Be an exceptional organization that attracts, develops and retains talent
As Courtney Stevens Greenwood walked to the stage, she thought: I really should have known better. I should’ve prepared what I wanted to say.
At that moment, though, it was hard for OMRF’s vice president of human resources to be angry, either at herself or anyone. It was December 2024, almost the 22nd anniversary of when she joined OMRF, and she was about to receive the foundation’s award for being voted one of the state’s Top Workplaces for the 12th straight time.
When she reached the microphone, Greenwood thanked OMRF’s employees, extolled the virtues of medical research and generally gushed about working at the foundation. But, she says now, “It was the perfect opportunity to talk about our values.”
If there’s anyone who knows about OMRF’s values, it’s Greenwood. As the head of human resources, she’s the person charged with ensuring that staff members stay true to the organization’s principles. And she got her start at OMRF by promoting those values – as the first recruiter OMRF ever hired.
It was the early 2000s, and OMRF’s president wanted to become more proactive about hiring. He began sending Greenwood, who’d previously worked as a recruiter but not in research, to scientific meetings. She quickly realized that if she was going to be an effective marketer for OMRF – “because that’s really what recruiting is,” she says – she would need to better understand the foundation’s culture. So, she asked various scientific staff members if she could watch them work.
That immersion not only gave her an on-the-ground view of life in the lab, but it also taught her what was special about OMRF. “I learned about the culture of training and mentorship in our labs,” she says. “I saw how managers supported and encouraged the people they worked with.” That, in turn, proved valuable when she spoke to recruits about what differentiated OMRF from other employers.
Greenwood’s messaging differs for each recruit. For instance, if people are coming from a big city on one of the coasts, she may highlight the quality of life in Oklahoma City. “I emphasize things like the low cost of living, the relative lack of traffic and ease of getting around,” she says. If they have children, she and her staff will arrange visits to local schools. They’ll also connect them with real estate agents.
The key, she says, is to understand what’s important to the recruits and their families. To that end, she and her team will schedule calls beforehand with the prospective employees – and their significant others – to gauge what’s meaningful to them. Then, they’ll do their best to connect them to local resources, which can mean anything from arranging a kayaking tour of Lake Overholser to matchmaking one recruit’s spouse with an Oklahoma dressage club. “But first, I had to look up what dressage was,” she says. (For the record, it’s a form of precision horseback riding.)
With non-Oklahomans, there’s one topic that inevitably comes up: tornadoes. When asked about the “T word,” Greenwood attempts to ease anxiety with information and humor. She tells them about advancements in weather prediction technology and the statewide warning system. At this, she’ll lean into her experience as a lifelong Oklahoman, telling them – with a smile – that “you’ll always know when it’s noon on a Saturday.”
For Greenwood and her team, the goal is simple: “We want everybody to want to be here.” That, she says, is true “whether we make them an offer or not.”
Still, recruiting talented people only represents a starting point. “We work hard to make OMRF a place where people want to spend their careers,” Greenwood says. That means offering generous health and retirement benefits, an employee fitness center, a subsidized onsite café, and many other programs that enrich OMRFers’ day-to-day lives.
It also means building and reinforcing a culture of listening, Greenwood says. “We seek input, and we genuinely want that feedback. Any employee can walk into my office whenever they want. They can walk into any member of the leadership team’s office and say, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on.’”
That open-door policy, she says, applies regardless of the message being delivered. “It might be a plea for help. It might be a complaint. We want to hear it all.” And, she says, “We want to figure out a solution.”
At OMRF, she says, people in every role – administrative, research, clinical – take great pride in the foundation’s scientific accomplishments. And that’s precisely as it should be. “Our goal is to create an environment where everyone understands that their contributions make an impact. We’re all in it together.”
