Tag: #healthcare

Estia Health: Recruiting Registered Nurses for Aged Care

Posted on by akessler
Estia Health: Recruiting Registered Nurses for Aged Care

Aged Care Recruitment in Australia

Estia Health: Recruiting Registered Nurses for Aged Care

Estia Health needed to source critical healthcare roles in their most hard-to-fill locations. PeopleScout’s sourcing expertise and EVP insights helped them exceed their targets in one of the tightest candidate markets in memory.

600+ + candidates screened
drop outs occured across the entire recruitment process
4 months to fill critical vacancies

Challenge

Estia Health is one of Australia’s largest aged care operators, with 72 residential aged care homes in SA, VIC, NSW and QLD. The aged care sector in Australia is suffering from a major skills shortage as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, international border closures and a large number of workers leaving the sector.

Estia turned to PeopleScout for project recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) to support the recruitment of registered nurses and support staff across a number of critical locations where they were getting little to no response to their vacancies. 

Solution

Two senior recruitment business partners supported Estia across five locations who drove passive and active recruitment for registered nurses and aged care workers. PeopleScout researched Estia’s target market to understand what motivates workers in the healthcare sector to accept a role. Following this, our team provided recommendations on the lifestyle bonuses they could offer as incentives for workers to travel to their locations. We also coached Estia on how to boost their employer brand to raise awareness of their opportunities, which has delivered a long-term impact within a challenging market.

Results

PeopleScout worked within Estia’s existing ATS system and screened over 600 candidates. We were able to speed up the process for successful candidates and in a number of locations achieved zero dropouts throughout the screening and background check process.

Over a 4-month period, our team placed 14 permanent positions across:

  • Registered Nurses
  • Personal Care Workers
  • Hospitality Support

With a large worker exodus across the sector, recruitment in the aged care sector in Australia is still an ongoing challenge. However, PeopleScout has proven our ability to make a significant impact in a short period of time for Estia Health.

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY
    Estia Health
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT ESTIA HEALTH
    Estia Health manages 72 residential aged care homes across Australia, supporting over 8,000 residents and their families at an important time in their lives.
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Employee Engagement at King’s College Hospital: Saying a Big “Thank You” to Nurses

Posted on by akessler
Employee Engagement at King’s College Hospital: Saying a Big "Thank You" to Nurses

Employee Engagement at King’s College Hospital: Saying a Big “Thank You” to Nurses

As one of the busiest NHS trusts in the UK, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust turned to PeopleScout for help with attracting nurses and other clinical professionals. Learn how we helped the Trust say a big “thank you” to their staff with a larger-than-life employee engagement campaign.

300 Pieces of Artwork
18 Installations Across 3 Sites
50% % Increase in Peer Recognition Among Staff
13,159 Thank-yous Sent to Staff

King’s College National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust is one of the busiest trusts in the UK, providing healthcare services for a population of over 1 million people. It supports numerous clinics and hospitals, including King’s College Hospital, a leading teaching hospital and trauma centre serving several boroughs in southeast London. Their vision is to hire brilliant, diverse staff who provide outstanding care for their patients and continue to educate and innovate for the future of medicine.

The Challenge

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust came to PeopleScout with a challenge. They were, like many other healthcare organisations, struggling to recruit for clinical roles such as nursing.

To address this, our initial objective was to develop a “Why King’s” message for an employer brand campaign. But after conducting focus groups with employees, it became clear that, to fix the attraction issue, we needed to start with employee engagement.

Retention of staff wasn’t an issue—King’s was overarchingly seen as a place where, with the right motivation, employees could grow in their career. The problem was an overall feeling among staff that there was a lack of recognition and appreciation from senior leadership. While there was a great deal of pride and loyalty within teams, there was no strong sense of unity across the five sites within the Trust.

Before we could go out with an authentic employer brand message, we needed to show employees that they are valued, encourage staff recognition and galvanise the organisation.

And we needed to do this on a big, Trust-wide scale.

The Strategy           

We designed an employee engagement campaign that would not only recognise employees, but would also be a big, bold, morale-boosting showcase of Kings’ values:

  • Always aiming higher
  • Working together
  • Inspiring confidence in our care

Little did we know just how important this message would become as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world. As the UK began clapping for the NHS in March 2020, we were designing a campaign that would greet the King’s staff on the frontlines and serve as a constant reminder of their incredible work, both before and throughout the pandemic.

This was so much more than an attraction campaign. It was our ‘Big Thank You’ to those who had sacrificed so much to keep us all safe.

Bringing It to Life

Six Days. 166 Participants.

As soon as lockdown restrictions lifted, we safely photographed and filmed people from across a range of clinical and non-clinical roles from all of King’s sites. Staff gave up valuable break time to take part in something that honoured their colleagues as well as recognised their own contributions.

350 Thank-Yous

Using comments made about participating staff members by their colleagues, we created 350 thank-yous—for both individual participants and general messages to all staff.

300 Pieces of Artwork. 18 Installations Across Three Main Sites.

We used the secondary colour palette from the NHS brand to create something that would stand out from the usual NHS blue to celebrate our King’s stars. With 300 pieces of eye-catching collateral in tow, we plastered our larger-than-life installations across three main sites, including a huge projection onto the outside of the hospital at their central location. Images went up on walls; inside and outside of buildings; on fence railings, stairs and windows.

Imagine the feeling: Arriving for another exhausting shift on the COVID frontlines to see an over 300-square-foot personalised message of gratitude to you, from your employer, projected on the outside of your workplace for all your colleagues and the local community to see.

That’s recognition on a big scale.

Not only did the installations delight staff, they also expressed the appreciation of King’s leadership and echoed the community’s warmth and gratitude for the Trust and the wider NHS.

Results

In times of unprecedented turmoil, unimaginable pressure and unbelievable sadness, this uplifting campaign created a feeling of belonging, camaraderie and engagement among staff. As COVID-19 raged, what had started as an idea to recognise and celebrate those who brought the King’s values to life, evolved to become a wider message for all, “Thank you to all of you, for everything—and whatever comes next, we’re all in this together.”

The campaign has been instrumental in building a sense of pride not just in individual teams, but in the Trust as a whole. We’ve helped create positive advocates who are proud to be Team King’s and who contribute to a culture of recognition and gratitude. As a result of this campaign:

  • There was a 50% increase in the number of recognitions made by staff to their colleagues following the campaign.
  • 13,159 thank-you letters and badges were sent out to all staff.

Their Chief Nurse is beyond thrilled with the results. Not only with the execution (which has also, on a practical level, brightened up some of the older hospital buildings), but with the impact she directly attributes to this campaign—renewed feelings of inclusion, recognition and engagement across the King’s staff.

“You’ve captured the people and heart of King’s and brought our values to life. The staff response to these images has been extraordinary and has created a real buy-in and the internal buzz that we were after.”

Nicola Ranger, Chief Nurse & Executive Director of Midwifery, King’s College Hospital

In addition to the employee engagement benefits, the Trust is leveraging the content in their on-going talent attraction and recruitment efforts via a custom careers portal and targeted recruitment marketing campaigns. We created a video for each person we interviewed to showcase King’s employer value proposition (EVP) and communicate the opportunities they offer.  

This feel-good, reputation-healing employee engagement project will have an impact on the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust workforce for years to come.

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY
    King’s College NHS Foundation Trust
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT
    King’s College NHS Foundation Trust provides healthcare services through numerous clinics and hospitals, including King’s College Hospital, a leading teaching hospital and trauma centre serving several boroughs in southeast London.
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Hiring Solutions for Healthcare Providers with Krista Sullivan de Torres

Posted on by jpatel

As organisations around the globe confront the challenges presented by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, even the most seasoned talent leaders find themselves in uncharted territory. We’re creating a mini-series with our experts here at PeopleScout about the issues that are most pressing during this uncertain time.   

This profile shares insights from PeopleScout Global Leader of Solutions Design, Krista Sullivan de Torres. Krista is a seasoned professional with more than a decade of human resources and talent acquisition experience. While Krista’s professional experience spans many industries, she has a passion for and deep expertise in healthcare. Her experience includes launching RPO programs for healthcare startup organisations, managing RPO operations for managed care, population health, behavioral health, and healthcare system clients. Krista’s specialties include global talent acquisition team design, talent acquisition operations, analytics and reporting, recruiting, sourcing and retention. Krista holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

Krista shared her insights about hiring solutions for healthcare providers from her home office in Florida. 

What are some of the hiring challenges facing the healthcare industry right now? 

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, there were already many challenges around healthcare hiring. We all hear about the shortage of nurses, but there’s also a shortage of clinicians across the board. With the outbreak of COVID-19, we’re now seeing an increased number of patients, so these shortages have become even more acute — particularly in the areas that have been hit hardest with the disease. In addition, some challenges arise when clinicians who have COVID-19 risk factors, or live with someone who does, are now unable or unwilling to work in order to protect themselves and their families — causing a large strain in hiring for these specialised roles.  

Hiring for a healthcare role, clinical or nonclinical, is much more difficult than hiring in many of the other essential industries right now. How and why is that? 

Regardless of whether we’re hiring for a role that is clinical or nonclinical, there are a lot of additional requirements for working in healthcare than there are in most other fields. If a candidate is going to be working directly with patients, particularly those that are most vulnerable, an extremely thorough background check is necessary to protect the safety of patients. So, rather than a traditional pre-hire online form and standard background check, healthcare candidates will undergo additional criminal history checks, fingerprinting and more. These critical checks tend to slow down the hiring process and can add a layer of complexity when we’re looking at the available workforce. 

Another factor affecting hiring is that a lot of people are a little afraid to work in the healthcare industry right now. As I mentioned earlier, people may be cautious about taking a job in healthcare in order to protect themselves or high-risk family members against COVID-19. In addition to there being a challenge in the number of candidates available to start, we are faced with the challenge of selecting the right people for the job and ensuring we have a pool of candidates who are excited and available to work during this unusual time.  

Lastly, a major factor we consider in the healthcare industry — particularly in a clinical setting — is ensuring workers are extremely customer-focused. We look for people who are very focused on the patient and the patient’s family at any time, but especially right now. We’re facing challenges in the spike in the number of people who are severely ill, so ensuring we have workers who are correctly educating and caring for patients is of the utmost importance.  

What sort of hiring solutions are available for healthcare organisations right now? 

A lot of healthcare organisations are really trying to get creative during this critical hiring time. They’re looking to potentially bring back previously retired workers, flexing up hours for part-time associates and bringing in traveling nurses or clinicians to support them where their internal teams are at capacity. Many organisations are also interested in implementing a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution to quickly get short-term support in locations that are particularly hard-hit.  

How do these RPO solutions work in practice? What are some of their benefits? 

That’s a great question. One of the many benefits of RPO is that we’re able to ramp up very quickly to meet client needs. For example, a client came to PeopleScout recently and let us know they needed to rapidly scale up hiring to support their hospitals. We spoke with the client, came up with a solution and worked through the contracting phase all within three days. It helps that PeopleScout has a large team of clinical and nonclinical healthcare recruiters who are trained to know the industry and can identify high-quality candidates to get the pipeline filled quickly. 

When it comes to on-demand recruitment support, the beauty lies in rapid engagement and disengagement. Once immediate hiring needs are fulfilled, an RPO provider can pull recruiters back in-house and assign them to a new project. This is a great benefit for clients — they don’t need to deal with the stress of layoffs and furloughs because they’re able to engage and disengage experienced recruiters as needed.  

The most important thing right now is to keep everyone safe and healthy. What is the best kind of solution for that? 

One important way to keep people safe while still meeting critical talent needs is to use a virtual hiring solution. PeopleScout has a bit of an advantage here because we were a virtually based culture even prior to the COVID-19 crisis, so many of our recruiters were already working from home. Our virtual solution allows us to conduct digital interviews — on-demand or live — so we can continue to safely service our clients without interruption. We’ve been able to effectively maintain — and in some cases exceed — productivity while also minimizing the risk for our clients, candidates and internal teams. 

Are there any final thoughts you’d like to leave us with? 

We’re all going through a really challenging time right now and trying to support one another. We’re all in this together and PeopleScout is here to support our clients, candidates, teams and prospects in any way we can. 

To learn more about ways employers can respond to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, visit our Resource Center. 

COVID-19 Series: Hiring Solutions for Healthcare Providers

Posted on by nfuqua

As organizations around the globe confront the challenges presented by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, even the most seasoned talent leaders find themselves in uncharted territory. We’re creating a series with our experts here at PeopleScout about the issues that are most pressing during this uncertain time.

We are focused on the safety of our employees and clients, friends, families and loved ones. However, it is important for many organizations to keep their talent acquisition functions moving – whether to provide essential services or to serve our communities by providing jobs. Many organizations are also now adapting to a newly virtual workforce.

In that spirit, this podcast shares insights from PeopleScout Global Leader of Solutions Design, Krista Sullivan de Torres about hiring solutions for healthcare providers.

Krista is a seasoned professional with more than a decade of human resources and talent acquisition experience. While Krista’s professional experience spans many industries, she has a passion for and deep expertise in healthcare. Her experience includes launching RPO programs for healthcare startup organizations, managing RPO operations for managed care, population health, behavioral health, and healthcare system clients. Krista’s specialties include global talent acquisition team design, talent acquisition operations, analytics and reporting, recruiting, sourcing and retention. Krista holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Checkup: How Healthy is Your Talent Acquisition Program?

Posted on by skatz

According to J.P. Morgan’s Healthcare Industry Outlook, the majority of healthcare executives expect to hire more physicians and nurses. However, there may not be enough talent to meet demand, with 58% of respondents stating they are “extremely” or “very concerned” about finding qualified candidates.

To learn the best ways to recruit for these hard-to-hire roles, join PeopleScout Healthcare Executives Gerry Sullivan, Leader of Enterprise Business Development, and Brett Bryner, Healthcare Workforce Leader, for our on-demand webinar Checkup: How Healthy is Your Talent Acquisition Program?, where they discuss their real-world experiences with clients and success stories from recent healthcare engagements.

In this webinar you will:

  • Find out how healthcare staffing shortage trends have changed in recent years
  • Learn the newest ways to recruit healthcare candidates faster
  • Explore ways to overcome the challenges of hiring for clinical and non-clinical roles
  • Understand why the candidate experience is more crucial than ever
  • Learn why maximising transferrable skillsets from non-healthcare industries is crucial
  • Hear testimonials and success stories in the tough-to-fill healthcare talent market

Preventing Physician Burnout and Reducing Turnover

Posted on by edyson

Exhaustion, stress and anxiety: these are the symptoms of a plague spreading throughout the medical community. Its name? Physician burnout. According to a study conducted by the Annals of Internal Medicine, physician burnout is on the rise and causing major disruptions in healthcare outcomes for both patients and the medical professionals charged with their care.  

In fact, according to the study, it’s estimated that physician burnout adds nearly $5 billion per year to healthcare spending in the United States. Problems such as insufficient care, patient dissatisfaction and malpractice lawsuits are all contributing to the cost of burnout among physicians in the U.S.

In this article, we dive into what physician burnout is, its effects on healthcare and what organisations can do to minimize and combat this troubling trend.

So, What is Physician Burnout?

The term “burnout” can seem like a nebulous catch-all-term for workplace stress and dissatisfaction. So, what makes burnout unique? For starters, burnout is officially a medical condition, according to the World Health Organisation, and is characterised as a persistent state of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. Burnout includes emotional exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from work along with a sense of poor personal accomplishment.

Although it can occur in any profession, incidences of burnout are more common in individuals employed in caring professions such as healthcare, social work, counseling and teaching. Common contributors to physician burnout are long work hours, a fear of being sued and having to navigate the growing healthcare bureaucracy and filling out time-consuming electronic medical records.

“Nearly everything a physician does in 2019 is monitored, rated, assessed and reported. The electronic health record has many benefits but it can also be a burden, adding substantially to the time physicians spend in front of a computer screen while robbing them of what brings them joy: spending time with their patients,” states Dr. Edward Ellison, executive medical director and chairman of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, in an article released in conjunction with the Annals of Internal Medicine study.

The Effects of Physician Burnout

Physician burnout is not new in the medical field. In a study conducted by the American Medical Association, Stanford and the Mayo Clinic, about 54% of physicians reported having at least one symptom of burnout – nearly double the rate of U.S. workers in 2014[KS1] .

For physicians and their employers, the effects of burnout are taking an enormous toll. Burned-out doctors tend to make more medical errors, and their patients have worse health outcomes and are less satisfied. This can contribute to a loss of reputation and revenue for employers and physicians.

“Physician burnout is known to be associated with increased physician turnover and reduced productivity,” said lead researcher Joel Goh, an assistant professor of analytics and operations at the National University of Singapore. “But the costs in monetary terms are poorly understood.”

The Annals of Internal Medicine study authors calculate that for healthcare organisations, the cost of burnout comes out to $7,600 per physician each year. The study cautions that these cost estimates are conservative, and only calculate lost work hours and physician turnover. What’s more, a survey conducted by the Physicians Foundation of more than 17,000 American physicians found that:

  • 54% rated their morale as “somewhat” or “very” negative about the current state of medicine
  • 63% were “somewhat” or “very” pessimistic about the future of medicine
  • 49% “often” or “always” experience feelings of burnout
  • 49% would not recommend a career in medicine to their children
  • 58% said the least-satisfying aspect of medical practice was too much paperwork and regulation

With such a staggering economic and professional toll, preventing and treating burnout in physicians is crucial to improving patient and organisational outcomes.

Identifying Physician Burnout

All too often, doctors spend far more energy concerned with the health outcomes of their patients, and their own personal health issues go unaddressed and unresolved. 

 
“It is always amazing to me how often burnout is actively ignored in healthcare. Research shows one in three doctors are burned out on any given office day,” remarks Dr. Dike Drummond, a career strategist for physicians who focuses on burnout. He began The Happy MD in response to the emerging burnout epidemic amongst physicians.

Outside of the mental, physical and workplace performance effects experienced by burned-out physicians, an estimated 300 to 400 U.S. physicians take their own lives every year. This number is higher than the suicide rate in the general population by 40% for men and an alarming 130% for women. This makes addressing burnout more than a financial or business imperative, but also one of great moral importance.

Because burnout is a slow and gradual process that increases over time, it does not happen from one day to the next. Instead, it can sneak up on physicians and their employers if both are not paying close attention to the warning signs. Below are some of the symptoms to be on the lookout for when combating burnout:

Physical Signs

  • Feeling tired and drained
  • Lower immunity
  • Frequent headaches, back pain, muscle aches
  • Change in appetite or sleep habits

Emotional Signs

  • Emotional exhaustion
  • Detachment from patients or de-personalisation
  • Sense of failure and self-doubt
  • Feeling helpless, trapped or defeated
  • Loss of motivation
  • Increased cynicism
  • Decreased sense of accomplishment

Behavioral Signs

  • Withdrawing from responsibilities
  • Isolation from others
  • Procrastination
  • Using food, drugs or alcohol to cope
  • Taking out your frustration on others
  • Skipping work or increased tardiness

Understanding the symptoms and behaviors associated with burnout can help your organisation better intervene with physicians and help them identify and understand the emotional burden they are experiencing.

Managing Physician Burnout

Organisation-led initiatives and interventions are sadly few and far between for many physicians, leaving them on their own to manage and treat the symptoms of burnout. This can make it more difficult to manage stress and the emotions that come from working in healthcare. However, this does not need to be the case. Healthcare organisations can take steps to help physicians reduce the risk or severity of burnout.

One strategy is encouraging medical professionals to acknowledge feelings of burnout or exhaustion when they occur and providing assistance whenever and wherever possible. What’s more, promoting the following strategies can help your physicians to decompress and clear their minds:

Physical Activities

This can be accomplished through physical activities such as spending time at the gym, running, walking, cycling or yoga to name a few.

Personal Activities

Others include meditation, mindfulness, reading for pleasure, developing a hobby, going to the movies or spending time in a museum. These activities can be pursued alone; however, when combined with a partner, family members or friends, social interaction can enhance the restful nature of these activities.

Time Off

Another essential approach to reducing and managing burnout is for physicians to spend time away from work. Regularly scheduled vacation time helps reduce fatigue by allowing the mind and body a break from the daily grind.

Your organisation’s workplace culture can also play a part in reducing burnout. An important step in battling burnout is managing time and respecting limits. When dealing with emotionally exhausted physicians, consider reducing the number of patients they see or the number of new patients taken on, if possible.

Conclusion

Burnout is common and affects a significant number of physicians at all stages of their careers. It is a consequence of an exceptionally motivated, high-performing, competitive and perfectionistic personality combined with a fast-paced high-stakes profession that is practicing medicine.

While burnout manifests in individuals, it is fundamentally a response to organisational culture and work life. Recognition of, and willingness to address, these specific stressors will allow individuals and healthcare organisations to better prevent or alleviate physician burnout.

Talking Talent: Addressing the Workforce Gap in Nursing

Posted on by epadmin

In this episode of Talking Talent, we talk about how to address the workforce gap in nursing and the solution developed at Sutter Health in Northern California to increase nurse retention.

Healthcare organisations across the United States are grappling with the nursing shortage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment of registered nurses is expected to grow 16 percent between 2014 and 2024 based on an increased emphasis on preventative care, growing rates of chronic conditions like diabetes and obesity and demand for healthcare services for the baby boomer generation. At the same time, baby boomer nurses are retiring in unprecedented numbers. By 2020, the number of baby-boomer nurses in the workforce will decrease to just half their 2008 peak.

Joining us to talk about the unique solution at Sutter Health is Christine Cress, the Director of Nurse Workforce and Leadership Development. A skilled executive coach and Stanford-trained facilitator, Christine has led inter-disciplinary teams to create functions and company programs where they did not exist before. She has been named honorary nurse by her nurse executive colleagues and is a strategic business partner generating results that require no spin. Christine blends mind, heart and business to her practice as a healthcare leader. She brings the insights of 18 years in healthcare – partnering with finance, supply chain, clinicians and HR to serve those who take care of patients.

In this interview , Christine explains how she and her team developed and funded an internal program that increased nurse retention during the nursing shortage.

You can read more about skills shortages in healthcare here:

Listen to other Talking Talent Podcasts about healthcare:

Talking Talent: How RPO Can Solve the Top Challenges in Healthcare Talent Acquisition

Posted on by epadmin

In this episode of Talking Talent, we discuss how RPO can solve the top challenges in healthcare talent acquisition.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that healthcare occupations in the U.S. will grow 18 percent between 2016 and 2026. With this growth and staffing shortages that are already common in the industry, healthcare organisations face new challenges sourcing, recruiting and retaining top talent. To cope, healthcare organisations are increasingly turning to RPO providers that can act as an extension of a healthcare organisation’s HR department to source and hire top talent.

At PeopleScout, we’ve recently expanded our healthcare solutions to help clients compete more effectively in the intensifying race for healthcare talent.
As part of this expansion, Brett Bryner joined the PeopleScout team. Brett is our healthcare workforce leaders who brings decades of insight-driven strategy and talent intelligence. Brett creates customised solutions for both clinical and non-clinical healthcare talent acquisition needs that support full-cycle, partial-cycle, project-based and total workforce engagements. In this episode, he talks about the top challenges in healthcare talent acquisition and the specific ways an RPO provider can help.

In this episode, Brett shares expertise about topics including:

  • Employee turnover
  • Talent shortages
  • HR Technology
  • Candidate Expectations
  • And more

For more in-depth information about how an RPO provider can benefit healthcare organizations, check out our new ebook, How RPO Can Solve The Top Challenges In Healthcare Talent Acquisition.

Healthcare Workforce and Recruiting Trends to Watch

Posted on by epadmin

The healthcare workforce is highly specialised. As a result, the healthcare workforce and labor market are uniquely competitive. To gain a competitive edge, healthcare organisations are looking for innovative recruiting solutions to find top-quality candidates who provide world-class care for patients.

In this post, we examine the trends in the healthcare workforce that will influence the future of healthcare talent acquisition.

Healthcare Employer Branding

Top healthcare candidates have many options when it comes to employers and can easily research the experiences of employees in your organization on career sites such as Indeed and Glassdoor.

In fact, a survey conducted by LinkedIn found that 75 percent of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before applying for a job. What’s more, a study conducted by Healthcare Recruiters International found that over 90 percent of candidates think employer branding is an essential recruiting resource. So, how can you ensure you have an impactful employer brand?

Conduct an Employer Brand Audit

Before developing your employer brand, you should conduct an employer brand audit. Your employer brand audit will help you understand how your brand distinguishes itself from competitors and provide a starting point from which you can build your strategy. Below are key questions to ask yourself during the audit:

  • Why would someone want to work for you?
  • What is the perception employees and candidates have about your organisation?
  • What percentage of your employees would recommend your company as a great place to work?

Set your Employer Brand Strategy

Prospective healthcare employees are similar to patients in that both select the healthcare provider they feel most comfortable with. Your employer brand strategy should help make a candidate’s choice easier and provide assurance that he or she has chosen the right employer. Your employer brand strategy should contain the following three components:

  • Differentiators: A list of the benefits and unique qualities that are different or better about working at your healthcare facility.
  • Employee Value Proposition: Using your list of differentiators, craft a brief paragraph that positions your organisation against other healthcare employers and demonstrates why candidates view you as an employer of choice.
  • Employer Brand Promotional Plan: Develop a plan to share your employee value proportion with candidates, including the tactics you will use, the tools you need and the schedule you will follow to attract potential new hires and retain current employees.

Promote Your Employer Brand to the Healthcare Workforce 

Once you have established your employer brand, it is time to promote it. You can promote your employer brand by highlighting your workplace benefits and culture in recruiting materials, on your website and social media channels and in your job postings and candidate outreach emails. Some examples of ways to promote your employer brand include:

  • Sharing videos and pictures of your workplace to show what working for your healthcare organization is like.
  • Leveraging your social channels to show off your workplace and company perks so that a candidate can assess what you have to offer.
  • Building a career site that makes visitors feel welcome and gives applicants the information they are looking for, such as details about employment opportunities, company culture and work environment.
  • Telling engaging stories from current and former employees to better attract the type of healthcare candidates who could see themselves in those stories.

Diversity in the Healthcare Workforce

Healthcare is experiencing a shortage of workers, and professionals of diverse backgrounds are particularly underrepresented in many occupations and in the upper ranks of many healthcare organisations.

Minority  Workers in the Healthcare Workforce

With demand in many healthcare professions at record levels, career opportunities abound for individuals of all backgrounds. However, Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians make up almost a quarter of the U.S. population, yet as a group, they account for only 6 percent of physicians, 9 percent of nurses and 5 percent of dentists according to the Sullivan Commission on Diversity.

Healthcare organisations can play a significant role in addressing this issue by:

  • Promoting healthcare careers to diverse populations via school programs and community organisations.
  • Encouraging students to shadow healthcare professionals and explore careers in healthcare.
  • Recruiting ethnically diverse individuals for every-level positions to increase current minority representation.
  • Offering internships, residencies and fellowships to ethnically diverse students. For example, the Institute for Diversity in Health Management in Chicago offers summer internships to college students.

Healthcare Workers with Disabilities

Individuals with disabilities can pursue successful careers in the healthcare field. Opportunities are available, but so are obstacles, from expensive equipment to accommodate workers to licensing requirements.

Some disabled healthcare workers take advantage of programs specifically designed to recruit those with disabilities. Project Search at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center gives high school students with disabilities the opportunity to learn about careers in healthcare. Healthcare organisations can also provide assistance to workers with disabilities by:

  • Creating formal policies and procedures on accommodations for staff with disabilities. Invite employees with disabilities to work with on these policies.
  • Making the online application process easier to use, with fonts that can be enlarged or a site that can be used with a screen reader.
  • Advertising your healthcare organisation as an equal opportunity employer and including contact information for anyone having problems accessing your organisation because of a disability.

Aging Healthcare Workforce

The National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report found that nearly half of all registered nurses will reach retirement age by 2020. What’s more, according to a survey conducted by the Federation of State Medical Boards, 50 percent of physicians nationwide surveyed were 60 years or older. These demographic trends portend significant employment challenges in the near future in the U.S.

Healthcare employers will need to rethink their current employment policies and practices to simultaneously retain talented older staff and create job opportunities for new workers of all ages. Many healthcare organisations are taking proactive steps to confront the problems that will occur as the healthcare workforce matures. Some of these strategies include:

  • Developing strong outreach mechanisms to attract promising senior candidates to healthcare management careers.
  • Publicizing career advancement opportunities, such as continuing education, professional development organisations, networking events and vacancies inside the organisation, in a manner that appeals to everyone, especially older individuals.
  • Creating environments that encourage retention, development and promotion of qualified elderly or senior employees.

Greater Use of Technology

As technology continues to become more sophisticated, it will play an increasingly important role in finding and hiring talent in healthcare. In fact, according to Ideal, 96 percent of senior HR professionals believing AI has the potential to greatly enhance talent acquisition and retention.

AI can help reduce unconscious bias during the hiring process by anonymizing candidates and focusing on skills, not age, gender or race, auto. AI technology can also be used to improve the screening process and manage interview scheduling.

Drafting Better Job Posts

Finding the right candidate in the healthcare workforce begins with the right job posting. In fact, it is often the first thing candidates see from your organization, so it is important to make a good impression.

Today, AI technology can utilize algorithms to assess and analyze language patterns in job postings to determine why some fail and others succeed and suggest keywords to make job descriptions more appealing to candidates. As the AI technology analyzes more job posts, it becomes more accurate with its language suggestions, helping employers draft precise job descriptions.

While there may never be a perfect job posting, AI technology is getting us closer.

Advanced Candidate Screening

Traditionally, candidate screenings begin with reviewing an applicant’s resume followed by a brief phone call. This means that recruiters and hiring managers have only their judgment of a resume to assess whether a healthcare candidate would make a good hire.

Recruiters know that resumes are an incomplete picture of someone’s skills, achievements, capabilities and most importantly, personality and culture fit.

AI technology can also be used to cull data and metrics healthcare organisations have on their employees to build predictive models and personality profiles that help lead to candidates who fit the company culture and job requirements more accurately and can reduce time-to-fill metrics.

Automating Recruiting Tasks

In healthcare recruiting, administrative tasks such as resume screenings and scheduling interviews can be time-consuming. With the assistance of AI, recruiters and hiring managers can reduce their time spent conducting administrative work by using AI and Robotic Process Automation technology to automatically screen candidates’ resumes using keyword and qualification searches.

AI can also help schedule interviews with candidates through email or chatbot programs that bring more personalisation to the communication process. Not only does this save time that recruiters can spend on more critical tasks, it also accelerates the interview process, helping reduce time-to-hire and ultimately providing healthcare organizations with an advantage when competing for talent.

Conclusion

Your healthcare organisation’s success depends on your ability to adapt to changes in recruiting and healthcare talent management.

Six Things to Expect from Your Prospective Healthcare RPO Partner

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For most healthcare organisations, recruiting talent is a major operational challenge. 69 percent of healthcare organisations are “concerned” or “very concerned” about competing for healthcare candidates as highlighted in ASHHRA’s Healthcare Workforce Executive Insights Survey.

New challenges such as clinical talent shortages and increased competition necessitate a more robust talent acquisition strategy.

To overcome recruiting roadblocks, healthcare organisations can partner with a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) partner to supplement internal recruiting teams for a partial or full life-cycle talent acquisition program.

When implemented correctly, a Healthcare RPO program enhances recruiting effectiveness, attracts top talent and reduces cost, providing healthcare organizations with a competitive advantage. In this post, we highlight six things healthcare organisations should expect from an RPO partnership.

What to Expect From Your Healthcare RPO Partnership

When you enter into an RPO partnership, you will find that a successful relationship is based on collaboration between your RPO provider and internal team, who need to work together to make the engagement a success.

Expect Seamless Integration with Your Internal HR and Recruiting Teams

An ideal RPO partner should have a well-developed practice for integrating into a client’s organization and working with a client’s recruiters, hiring managers and leadership teams. During the implementation process, your Healthcare RPO partner should conduct a needs assessment to understand your program requirements. They will then develop a custom solution that meets the needs of your organisation and business model.

Engaging an RPO partner is an opportunity to create change in the way you recruit talent across your organisation. Changes in the recruiting process can include training hiring managers to be better interviewers, implementing new recruiting technology tools and establishing a unified message and employer brand.

This is the time to take the recruiting process seriously and bring attention to it internally. Your RPO partner will need to work with you to be an agent of change in your organization in order to successfully implement new tools and processes.

Expect Value-Added Recruiting Functions

As talent acquisition becomes more sophisticated, organisations are looking for additional services from an RPO partner such as employer branding capabilities, advanced analytics and new technology. When considering Healthcare RPO partners, look for capabilities that will add value while improving your recruiting processes.

For instance, if your organisation is anticipating a merger and requires a solution to swiftly ramp up your current workforce, talent acquisition services such as social media sourcing, video interviewing and recruitment marketing provide additional value by improving the candidate experience and your position in the talent market.

To determine which value-added services would most benefit you, audit your current recruiting processes and performance to identify where your in-house teams excel and where outside expertise can make a positive impact.

Expect In-depth Program Analysis and Reporting

You should expect that your RPO partner will provide you with a complete analysis of your recruiting processes’ strengths, weaknesses and challenges.

This assessment should include:

  • Detailed process mapping before, during, and after implementation
  • Understanding gaps and opportunities within your program
  • Visibility into real-time workforce data and analytics

From this deep-dive, your RPO partner should develop customised solutions for your immediate and long-term talent needs and consult with stakeholders on ways to improve your program.

Recruiting metrics and analytics are powerful tools. When an RPO partner dives into the data, they can provide guidance on big and small recruitment changes that will lead to improved hiring metrics.

Expect Accountability and Transparency

Accountability and transparency are key factors in a successful RPO partnership. As the client, you should be able to ask your RPO partner any question you can conceive of, and in turn, your RPO partner should be able to provide you with satisfactory answers.

To ensure accountability, your RPO provider should work with you to establish mutually agreed upon Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SLAs should be established during the partner selection process, and their governance should be clearly outlined during contract negotiations.

SLAs establish how you and your RPO provider will work together and can cover items like terms, liability, billing and payment, confidentiality, solicitation, insurance, warranties and employment relationships.

Before you draft SLAs, you need to assess your recruitment performance prior to working with your RPO partner. This can prove challenging, especially if your internal recruitment processes do not track and benchmark data.

If you do not have benchmarks, your healthcare RPO provider should be able to provide data based on their work with other clients in the healthcare space.

When setting up SLAs, make sure they are realistic, achievable and meet your organisation’s recruiting needs. RPO SLAs often include the following metrics:

  • Time-to-fill: Time-to-fill measures how long it takes recruiters to fill an open role.
  • Hiring manager satisfaction: You can measure hiring manager satisfaction through a survey, for example.
  • Candidate experience and satisfaction: You can conduct surveys with every candidate, not just ones who are hired, to better understand the impact of your candidate experience.
  • Interview-to-offer ratio: This metric is the ratio of the number of interviews to the number of candidates that are given an offer and can help determine the quality of candidates.
  • Diversity of candidate: This is the percentage of candidates considered or self-identified as “diverse,” and can be used to track different groups of candidates like women or veterans.

The right mix of service-level controls can help ensure a successful partnership.

Expect to Be Supplied with References

You would not hire a doctor or nurse without checking their references, and the same applies when partnering with an RPO provider. An RPO partner can always tell you about their solutions, skills and expertise. However, to get a real sense of an RPO partner’s true capabilities, you need to speak to their clients and hear success stories directly.

You should receive references from organisations that the RPO partner has worked with, ideally in the healthcare space, that have dealt with similar challenges as you, so you can really understand how the RPO has delivered effective solutions in the past.

For example, if your organisation is having a difficult time sourcing healthcare talent in a rural community, your RPO partner should provide you with a reference that illustrates their ability to source candidates in lean talent markets.

Expect Effective Recruiting Technology

Your RPO partner should be deploying the most current and best-in-class recruiting technologies to access and leverage data, attract and source candidates, automate recruiting processes, and screen and shortlist candidates.

For instance, an RPO partner equipped with an experienced team of recruiters trained in using advanced tools and resources can use AI and predictive analytics to quickly find candidates with the skills and qualifications you’re looking for.

The right talent acquisition technology tool can also help provide a superior candidate experience.

  • AI-enabled sourcing tools help recruiters find the best candidates faster.
  • A streamlined application process can allow candidates apply with just one click.
  • Personalised recruitment marketing tools like chatbots, SMS messages, email campaigns and individualized landing pages provide candidates with the consumer-like experience they have come to expect online.

Healthcare RPO partners should also be able to help you quickly implement the best recruiting technologies into your talent acquisition program that can save both time and money.

Click here to learn more about PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology platform, Affinixtm.

Conclusion

Selecting the right RPO partner is a big decision for any healthcare organisation and outsourcing recruitment processes can have a tremendous business impact.

Your RPO partner should possess the ability to understand the capabilities and reach of the latest emerging talent tools can provide both significant costs savings and a competitive advantage and provide you access to talent, quality of hires, process efficiencies and workforce management support.