Sr Director - Labor Management & Benchmarking

Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare•Memphis, TN

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

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.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree Healthcare Administration
Leading workforce management, workforce engineering, or productivity initiatives within a healthcare setting 10+ years
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.
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.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's Degree Business
Bachelor's Degree Finance
Bachelor's Degree Industrial Engineering
Master's Degree Healthcare Administration
Master's Degree Business
Master's Degree Finance

Responsibilities

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.
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.
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.
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.