential. That’s where my HR team can help.
ERD is already piloting a recruitment approach similar to what the draft executive order calls for on two current vacancies. We want to practice how to focus on skills and competencies in the posting and the screening process before direction comes out from the Governor’s Office. That way we’ll be ready to help HCA adjust to new expectations.
The hard work is paying off
I’m so glad to be a part of this work. Although HCA still has some underrepresentation in its workforce, we’ve seen meaningful progress in a number of areas in the last few years:
- More people of color applied and were hired in 2023 than the year before.
- Almost 26 percent of our workforce are people of color.
- Representation of people with disabilities at HCA has more than doubled since 2017.
- Seven-point-five (7.5) percent of our workforce identifies as LGBTQ+.
One of the measures of progress I’m most excited about is this: the number of managers of color has increased in the last two years. In February 2022, just 15.8 percent of HCA managers were people of color, but in February of 2024, 19.6 percent of HCA managers were people of color. While we’re still working on fully reflective representation, that’s a significant change in just two years.
Recruitment is a big part of these encouraging changes, and as we continue to improve our practices and provide support across the agency, I think the future of workforce equity at HCA is bright.
Interested in joining HCA?
HCA is always hiring – see our open job listings or subscribe to receive HCA’s weekly job update email. You can also learn more about working for the state of Washington at careers.wa.gov.