Melissa “Missy” Hopson thought she would spend her whole career teaching, but when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2006, her college, Xavier University of Louisiana, temporarily closed, and she switched gears. After five years as a communications and marketing professional, she found a home — and a purpose — at Ochsner Health, a nonprofit health care provider in the Gulf region that operates 46 owned, managed, or affiliated hospitals and more than 370 health and urgent care centers.
Hopson began her tenure at Ochsner with just a handful of direct reports who were in charge of the learning and development for 11,000 front-line team members. She quickly realized that her team needed to offer more than just orientation events and computer training to address its talent gaps. It needed to look for contribution-motivated talent in communities often ignored by traditional hiring systems.
Ochsner’s shift centered on one mantra: “Bring the outside in and the inside up.” This philosophy has generated significant benefits for Ochsner — higher employee retention, greater productivity, and improved patient satisfaction among them — while changing the lives of thousands of employees. In a recent interview, Hopson, now Ochsner’s system vice president and chief learning and workforce development officer, discussed the company’s success.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Andy Tonsing: You started at Ochsner in 2011. When did you realize the company needed to do something radically different in terms of talent development?
Missy Hopson: Managers started requesting more, asking us what else we could do to develop their team members. I kept racking my brain until one day in 2012, the head of talent acquisition comes to my desk. She hands me something from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which is our local philanthropic arm. It was a roundtable discussion to hear how a national hospital system created programming that helped move unemployed members of the community into careers in health care.
I went, and several philanthropic organizations were at the table. They were going to give seed funding to a health care organization to launch a similar program in the Gulf region. The application was due the next day. I was crestfallen. There was no way we could get a grant application together in time. I told them I definitely would apply the next year. They ended up giving me an extra two weeks, and that’s how we got started.
Tonsing: What was the program you developed, and what did it teach you?
Hopson: First, I asked my head of recruitment to identify the company’s most-needed entry-level position that could be filled through a certificate program. The answer? Medical assistants. Our MA Now program is currently well-known throughout Louisiana for successfully taking unemployed or underemployed individuals and getting them on the job within six months.
We worked with our local community college, Delgado, to create a certificate program. We engaged our hiring managers, asking about their primary pain points. As a result, MA Now doesn’t just show you how to be a medical assistant. With Delgado, we train for culture, communication, ethics, and enhancing the patient experience.
For applicants, we pledged Ochsner would hire 100% of graduates. We had 20 spots. Within 72 hours, we had 504 applicants. That experience showed me that people who’ve been overlooked are eager to contribute. What they need isn’t motivation — it’s access to opportunities that open doors into health care.
We also found applicants needed more than instruction. To complete programs, they needed help with transportation costs, child care, and utilities. In that inaugural class, one of my teammates noticed her star student struggling mid-program. Her parents had gotten in trouble with law enforcement, and she’d been evicted. She was living in her car. We found her housing. She finished the program and came to work for us as an MA. She’s continued to advance in her career, too. She’s a nurse now.
At Ochsner, we address barriers that could have knocked someone out of another training program. And our approach worked immediately. The retention rate for those 20 graduates at the end of their first 18 months on the job was 94% — compared to a national rate of about 55–59% for medical assistants.
That first experience taught us we could create programs that would bring somebody in faster and get them productive more quickly. They’re certified, and they have a level of knowledge and skills about our culture, patients, and the way we communicate.
Tonsing: You have said your philosophy is to bring “the outside in and the inside up.” That’s the outside in. What’s the inside up?
Hopson: Yes, so now Ochsner has a program that’s helping us bring in new medical assistants — fresh talent that wasn’t in the sector before. But we also knew we had MAs already working for us who wanted to advance. So, we started with an upskilling program that enabled 55 MAs to earn their certified clinical medical assistant credential and receive a pay increase.
That success sparked the next step: a request from our own MAs to keep growing in the field of nursing. In response, we launched a licensed practical nurse apprenticeship. In our very first cohort, 17 MAs advanced to become LPNs. Each program built momentum for the next, creating a true career pathway.
We used the same model as MA Now: We worked with local educators, asked managers what their pain points were, and solved for them through our training. And, importantly, for the people in the program, we offered the apprenticeship on site during work hours. So many people wanted to move up but thought they’d have to quit their job to do it. Now, they don’t.
So now, I have a two-pronged strategy. Everything I’m doing is about: How do I connect with the community, go to the people who live around our facilities, and open pathways to prosperity through meaningful careers in health care? And then for my incumbents, how do I meet them where they are, assess what their needs are, and then help them go to the next level and reach their full potential? These people are not quitting. They’re staying with us, and they’re not going into debt to upskill.
The flywheel is now turning, and we’ve created many other programs like these two. Last year, we served 1,700 people through more than 30 training programs.
Tonsing: You also created a career center within Ochsner, similar to what colleges have. Why?
Hopson: Because we believe that constantly asking people what they want to do next is part of a sound long-term workforce strategy. It’s part of that “inside up” mentality to filling job gaps.
So, we ask: Is this job your finish line, or your launchpad? Most people will say “launchpad,” but they need help to discover their passions, where their skills lie, and the path they need to take to achieve their goals. And they need help overcoming the barriers that have prevented them from taking the next step. The career center offers access to career coaches, life coaches, and social workers, so all our team members get the support they need to launch. The center will help us future-proof our organization because it will enable us to find people eager to tackle new challenges and innovate.
Tonsing: You’ve talked a lot about the barriers employees face. How does a mindset focused on human potential help you address those barriers?
Hopson: Ochsner has 42,000 team members. Every day, someone, somewhere, is facing a roadblock. On the surface, it makes them appear like struggling team members. They’re late or maybe even distracted. But it’s not that they’re setting out to be difficult team members. Life has happened. They’ve hit a wall they can’t overcome on their own. Our managers’ mindset now is, “How do I address what’s holding back this person?” and “How do I use the support in our career center to help my teammate?”
What Ochsner team members know is that our learning team is here to support them on their career journey in every way they need.
Tonsing: This support really must help build employees’ confidence and adaptability when it comes to things like AI.
Hopson: Yes, because they know we’re going to be here to help them through whatever change comes next. That we’re going to go through it together.
Working as humans, with humans, we’ve got to see each other wholly. And when we do see each other wholly — when we listen — we can understand what the unmet need might be. We can understand what someone needs to stay in their job and be successful.
There’s also the opportunity to think differently about the solutions we bring forward, because if we can solve what the unmet need is, we’re going to have a stabilized workforce. Retention goes up; turnovers down. And again, I always return to that measure that we care most about: Patient experience goes up when team members are valued. Patients heal better and more quickly when our teammates are not stressed and trust us to develop their potential.
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