Colette Brown, CHRO at Stony Brook Medicine

Show Notes

Running HR in a 24/7 Hospital: Stony Brook’s CHRO on Behavior-Based Leadership and AI

Connect with Colette Brown: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colettebrownhr/

Summary

How do you lead 10,000 caregivers across three shifts without losing consistency, compassion, or speed?

Colette Brown, Chief Human Resources Officer at Stony Brook University Hospital—the only Level I trauma center in Suffolk County and recently ranked #1 in New York for pediatric care and #7 in the nation—explains how her team supports a round-the-clock workforce.

Colette shares why leadership is the core challenge in healthcare HR and how to replace labels like “toxic” with pinpointed behaviors you can coach.

She walks through Stony Brook’s homegrown manager training (verbs over adjectives, real role-plays, and ER partnership) and how they prepare leaders for tough reactions while preserving empathy and fairness.

Colette also details their AI journey, including “Herbie,” a 24/7 HR chatbot built to handle high-volume, high-urgency questions—from leaves and timesheets to employment verifications—and why continuous monitoring matters.

Along the way, she reflects on COVID-era heroism, practical resilience, and career advice for rising HR leaders. Expect actionable tools for behavior-based leadership, self-service at scale, and using AI to reduce anxiety before investigations and difficult conversations.

Timestamps

[00:38] – Stony Brook’s footprint, rankings, and mission-driven culture

[01:56] – Why healthcare HR is hardest: 24/7 staffing and emotional labor

[04:44] – COVID heroism: SUNY Upstate nurses, community support, lasting lessons

[06:18] – 2026 priorities: leadership, fairness, and the “attitude trap”

[08:44] – From labels to behaviors: verbs, pinpointing, and practical training

[11:22] – Coaching managers: ER partnership and preparing for tough reactions

[15:12] – AI in HR: launching “Herbie,” the 24/7 HR chatbot

[17:58] – What employees ask most—and how self-service changes HR

Takeaways

- Replace labels with observable behaviors; coach using verbs and specific examples.

- Build manager capability with role-plays, scripts, and ER support to handle difficult reactions.

- Standardize fairness and consistency across shifts; set clear expectations and address issues early.

- Use AI to rehearse investigations and tough conversations to reduce anxiety and improve outcomes.

- Deploy a 24/7 HR chatbot; curate content, track trends, and continuously refine answers.

- Invest in caregiver well-being and resilience to sustain performance in a round-the-clock environment.

Sponsor

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What is HR Voices?

HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.

Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.

There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.

HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”

Emily Fenech (00:35)
Welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Emily Fenech and today I am lucky enough to be chatting with Collette Brown, the CHRO at Stony Brook University Hospital. Welcome, Collette.

Colette Brown (00:46)
Thanks so much, Emily. I'm really excited to be here.

Emily Fenech (00:50)
Yes, so excited to talk to you. Collette, Stony Brook is a household name for a lot of people. A lot of people really know that name. Stony Brook was recently named the number one hospital in New York for pediatric care and number seven hospital in the nation. What an achievement. Can you tell us a little bit more about, more context on Stony Brook for those who may not be familiar?

Colette Brown (01:10)
Absolutely, and I am like so proud and so grateful to work here. We are the only level one trauma center in Suffolk County We have about 8100 employees here at Stony Brook University Hospital We also have two affiliate hospitals Stony Brook Southampton and Stony Brook Eastern Long Island. So all together we're about 10,000 employees But University Hospital really is a premier hospital. We just have an exceptional team

Our CEO, Carol Gomes, is so dedicated to our mission. Our entire executive leadership team are really top notch. And we just have exceptional employees, truly, truly dedicated to the mission we serve. And it really is inspiring. It's just an inspiring and wonderful place to come to work every day.

Emily Fenech (01:54)
That's awesome. sounds like I'm down the street from Vanderbilt, which is also another university hospital. I just feel so lucky to within proximity to an institution like that. I'm sure the residents near you in Suffolk County feel the same way. was looking, shifting gears, know it's a wonderful high ranked hospital, but I wanted to shift gears a little bit more to the challenges. So I was on Reddit of all authoritative places to get your information.

Colette Brown (02:18)
Okay.

Emily Fenech (02:18)
But

I did see something interesting, which was there was a poll on the HR community subreddit. It was like, what do you think is the most challenging environment for people leaders? And healthcare by far was talked about, was voted to the top. I wanted to get your take on that as someone who's a senior people leader within healthcare. Why do you think that that is? What are some of the challenges for leading people in that context?

Colette Brown (02:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's interesting. I think some of the challenges that are probably unique to health care, we operate 24-7, so we need to make sure that we have full staffing, round the clock, 365 days a year, so Christmas Day, every other day in between, and we have to make sure that we have adequate support for our employees on all three shifts.

including supervision and people who are there as resources to them if they run into a problem or need support with something. So I think that's an inherent challenge in any type of industry where you're operating 24-7. Also, the work they do, it requires not only a high level of clinical skills, but really a high level of emotional compassion, empathy, and that really can...

take a toll on employees. So we focus a lot on resilience and their own well-being. Because when you're caring for people who are sick, or you're caring for a family who has a newborn in the neonatal intensive care unit, you become emotionally attached and emotionally involved. And again, we have to make sure that we're taking good care of our employees and they're taking good care of themselves. So I think those are some of the challenges that are unique.

One of the things that I think will stick with me forever is during COVID, what our employees went through and the sacrifices they made and literally the heroism they demonstrated. When we knew very little, they were coming to work, putting themselves at risk. Of course, we had every type of protective equipment under the sun and we were ahead of everything, but still it was a very frightening time. And like many healthcare organizations,

we just couldn't staff to the levels we needed to staff. And being part of SUNY, which is the State University of New York, we called upon one of our sister hospitals, SUNY Upstate. They're near Syracuse and they weren't yet, the wave of the pandemic hadn't yet hit them. And we had probably 20 or 30 nurses who voluntarily came down. You we put them in housing, spent two to three weeks with us.

helping us take care of our patients. we had, they had a police escort, fire engine escort, we had employees lined out in front of the hospitals, all just clapping, cheering, holding signs. I mean, we were all choked up and I still get emotional. I really get emotional thinking about it and I think it just demonstrates the absolute passion.

Emily Fenech (05:09)
I'm getting choked up now. ⁓

Colette Brown (05:18)
caregivers have for their patients and their community. And we are so fortunate to have incredibly compassionate and caring and highly skilled employees here at Stony Brook and within SUNY.

Emily Fenech (05:34)
That's moving. You're the first first guest that's made me cry on HR Voices. No, it's I think it's a longer. Yeah, absolutely. Just I can't imagine being in that position and it takes you back to think about, you know, what that was like for for frontline workers. I again, I mentioned I'm in Nashville. It's a huge health care. Most of my majority of my friends are nurses or in the music business. So it just takes me back to them. A lot of them traveled to other other areas. So.

Colette Brown (05:37)
I'm sorry. Happy tears, I hope.

Ha

Yes.

Emily Fenech (06:03)
When it comes to your people team, you know, if you take it back to where we are now, almost 2026, I'm sure you're thinking ahead to the future. When you think about your people team specifically, what sort of challenges are they facing day to day that are top of mind for you as we enter into the new year?

Colette Brown (06:21)
Well, first I'll say we're in so much of a better place than we were in 2020 and 20 and now in 2025 and going into 2026. We've made incredible strides with staffing. We have really invested a great deal in our employees and compensation and leadership development programs and reward and recognition programs, as I mentioned in wellness and resilience programs. I think some of the challenges for

Stony Brook, quite frankly, are the same challenges I've personally seen in every organization I've worked in and are the same challenges I hear my peers talk about all the time. And there's the same challenges I read about all the time. And that's really leadership. I think a big challenge comes down to ensuring that as leaders, we are building and nurturing a culture of respect, a culture where employees feel

that their voices are truly heard, that their suggestions resonate, and where things are fair. The standards are the same for everyone. And when it comes to ensuring fairness and consistency, I think leaders struggle with that, and I see that as their biggest pain point for two primary reasons. One is, like leaders, like all of us, we're human.

dread, dread, dread conflict and go out of our way, quite honestly, to avoid it. So we tend not to have those important and sometimes difficult conversations. And I think the second part of that same challenge has to do with what I call labeling employees or sometimes I call it the attitude trap. So throughout my career, I've heard leaders say, they have a negative attitude.

this person is toxic, I've even heard there are cancer on the department. mean, all kinds of dramatic language. this is not, this is again, I would feel confident that you would see this in every organization. And I think the challenge is leaders, like most of us, were never taught how to pinpoint behavior. I actually learned that term when I worked for an organization.

that was a residential and educational facility for kids and adults with intellectual disabilities. And they had behavioral analysts there and they really used the science to talk about how to pinpoint or identify specific behaviors that are problematic. So then you can coach and teach around those behaviors. So we do a lot of work in our leadership education workshops where we say, okay, don't tell me any names. Think about the person.

could be at work, could be at life, or at home. When the phone rings or they walk into your office, you just go, ugh, and who is it? And now don't use any adjectives, no labeling them, use verbs, and describe the specific behaviors. And invariably at first, even in the workshops after we say, don't use adjectives, use verbs, don't label the person, invariably they do. But then we,

work through it and we say okay what are the things they say or do that make you feel as though they're negative or how are they saying it or how are they doing it and then we're able to really distill and pinpoint so we do a lot of education around that so that leaders can address not only performance issues but behavioral issues because behavioral issues is one of the biggest influencers

of how employees feel about the work environment. If I'm coming to work every day and I feel as though my coworker is exhibiting label bullying behavior, that's going to affect my work experience. Maybe I'm going to be less engaged. Maybe I'm actually going to leave. So it's really to me it's a leadership imperative.

Emily Fenech (10:10)
Mm-hmm. So at All Voices, we're an employee relations platform. So we see this all the time, which is that when complaints come in, they are so often adjectives. But I've never heard it explained so succinctly as you just did, right? Of, you know, this person is a bully. Well, can we, you know, an investigator's job is to get down to the behavior. What was specifically said or what was specifically done?

Colette Brown (10:16)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Emily Fenech (10:37)
so

that we can coach to it. So I love the way that you just explained that. ⁓ So in addition to the training, is there anything else that you've done to try to address that challenge? there a specific, do you develop your own training or is there anything that others could adopt to help lead a session like that? That sounds very helpful.

Colette Brown (10:41)
Thank you.

We actually have developed our own training, our own homegrown training around those notions and around those concepts. And I think taking them and trying to put them into practice is really the key. I personally throughout my career have gone through to a lot of educational training programs where there's a lot of theory. And certainly the theory is important. We need to understand the rationale. We need to understand why. But I believe we're

Emily Fenech (11:16)
Right.

Colette Brown (11:23)
some of these trainings fall short is they don't talk about the how. Now how do I actually implement this? What do I actually do? So we go into great detail getting that granular and we do a lot of exercises, a lot of role plays, a lot of case studies, allowing them to put it into practice. We're also very fortunate because we have a wonderful employee relations team.

and we tell our managers all the time, the only thing you have to remember from this workshop is call HR. So we tell them, just pick up the phone and call us and we will walk you through it. We will help you distill what is happening, what can be addressed, how should it be addressed. We will coach you, we will help script you, we will help prepare you for reactions. I think that's another thing.

Emily Fenech (11:56)
Thanks

Colette Brown (12:14)
leaders struggle with is what if the employee gets angry, what if the employee cries, what if the employee says, what about, you know, what about so and so, and you're picking on me. We actually help them rehearse and practice for that. We say to them, of course you want to stay in listening mode. You don't want to just have scripted answers. You want to listen to, understand, and empathize with the employee's saying, but we want you also to be prepared.

on what's an appropriate way to respond because the ultimate goal is to help that employee grow, develop, and meet the expectations and ultimately to ensure our commitment to all of our employees, which is a safe and comfortable work environment.

Emily Fenech (13:00)
Yes, that's wonderful. Right now, right after this recording with you, we're actually doing a mock investigation. We do them regularly at All Voices and this time I play investigator. It is such a difficult, more difficult role when you have to put yourself in that position to ask those questions and pinpoint those behaviors. I've been leveraging AI to sort of help me prepare as someone who doesn't do this every day. So just sort of helping me anticipate.

Colette Brown (13:23)
Yes.

Emily Fenech (13:28)
emotional reactions so that I can be prepared for them or anticipate difficult questions or, you know, make sure I've covered all of my bases. So it's been really helpful as I prepare for my fake interview. ⁓

Colette Brown (13:39)
Yes,

but that is a wonderful idea and AI is just such an incredible tool and it's so powerful and I've been encouraging my HR team to really leverage it and we do take advantage of it and I think that's a great idea is you can role play with AI. And of course, we never know what's going to happen in the actual moment, but it does help us prepare.

Emily Fenech (13:43)
Mm-hmm.

Colette Brown (14:09)
And I think that preparation naturally helps reduce anxiety.

Emily Fenech (14:14)
Yes, that's, I mean, even it just going into it in a better emotional space, it's been helpful. Last time we spoke, you had mentioned to me some sort of AI technologies, tools that you've been bringing in-house to support your team. Could you tell us a little bit more about where you guys are on your adoption journey and what your experience has been so far?

Colette Brown (14:32)
Absolutely. About a year and a half ago now, we rolled out an HR chatbot, which is AI, I would say certainly not as robust as a chat GPT or a co-pilot. But we partnered with a vendor and we rolled out an HR chatbot. We had a little contest with our employees to name it, and we named our chatbot Herbie, which is spelled capital H, capital R, so HR, and then BIE. ⁓

And we really wanted to make sure that employees were aware of this new tool, this new resource, and we had a lot of fun with it. We had our HR leaders dressing up in like a little robot costume, walking around. We had tabling events. We did all kinds of photo shoots with Herbie, and employees had a lot of fun with it, but the most important part was we communicated that Herbie was

going live and was here to help them. And as we talked about, we're a 24-7 operation, but HR is not open 24-7. So employees who have questions at three o'clock in the morning or who need a benefits form or need to know, you I need to get a copy of my W-2 form, whatever it might be, now they can do that 24-7. They don't have to wait and sometimes wake up

You know, it's my value time to sleep, but I have to get up to call HR when they're open. So we were very excited about that. We were very thoughtful about how we programmed Herbie. We had to build his brain, so to speak, in terms of uploading content, putting the links to particular websites that we wanted him to scan, putting links to documents that we wanted him to scan.

and creating custom questions and responses. We tried to put some silly fun things in there too. Herbie's always having a good day, no matter how you ask him what he's doing. He's usually pretty positive. And we continue to monitor the chat bot. I think that's the most important thing. It's easy to say, here it is, it's fun, we went live, we did it. But we continue to monitor it to see what kinds of questions are coming in. Is Herbie answering the questions correctly?

and then we modify his responses and add content when we see there are questions coming in that he hasn't answered in the past.

Emily Fenech (16:55)
Yeah, I going to ask what you're learning from it. Has anything sort of surprised you in terms of maybe things that need to be better communicated or better documented or anything like that?

Colette Brown (17:05)
It has been interesting. And we've looked at some of the metrics. I'm amazed at the number of requests we get for employment verifications. And that's something that we can now do much more quickly, much more efficiently for employees. A lot of questions about leaves, leaves of absence, information that was available to employees, but not in the moment. So that's really been the biggest piece.

bread and butter questions that employees want. You what are our holidays? How do I submit my timesheet? I mean, it's really those types of almost procedural questions that they're asking.

Emily Fenech (17:38)
Right.

The things that HR get, no matter how many times you've emailed everyone or posted it clearly and they still ask, you know, about holiday schedule and you just drive you a little bit crazy, but Herbie doesn't mind.

Colette Brown (17:46)
Yes.

Yes. Herbie

doesn't mind and like you know again it comes down to human nature. If you if I come to orientation and you tell me all about my benefits okay great but it's not really going to resonate with me I may not remember it when six months from now I now need to utilize it.

Emily Fenech (18:08)
Exactly. Well, we have covered so much ground today. I have really enjoyed this conversation. It's been an emotional roller coaster. But any sort of final words of advice for our audience on the HR leaders, maybe not as senior in their careers as you yet, do you have any advice?

Colette Brown (18:24)
I guess from a career path point of view for those who are looking to grow their career in HR, I always found it to be basically just be eager and willing to learn. Ask, what can I help with? Can I get involved in this project? This is really interesting. Can I somehow lend a hand? I think those types of things have been what

have enabled me to move forward in my career, as well as I encourage all in HR to invest in themselves, to teach yourself whatever skill it is, whatever tool it is that you feel you need to refine, just take the time and invest in yourself to do that. As you said with AI, my goodness, how much easier is that than it was years ago? But from a career point of view, I think from a practice point of view, it can, like any other field,

HR can become sometimes exhausting. Again, we have to take care of ourselves as people. We're listening to sometimes problems throughout the day and take care of yourselves. And also no matter what, don't allow yourself to fall into the trap of becoming cynical and just really recognize every employee is an individual, a whole person and treat them as such.

And I think that will yield incredible results for your organization. It really just comes down to the basics, kindness, compassion, empathy, respect, fairness, accountability. I mean, it's nothing secret or magic. It's basically, again, human behavior, what we all want in any organization.

Emily Fenech (20:00)
That's great advice. Thank you so much Colette for being here and for sharing all of your wisdom with us today.

Colette Brown (20:05)
thank you, Emily. It was my pleasure and thanks for a fun conversation. You too. Bye bye.

Emily Fenech (20:10)
Take care.