Recruiting ‘outside’ talent and developing your leadership team key to facing future reforms, says Regis Healthcare CEO Dr Linda Mellors

Among the CEOs to name ‘leadership team talent’ as her top priority for 2022 in our ‘Leaders to Watch’ issue, Linda has told this week’s Executive Talent issue of SATURDAY that all organisations should be looking at recruiting talent from outside the aged care sector. Regis’ current executive team comes from a diverse range of sectors, with a range of technical skills, and includes registered nurses, allied health professionals, and executives with IT, operations, healthcare, hotels, hospitality, tertiary education and manufacturing experience.

“Leadership development from the inside is absolutely critical, but you don’t want that to be the sole pipeline of talent for your executives,” Linda explained. “So, for me, it’s making sure that there is a balance between internal promotion and bringing in new and different skills and thinking from the outside.”

Executives from the healthcare sector, particularly people with a background in acute hospital, sub-acute and palliative care, as well as the hotel, hospitality and customer service sectors are also attractive options, she added.

“I also look at any kind of sector where you have a dispersed and complex portfolio. One of the challenges for us is that we have homes and services across the country. So, in terms of an executive, you need someone who understands what you need to do from a portfolio sense to support each of those stand-alone sites and businesses.”

Linda says she looks for executives who can think through complexity with a focus on systems-level thinking, but also deal with the uncertainty of the aged care environment.

“In an environment like ours, you want to have solid systems and processes to give you confidence about the reliability of what you have in place,” she said. “But then you also need executives who can deal with the uncertainty of our environment. You want people to put systems, processes and controls around as much as they can, but recognise the things they cannot control and that require a response without any forward planning.”

To read the full interview with Linda, check out this week’s Executive Talent issue of SATURDAY, in your inbox at 6am, on Saturday, 19 February. Subscribe here for full access.