When a new team member joins CorrHealth, receives their first paycheck, enrolls in benefits, or celebrates a work anniversary, there is a team working behind the scenes to make those experiences possible.
The People and Culture Department plays an essential role in supporting CorrHealth’s team members, facility operations, and city and county partners. While many people interact with the department during hiring, onboarding, benefits enrollment, or performance review season, its responsibilities extend far beyond these familiar processes.
From maintaining accurate records and coordinating payroll to supporting supervisors, recruiting healthcare professionals, and recognizing team member milestones, People and Culture helps keep CorrHealth connected, organized, and prepared to serve our communities.
To better understand the work happening behind the scenes, we connected with Kim, CorrHealth’s Director of People and Culture, who shared an inside look at the department, its responsibilities, and the many ways her team supports the organization every day.
Supporting Every Stage of the Team Member Experience
The work of People and Culture begins long before a new team member arrives for their first day.
The department supports the entire team member lifecycle, beginning with recruitment and hiring and continuing through onboarding, benefits, professional development, performance management, and ongoing support.
Each stage requires careful coordination between team members, supervisors, facility administrators, and organizational departments.
For example, bringing a new nurse into CorrHealth involves much more than posting a job opening and scheduling an interview. Behind the scenes, multiple People and Culture team members may be involved in reviewing applications, coordinating interviews, preparing offer letters, completing background checks, organizing onboarding documents, verifying credentials, preparing orientation materials, and ensuring the new hire is properly entered into the organization’s systems.
Once that individual joins CorrHealth, the department continues providing support through payroll, benefits, training coordination, performance reviews, and other needs that arise throughout their career.
Although many of these responsibilities happen outside the public eye, they contribute directly to the experience of CorrHealth’s team members.
Kim’s Role as Director of People and Culture
As Director of People and Culture, Kim oversees the department’s overall direction while remaining closely involved in its daily operations.
Her responsibilities include People and Culture strategy, workforce planning, policy oversight, compliance, organizational support, and guidance on complex team member matters.
However, her role extends beyond developing strategies and overseeing department priorities.
In a growing, hands-on organization like CorrHealth, Kim also works alongside her team to address the situations and challenges that arise each day.
This can include assisting with investigations, conducting team member check-ins, supporting supervisors, providing policy guidance, following up on compliance matters, and helping resolve team member concerns.
Her position requires balancing the needs of individual team members with the operational responsibilities of the organization.
Whether she is helping a supervisor navigate a personnel matter or working with the department to improve an internal process, Kim helps ensure that People and Culture remains responsive to the people it serves.
An important part of her work is connecting the department’s priorities with CorrHealth’s broader goals while maintaining a practical understanding of the systems, processes, and people that keep the organization moving forward.
The People and Culture Generalist: Connecting Team Members and Supervisors
The People and Culture Generalist supports many of the programs and processes that team members encounter throughout their careers at CorrHealth.
This role helps coordinate New Hire Orientation, education reimbursement, leave requests, performance reviews, and training activities.
The Generalist also processes personnel action forms, assists with team member relations, supports compliance follow-up, and works directly with supervisors to navigate the organization’s performance management platform.
These responsibilities require consistent communication and attention to detail.
When a team member has a question about leave, a supervisor needs assistance with a performance review, or an individual submits an education reimbursement request, the Generalist helps guide the process.
By serving as a connection between team members, supervisors, and organizational management, this position helps ensure that important information reaches the right people and that requests continue moving forward.
Payroll and Benefits: Supporting Financial Well-Being
Accurate payroll and accessible benefits are fundamental parts of a positive team member experience.
CorrHealth’s Payroll & Benefits Manager oversees the processes that help ensure team members are paid correctly and understand the benefits available to them.
This includes payroll processing, pay rate verification, earnings adjustments, benefits administration, benefit deductions, and coordination with outside vendors.
The role also manages open enrollment, COBRA-related processes, retirement plan support, reconciliations, and year-end compliance requirements such as W-2 distribution and Affordable Care Act reporting.
Many of these responsibilities involve detailed reviews and strict deadlines.
Even a routine payroll change requires accurate information, proper documentation, and coordination to ensure that it is processed correctly.
While much of this work happens quietly behind the scenes, its impact is felt by team members across every CorrHealth facility.
Recruiting the Healthcare Professionals Who Support Our Mission
Recruitment is another important responsibility of the People and Culture Department.
As CorrHealth continues supporting correctional facilities across its service areas, attracting qualified healthcare professionals requires ongoing communication, organization, and relationship-building.
The Recruiting Specialist manages many aspects of the hiring process, including job postings, applicant screening, interview coordination, offer letters, background check coordination, and candidate communication.
This position also maintains the applicant tracking system, monitors recruitment metrics, and partners with hiring managers throughout the selection process.
The goal is to create an organized and responsive hiring experience while helping CorrHealth facilities connect with qualified candidates.
Building Future Clinical Talent Pipelines
While the Recruiting Specialist manages the broader hiring process, the Nurse Talent Scout focuses specifically on identifying and connecting with clinical professionals.
This includes nurses and other healthcare positions that may be particularly challenging to fill.
The Nurse Talent Scout builds relationships with potential candidates, attends healthcare job fairs, conducts outreach to professionals who may not be actively searching for a new position, and develops connections with nursing schools and clinical programs.
CorrHealth is also expanding its proactive recruitment efforts through a College Recruiting Headhunter focus within this role.
This initiative is designed to strengthen relationships with colleges, universities, nursing programs, allied health programs, and emerging healthcare professionals.
By connecting with students and future clinicians earlier in their careers, CorrHealth can introduce them to correctional healthcare opportunities and build long-term relationships with individuals whose professional goals align with the organization’s mission.
Where applicable, these efforts may also support internship opportunities and entry-level recruitment.
Rather than waiting until a position becomes available, this approach helps CorrHealth develop relationships with potential future team members before an immediate hiring need arises.
The People and Culture Coordinator: Keeping Processes Moving
Behind every organized department is a significant amount of coordination.
The People and Culture Coordinator helps manage the systems, information, and deadlines that support daily operations.
This includes maintaining People and Culture information system data, coordinating onboarding logistics, tracking performance reviews, preparing routine reports, supporting audits, and routing important documents.
The Coordinator also assists with recruitment activities, applicant tracking system updates, monthly newsletters, social media support, and job description creation and revisions.
Another important responsibility involves collecting salary survey information and market data to support compensation reviews and workforce planning.
Although these tasks may seem unrelated at first glance, they all contribute to keeping CorrHealth’s internal processes organized and current.
Accurate job descriptions support recruitment and workforce planning. Updated records help maintain compliance. Performance review tracking helps supervisors stay on schedule. Organized communication ensures team members receive important information.
The Coordinator helps connect these moving pieces so the department can respond efficiently to the organization’s needs.
The People and Culture Assistant: The Details That Make a Difference
Some of the department’s most important responsibilities involve tasks that team members may never realize are happening.
The People and Culture Assistant provides administrative, records, and logistical support that helps the entire department operate smoothly.
This includes maintaining personnel files, scanning and filing documents, preparing new hire packets, organizing orientation materials, assembling interview packets, and coordinating department mailings.
The Assistant also supports clothing fulfillment, apparel inventory, packaging, shipping, recruitment event materials, scheduling, and data verification.
When a new team member receives an onboarding packet, a facility receives requested apparel, or recruitment materials arrive at a job fair, the People and Culture Assistant may have helped make it happen.
These details are easy to overlook, but they are essential to creating an organized and responsive department.
The Work You Might Not Know Happens Behind the Scenes
Beyond the department’s formal responsibilities, People and Culture manages a wide range of smaller tasks that contribute to CorrHealth’s workplace culture and team member experience.
Some involve important organizational processes, while others focus on personal connections and recognition.
For example, the department prepares monthly birthday cards, coordinates anniversary gifts, fulfills team member attire requests, and helps distribute recognition items.
Other responsibilities are less visible but equally important.
These include assisting with IT support needs, preparing job fair materials, supporting investigations, conducting team member check-ins, maintaining accurate personnel records, coordinating compliance activities, and helping supervisors navigate department systems.
A birthday card may take only a moment to read, but someone must maintain accurate information, prepare the card, and ensure it reaches the intended team member.
A job fair may last only a few hours, but preparing for it can involve organizing promotional materials, updating job postings, preparing recruitment packets, coordinating schedules, and shipping supplies.
An onboarding session may appear straightforward to a new hire, but it represents the combined efforts of several people working to ensure everything is ready.
These responsibilities demonstrate that People and Culture is not limited to major milestones or formal personnel processes. Its work is woven into the everyday experiences of CorrHealth team members.
Supporting the People Who Support Our Patients
Although each position within People and Culture has distinct responsibilities, the department’s work is deeply connected.
Recruitment leads to onboarding. Onboarding requires accurate records and payroll information. Benefits, training, performance management, and ongoing support continue throughout a team member’s career.
Each process depends on communication and coordination between different members of the department.
Together, these efforts support CorrHealth’s ability to attract, onboard, develop, and retain talented healthcare professionals.
They also help facility administrators and supervisors focus on their operational responsibilities by providing assistance with the personnel processes that support their teams.
For CorrHealth’s city and county partners, a well-supported healthcare workforce contributes to consistent facility operations and quality patient care.
More Than a Department
The People and Culture Department’s impact cannot be measured by any single responsibility.
It is reflected in the new team member who feels prepared for their first day, the nurse who receives assistance with a benefits question, the supervisor who gets support navigating a challenging situation, and the team member who feels appreciated when a birthday card or anniversary gift arrives.
It is also reflected in the accurate records, organized processes, recruitment efforts, and compliance activities that support CorrHealth’s continued operations.
Under Kim’s direction, the People and Culture team works to provide timely, accurate, and compassionate service while supporting the people who make CorrHealth’s mission possible.
To Kim and the entire People and Culture Department, thank you for the countless ways you help keep CorrHealth moving forward. Your work behind the scenes makes a meaningful difference every day.