Lab Soft News: More on the Epic Systems Culture: HR Responsible for All Hiring Decisions

I have posted a number of previous notes about Epic Systems with particular emphasis on it's corporate culture (see: Epic Systems and Its Corporate Culture; More on the Epic Culture: Is This a Cult or a Company?; Epic Flexes Its Political Muscle in Wisconsin with Boycott). These notes have drawn considerable attention, particularly from IP addresses inside the company. The CEO and founder of the company, Judith Faulkner, shapes the company's culture but she rarely speaks to the press. I was therefore interested to discover an article from December, 2002, describing her own views about the Epic corporate culture (see: Epic's Founder Judy Faulkner Speaks on Culture, Business Beliefs, and Recruiting). Below is an excerpt from it:

All potential employees go through a rigorous screening process. HR is responsible for all hiring decisions. There are no job descriptions. The employees in the workgroup have no input. Faulkner believes, "teams hire people they like ... this eventually breeds bad attitudes and ego-protection" Faulkner tries to take personality out the decision process and hire on skills. "Beware of the articulate incompetent ... a bad weed is a flower in another garden," according to Faulkner. She believes it takes three years for a person out of college to become an "Epic Person," and six years for those hired from the outside.

As I have said in the past, it's difficult to argue with success and Epic is one of the most successful EMR companies around. I must admit, however, that I found the above quote intriguing. I worked in the area of LISs and lab software for 24 years. I can say with absolute uncertainty that the very last group in the organization to whom I would turn for a hire recommendation, let alone a hire decision, would have been human resources (HR). In the large health system environment in which I spent most of my career, the function played by HR was to understand the myriad personnel rules of the organization and ensure that new hires were acceptable under these rules. This had little relationship to the competency or suitability of the new people being interviewed.

So how can one understand and explain Judith Faulkner's quote above? There is only one way that I can explain it. She clearly understands and controls her HR group with an iron hand. The members of the group certainly understand the type of individuals that she wants to place into the organization. However and in my opinion, members of a workgroup need to provide some input into the selection of their co-workers. I reject the idea that members of a workgroup will select new hires primarily on the basis of their congeniality. In work teams, particularly small ones with a lot of responsibility, everyone needs to pull their load. In such a setting, it would be suicidal to recommend, say, a gregarious person who was a slacker.

Epic is a privately held company that is dominated by its founder. One important locus of control is obviously through the company executives and line managers. Faulkner clearly also exercises additional leverage and control through the HR department and their control of new hires. As I have said before, she must be doing something right but my gut tells me that the company is paying a high price in terms of personnel turnover by ignoring input about new hire decisions from team members.

May 2020