VirtualHealth: Diversity Takes a Leading Role

By Adam Sabloff, Chief Executive Officer

Since its inception, VirtualHealth has been dedicated to nurturing an employee-centric culture that places a high value on diversity. Notably, the company is comprised of 40 percent women and 30 percent minorities, and more than 50 percent of the leadership team is female. This is one of many reasons the company was named as a 2018 Best Place to Work in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare.

Many tech companies create initiatives and programs to promote diversity, but their leadership often doesn’t reflect those goals. We’ve found that ensuring a diverse leadership team helps encourage a diverse candidate pool and a fair hiring process. When a company has a balanced leadership and hiring manager team, they have a much wider perspective when reviewing resumes, interviewing, and making offers. This lets us choose the best candidate for each role even during periods of rapid growth. 

A company can achieve a similar outcome in several ways. First is to broaden the talent pool by hiring from outside the industry. VirtualHealth frequently hires from outside of technology and healthcare. Many companies specifically look for new hires that work from a set list of companies, but that’s often how the same individuals move between the same organizations and recycle the same ideas. Beyond ensuring a more diverse talent pool, this approach pushes the industry forward with new perspectives, which is particularly valuable in a stagnant industry like healthcare.

Secondly, forming a diverse leadership team allows that team to build balanced teams under them. This ultimately translates into the hiring managers being an important mix of genders, races, and perspectives, which will trickle into every hiring decision the company will make. 

VirtualHealth has been fortunate to be led by a leadership team that prioritizes diversity, and it sees the benefits over time. The company gets dozens of applications for every open role and has the benefit of focusing on hiring the best candidate from a diverse pool. In addition, VirtualHealth’s strong culture has created a loyal and dedicated employee group who is passionate about promoting the same ideals for every new hire.