Tag: #healthcare

Paging All Doctors: Effective Physician Recruiting Strategies and Tactics

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The Association of American Medical Colleges has projected that by 2030 there will be a shortage of between 42,600 and 121,300 physicians. This shortage will include both primary and specialty care physicians.

Despite the looming shortage, hospitals and healthcare systems are increasingly employing physicians. Three-quarters of healthcare organizations surveyed by independent consulting firm Sullivan, Cotter and Associates said they plan to increase the number of employed physicians in the coming year.

To attract and hire good candidates in a high-demand hiring environment, healthcare organizations need to create an outstanding physician recruiting strategy. In this post, we explore proven tactics healthcare organizations can implement to recruit and retain top physician candidates.

Make the Candidates’ Experience the Heart of Your Physician Recruiting Process

The physician recruiting process requires tremendous time and effort, great attention to detail and timely ongoing two-way communication between candidates and employers. Because of the time-intensive nature of the process, poorly executed physician recruiting is expensive.

In a candidate-driven talent market—especially so for physicians—it is important for you as an employer to make a good impression on the candidates you are pursuing. To ensure success when recruiting physicians, healthcare organisations need to roll out the red carpet for candidates and provide them with an extraordinary candidate experience.

Communication

Communication is the cornerstone of great candidate experience. To build strong relationships, recruiters should work to understand the physician’s needs and wants. When contacting a candidate, a recruiter should open a dialog about what motivates them and work to identify issues and concerns they may have.

Transparency 

Organisations should also make it easy for candidates to evaluate their organization to shape their views and impressions early and accurately. To help facilitate this, innovative recruitment technologies and techniques such as video interviewing and virtual office tours can engage candidates in new ways and help your organisation leave a lasting impression.

Interviewing Candidates

The interview is not only an ideal way to further assess a physician’s fitness for a position, but also an important chance to “sell” your job offer.

Wherever possible, relate what you do to the interviewee’s medical background and previous clinical experience. One of the easiest ways to do this is to ask candidates why they want to work for you and use their reply to tailor your response, highlighting the parts of the job that may appeal most to them.

Technology can help with interviewing as well. Automated interview scheduling can save you time and video interviewing can be used to conduct real-time interviews with physicians in different locations or to pre-recorded interviews that can be watched when it is convenient for you.

Be Responsive                         

For physicians, a typical day on the job can be hard. Often, it includes running non-stop for eight to 12 hours, being constantly interrupted, having patients demanding attention and making rapid decisions. This makes the responsiveness of your recruiters and their ability to communicate with them quickly and effectively crucial to the recruitment process.

Recruiters should leverage technology to help them stay organised and respond quickly to candidate inquiries. Recruiters should also make sure that the next steps in the hiring process are outlined and communicated to the candidate well in advance. When done efficiently, responsive physician recruitment can reduce confusion between candidates and recruiters and cut down time-to-hire.

Include the Candidate’s Family

Family concerns play a significant role when considering a new position for many physicians, especially one that may require them to relocate.

When recruiting a candidate, consider whether the location of your organisation provides the candidate’s spouse with professional opportunities or the candidate’s children with good schools. All of those items affect a physician’s decision to accept a new job offer.

If the candidate makes a visit to your hospital or clinic, include family members in the experience. Giving family members the opportunity familiarize themselves with your community can favorably influence a candidate’s decision.

Become an Employer of Choice for Physicians

An employer that offers a positive work culture and environment not only attracts great candidates but also increases the chance of retaining them.

Becoming a healthcare employer of choice means that physician applicants are eager to work for your organisation, that other healthcare workers envy your employees, you receive lots of resumes from eager candidates and that your best employees are likely to remain with your organization throughout their careers.

What is a Healthcare Employer of Choice?

Healthcare employers of choice are motivated by the well-being of both employees and patients. An employer of choice clearly differentiates between themselves and competitors in key benefits, such as life insurance, disability, paid time off and retirement, as well as certain physician-specific benefits, such as continuing medical education expenses, licensing and medical malpractice insurance.

Schedule Manageable Workloads

Organisations that want to become an employer of choice should try to make sure that physician workloads are manageable. This can be done by reducing the number of patients they see during a shift to ensure physicians have ample time to sit down with patients and families to discuss treatment and post-discharge care.

Work-life Balance and PTO

For many physicians, work-life balance can seem like more a work-life puzzle. The healthcare field can make trying to fit in time for family and friends, hobbies, or any other activity that occurs outside of work difficult.

It is a daily struggle. For some, the struggle leads to stress, which leads to a lack of motivation. A large part of your physician recruiting and retention strategy should revolve around providing candidates with favorable or flexible scheduling and a healthy amount of PTO time to show that your organisation is committed to a healthy work-life balance.

Clearly Communicate Your Benefits Package

In order to appreciate the benefits your organisation offers, candidates need to be clear on the options that are available to them. If your organisation provides the opportunity to earn bonuses based on performance, a partnership track or retirement benefits, make sure that your recruitment messaging communicates those benefits clearly.

Sometimes employees can be hesitant to use some of the perks provided by an organisation. It is essential that your workplace culture encourages your employees to use their benefits.

Conclusion

Every physician views career success differently, and one of the keys to effectively recruiting physicians is discovering what motivates them. Some physicians may be fresh out of residency and concerned about paying back student loans while others might be seeking the prestige of a leadership position or teaching opportunities. Find out what success means to your candidates and discuss how you plan on helping them achieve it.

Talking Talent: Navigating the Talent Acquisition Challenges of a Major Hospital Expansion

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In this episode of Talking Talent, we talk to Dr. Ekta Vyas, the Director of Human Resources at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford I Stanford Children’s Health, about the challenges she faced during the major hospital expansion of the new Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.


The Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford is nationally ranked and recognised in 10 specialties and has been for 13 consecutive years. The new expanded facility opened in December 2017, a more than half-a-million square foot building that doubled the size of the existing pediatric and obstetric hospital campus. It added 149 patient beds, bringing the total on the Palo Alto campus to 361. This new facility is America’s most technologically advanced, family-friendly and environmentally sustainable hospital for children and expectant mothers and has proudly earned the LEED Platinum distinction.


Dr. Ekta Vyas led the employer branding strategy and recruitment infrastructure development work. As a trained industrial/organisational psychology practitioner with 20 years of experience, Ekta is a regular conference and panel speaker and has been published in academic and practitioner journals. She is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, and also currently serves as adjunct faculty at San Jose State University School of Management (within Lucas College of Business).


Among the challenges facing the Human Resources group was the need to hire more than 500 new employees for a high acuity environment; the complexity of hiring in Silicon Valley along with the high cost of living and commuting barriers it brings; and synchronising strategic timelines between Corporate Marketing, Hospital Expansion, and the Talent Acquisition teams. This hiring need was in addition to their regular average recruitment – based on standard turnover for normal business operations.


The success of this project is being widely recognised across healthcare and other industries and has been published as a case study in the Fall 2017 issue of Journal of HR People + Strategy. Ekta recently presented this work at the People in Healthcare (Talent Management Alliance) conference and as a keynote at NCHRA’s Talent Acquisition conference.


Ekta has been in the healthcare industry for 12 years and before this undertaking was a Director of HR at Stanford University Medical Center.
You can listen to our first Talking Talent podcast, How HR Technology Can Combat Staffing Shortages in Healthcare, here.


The success of this project is being widely recognised across healthcare and other industries and has been published as a case study in the Fall 2017 issue of Journal of HR People + Strategy. Ekta recently presented this work at the People in Healthcare (Talent Management Alliance) conference and as a keynote at NCHRA’s Talent Acquisition conference.


Ekta has been in the healthcare industry for 12 years and before this undertaking was a Director of HR at Stanford University Medical Center.
You can listen to our first Talking Talent podcast, How HR Technology Can Combat Staffing Shortages in Healthcare, here.

Regional Healthcare: How to Recruit and Attract Clinical Talent in Rural & Remote Areas

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Healthcare providers in rural areas face unique obstacles when it comes to recruiting and retaining clinical talent. The growing shortage of nurses and physicians coupled with declining regional populations makes it more challenging than ever for rural healthcare organisations to attract physicians, nurses and other specialised clinical professionals. In this post, we cover the recruiting challenges faced by rural healthcare organisations and actionable advice on how to overcome them with smart talent acquisition strategies.

Regional Healthcare Challenges

The Australian Department of Health has released a Work Incentive Program for practices that are experiencing challenges in recruiting and retaining clinical talent. Recruiting and retaining clinical professionals in these underserved rural communities remains a significant challenge for states and governments and healthcare organisations. Economic, educational, professional and cultural dynamics affect the clinical talent shortages in rural areas including the following factors:

  • Many universities and institutions of higher learning are located in more urban regions, limiting rural healthcare organisations recent graduate talent pool.
  • Access to professional development and education programs may be limited in rural areas which can discourage candidates looking to further their career training and education.
  • Candidates with experience working in urban areas may not be prepared for or willing to adapt to the culture and lifestyle changes inherent with living in rural communities.
  • Rural healthcare organisations may not have enough opportunities for career advancement within the organisation.
  • Rural healthcare organisations often face understaffing leading to increased workloads, extended shifts and less scheduling flexibility.
  • Urban healthcare organisations may be able to offer more competitive salaries, benefits and better working conditions.
  • Rural communities may offer fewer career opportunities for spouses and children of candidates.

Recruiting Strategies for Rural Healthcare Organisations

To overcome recruiting challenges, rural healthcare organisations need to employ various strategies focused on attracting and retaining clinical talent. Below, we list four approaches rural healthcare organisations can utilise to source, hire and retain clinical talent.

Recruit Foreign-Born Talent

Rural healthcare providers should not limit their talent search locally. Federal programs like 5 Year OTD Scheme are created for foreign-born physicians to be accepted into the program, they must agree to work in a Health Professional Shortage Area.

Maintain a Steady Candidate Pipeline

The healthcare talent shortage has placed a premium on clinical healthcare workers. Rural healthcare organisations have to reconcile the fact that some of their talent may be lured away by offers from competitors in more attractive locations. To stay ahead of talent attrition, rural healthcare organisations need to build and maintain a verdant candidate pipeline. Below we share strategies on how to build and cultivate relationships with potential candidates:

  • Healthcare organisations should position themselves as rural training sites for medical students, primary care residents, nurses and other clinical roles looking to experience healthcare in a rural setting.
  • Staff members should be encouraged to network and cultivate a rapport with potential candidates at medical conferences, professional development workshops, networking events and trade shows.
  • Recruit traveling nurses, physicians and locum tenens clinical professionals who may also be on the lookout for permanent practice opportunities.
  • Recruiters for rural healthcare organisations should be provided with subscriptions to candidate sourcing services and encouraged to reach out to candidates who have experience working in rural healthcare.

Sell the Community to Candidates

Many candidates may have preconceived notions regarding rural communities — and not all of them positive. To assuage a candidate’s doubts about working and living in a rural setting, it is important for healthcare organisations to highlight the strengths and positive attributes of their community. Recruiters can point to the lower cost of living in the community and how that can make the compensation packages more attractive. Elements of a community’s culture such as recreational and leisure activities, natural beauty, festivals, fairs, the arts scene, spiritual and religious institutions and a community’s character may make the position more attractive once highlighted. Additional factors such as the community being a good place to raise children, an opportunity for more professional independence and the chance to offer more personable patient care are all positives that can be presented to interested candidates.

Conclusion

For rural healthcare organisations facing recruiting and retention challenges, employing some of the approaches and strategies outlined in this blog will help attract vital clinical talent. Improved talent acquisition, in turn, will enhance the quality of care rural healthcare organisations provide to their communities.

How to Use Pre-Employment Assessments and Testing in Healthcare Recruiting

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From resumes to references and cover letters, healthcare organisations have multiple sources of information to learn about the skills and competencies of a potential hire. Even with this information, it can be hard to get to know candidates throughout the hiring process. Healthcare HR professionals can use pre-employment testing to more accurately ascertain the strengths, weaknesses and overall suitability of a candidate. In this post, we cover the basics of pre-employment assessments and ways healthcare organisations can leverage them to make better healthcare hiring decisions.

What is a Pre-employment Testing and Assessment?

A pre-employment assessment is a method used by an employer to evaluate a candidate’s skills, intellect, personality and other traits. Recruitment process outsourcing providers, healthcare hiring managers and recruiters are all relying more heavily on data-driven talent management practices. According to a survey conducted by the American Management Association (AMA), the use of pre-employment assessments is growing steadily. The AMA’s study revealed the following:

  • 70 percent of employers conduct job skill testing at some point during the hiring process
  • 46 percent of employers conduct personality or psychological assessments of job candidates
  • 41 percent of employers test candidates for literacy and math aptitude

Assessments can provide valuable information on a candidate’s ability to successfully execute their duties in the workplace. Below we list the three popular types of pre-employment assessments and their functions:

Pre-employment aptitude tests

According to a study conducted by LinkedIn, the most important traits employers seek in candidates are problem-solving skills and the ability to learn new concepts. These traits are hard to measure based solely on a review of a candidate’s resume or during an interview. An aptitude test is used to measure a candidate’s critical thinking, problem-solving skills and ability to learn and apply new information.

Pre-employment personality tests

A personality test seeks to answer the following questions for organisations: Will the candidate be happy in this position? Does the candidate possess the behavioral traits and attributes needed for success in this role? Dissimilar from an aptitude test, there are no right or wrong answers to the questions on personality tests. Measuring behavioral traits can help healthcare organisations predict job fit by determining if a candidate’s behavioral tendencies line up well with an organisation’s culture and the demands of the position.

Pre-employment skills tests

Skills tests are designed to measure job-related skills, including skills from verbal, math and communication abilities, to typing and computer literacy. Many skills tests in healthcare are designed to measure more specific medical-related skills such as medical terminology, patient safety practices or other knowledge unique to the healthcare work environment.

The Value of Pre-Employment Testing and Pre-Employment Screening in Healthcare

Pre-employment assessment tests offer wide-ranging benefits from streamlining the recruiting process to strengthening a healthcare organisation’s capabilities by increasing the chance that a new hire will be effective in their role.

A study conducted by Gallup concluded that companies that selected the top 20 percent of applicants based on talent assessments increased productivity by 10 percent and decreased turnover by 10 percent. Below, we list five of the most significant benefits a healthcare organisation may experience after implementing pre-employment testing.

Lowering employee turnover

Employee turnover is a major issue for many healthcare organisations. The costs of turnover can be significant. Pre-employment assessments can help healthcare organisations increase employee retention by making sure that new employees possess the basic skills required for the job along with the appropriate personality, or character, to feel comfortable working with a particular healthcare organisation or medical environment. These factors may decrease the chances of candidates being let go for poor performance or failure to successfully complete training, as well as the likelihood that employees will quit of their own volition.

Reducing time spent on screening candidates

According to Recruiter.com, recruiters spent 63 percent of their work week on the phone screening candidates. By requiring that candidates take pre-employment testing earlier in the recruiting process, healthcare organisations can quickly filter out candidates who do not possess the minimum skills or traits desired by hiring managers, which frees up time for recruiters to speak with more qualified candidates.

Moreover, setting minimum cutoff scores for certain assessments can narrow down the number of candidates selected for a phone or in-person interviews. Reducing the time dedicated to the screening process can drastically reduce the overall time to hire candidates.I

Identifying prospective leaders

According to a survey conducted by the American College of Healthcare Executives, more than half of respondents agreed with the statement: “In general, over the last five years, my firm’s healthcare clients have changed the requirements for skills, knowledge or credentials needed by members of their senior leadership teams.” Respondents most often named emotional intelligence, ability to influence rather than direct, strategic thinking, collaboration and critical thinking as the skills most desired in healthcare leadership.

Pre-employment screening presents an opportunity to identify candidates who possess the potential to ascend to leadership roles by testing candidates on the leadership qualities they value most. Hiring candidates who possess leadership potential can help healthcare organisations source harder-to-fill leadership positions internally in the future.

Building successful teams

Quality patient care is at the core of successful clinical hiring. To provide quality care, a healthcare organisation’s staff needs to work towards the shared mission of caring for and serving patients with dignity, empathy and respect. This sense of common purpose begins with building effective teams within a healthcare organisation.

Pre-employment assessments such as personality tests can be used to measure the behavioral traits not only central to job performance, but also to a candidate’s ability to work within a team structure. On personality tests, there are no right or wrong answers; however, the answers can provide healthcare organizations with insights into whether a candidate will fit in with their team and the organisation’s overall culture. Traits such as strong interpersonal skills, good communication skills and high levels of empathy can all indicate that a candidate works well with others and can provide patients with quality care.

Recognising strengths and weaknesses

From soft skills such as bedside manner to hard skills like technical proficiency, a properly administered pre-employment testing can uncover a healthcare applicant’s professional strengths and weaknesses. Identifying strengths and weaknesses using assessments can help HR professionals by:

  • Identifying candidates with high levels of initiative and strong work ethic
  • Screening out candidates who may be unreliable
  • Reducing the potential of hiring the wrong candidates and wasting resources on training
  • Helping HR leaders develop training programs for current employees based on insights gleaned from the strengths and weaknesses of candidates

By utilising pre-employment screening and assessments, healthcare organisations can better understand where a candidate will excel, which of their skills may need nurturing or training and if they are well-suited for the roles they are applying to.

Conclusion

By utilising pre-employment assessments tests, healthcare organisations can employ a less biased and more efficient method of hiring candidates. Furthermore, the data provided by pre-employment assessments can better inform hiring managers and recruiters of the skills and traits possessed by applicants and can be used to better position job descriptions and optimise training procedures. If you would like to learn more about pre-employment screening technology, check out PeopleScout’s proprietary recruiting technology platform, Affinix and check out other great recruitment strategies for healthcare organisations.

Leveraging Recruitment Marketing to Attract Healthcare Talent

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Recruitment marketing has evolved from being an emerging trend in talent acquisition to a necessary strategy to attract top candidates, especially in competitive talent markets. Given the shortage of healthcare talent in both clinical and non-clinical roles, organisations looking to attract and hire the best candidates need to leverage recruitment marketing strategies to stay competitive. In this post, we outline key strategies to help healthcare organisations build a robust recruitment marketing program.

Clearly Communicate the Employer Brand and Value to Healthcare Talent

Healthcare hiring managers spend a lot of time crafting the persona of their ideal candidate. However, some hiring managers neglect to address the value their healthcare organisation presents to potential candidates. Building a strong employer brand can have a positive impact on recruiting. In fact, according to a LinkedIn survey, 75 percent of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before applying for a position. This means candidates are as concerned with the reputation of a potential employer as the employer is concerned with a candidate’s experience and work history.

To present value to candidates, healthcare hiring managers and recruiters need to look through a marketing lens and carefully reflect upon how their employer brand will be interpreted by healthcare talent. Good employer branding not only communicates an organisation’s mission and values, but also the experiences and triumphs of an organisation’s current workforce. Effective employer branding highlights employee engagement within an organisation and the community it serves and will attract like-minded candidates eager to help an organisation achieve its goals and objectives. Below we outline a few ways healthcare organisations can better communicate their employer brand to candidates:

  • Hire a film crew or photographer to take candid shots of the facility and employees. Candidates are savvy enough to tell the difference between stock photography and real employee photos and will appreciate a real look inside of an organisation.
  • Tell the stories of real employees progressing and excelling within the organisation. These stories serve as an inspiration and show candidates that there is a clear path to advancement and success if they join the team.
  • Review the organisation’s social media accounts to see if it reflects the culture of the organisation and whether it is used to full effect to highlight employee success stories, internal commitments to staff and fun work-related activities.

Update the Career Page

Providing an excellent candidate experience is a vital component of an effective recruitment marketing strategy and building a well-designed and easy to navigate career site can help positively impact candidate experience. What’s more, Talent Board found that 64 percent of candidates listed career sites as a top resource for researching new opportunities. When candidates visit a career page, it is often the first experience they have with an organisation. From the moment a candidate lands on a career page, he or she begins to sketch out a mental image about an organisation, its facilities and employees, so it is vital to provide applicants with the information they want most. According to a Glassdoor survey, the top five pieces of information job seekers want employers to provide on a career site are:

  • Salary and compensation information
  • Employee benefits and perks
  • Basic company information
  • What makes an organisation an attractive place to work
  • The organisation’s mission, vision, values and culture

Beyond providing applicants with the information they want, healthcare organisations also need to make applying for open positions simple. Sometimes replying to a job posting can be a frustrating experience. Many career sites have a burdensome online application process that bogs down applicants with long forms and multiple hoops to jump through before they can submit their resume. This leads to lots of qualified healthcare talent leaving applications half-complete or worse, applying with a competitor.

To prevent applicant frustration and abandonment, healthcare organisations should build career pages that have an easy interface with no separate URLs or pop-up screens. According to a study from Appcast, recruiters can boost application conversion rates up to 365 percent by reducing the length of the application process to five minutes or less.

A well-designed career site can also help filter out unqualified candidates. Healthcare organisations should structure applications to include screener questions to filter out unqualified job candidates so talent acquisition resources can be dedicated to engaging the most qualified applicants.

Invest in Content Marketing to Recruit Healthcare Talent

The objective of content marketing is simple: create relevant and engaging content aimed at current and potential customers in an attempt to educate them on products, services or topics of interest. While the majority of content marketing efforts are targeted at obtaining clients, content marketing can also be leveraged as a recruiting tactic to attract and engage healthcare talent.

Healthcare recruiters looking to deploy content as another tool in their talent acquisition arsenal should work with their organisation’s marketing team to create compelling content. Compelling content can come in many forms such as blogs, ebooks, podcasts and videos. The only prerequisite to great content is that it should tell a story can add value for readers and in turn, improve the candidate experience.

Beyond the above-mentioned content vehicles, interactive content can also make a significant impact on job seekers. According to a report by the Content Marketing Institute, 81 percent of content marketers agree that interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content, and 79 percent agree that interactive content enhances retention of brand messaging. Interactive content provides candidates with a two-way conversation and is more personal than other pieces of content. A simple yet fun quiz that tests how well a candidate aligns with an organisation’s brand values or video tours of the facility allow candidates to research a potential employer and helps them feel more in control of the recruiting process.

SEO and Healthcare Talent Acquisition Strategy

The best recruitment marketing strategy is only as effective as an organisation’s presence on search engines. What’s more, 30 percent of Google searches—around 300 million a month—are employment related. In the highly competitive healthcare talent market, ranking well on search engines and job boards can mean the difference between attracting a steady stream of healthcare talent and losing talent opportunities to competitors. Below we list recruitment marketing SEO basics:

  • Create a distinct, index-able job page for each open position and at each location if applicable
  • Ensure jobs pages are marked up with the proper schema and metadata structured data
  • Send regular XML sitemap updates to Google

In addition to SEO basics, properly optimised job postings provide additional job data Google finds valuable. This data can be added to a job post to help Google index and rank the page better. Remember, Google values “completeness of data” so the more information placed in a job posting, the more likely it is to turn up in the top results of a job candidates search. For better optimisation, job postings should include:

  • Employment type (full-time, part-time, temp-to-hire)
  • Salary or hourly pay rate
  • Minimum education requirements
  • Minimum experience requirements
  • “Valid through” date
  • Work hours and schedule type
  • Industry sector: i.e., biomedical, hospital food service, laboratory work, etc.
  • Required skills such as “ability to lift more than 20 pounds” and “MS office proficiency”
  • Qualifications, certifications and experience
  • Responsibilities and job duties that are clearly defined

Job titles are also an extremely important SEO factor for ranking in search engines and on job boards. When drafting job postings, make sure common titles are used for open positions. For example, a healthcare provider might refer to nurses as “medical ninjas” instead of their traditional title. While quirky and unique, job seekers will never search for “medical ninja” openings when looking for a job. It is best practice to use common titles and standard terminology as keywords that job candidates are likely to use in their search.

Conclusion

As the healthcare labour shortage remains a factor in recruiting healthcare talent, organisations need to continue to find ways to attract candidates. By implementing a strong recruitment marketing program, healthcare organisations will ensure they stay ahead of the talent curve.

Healthcare HR Technology To-Do List

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Marc Miller, president and founder of Marc S. Miller Associates HR Technology Consulting, gave the presentation “HR’s Strategic Shift: How to leverage HR technology to drive results for your Healthcare organisation” at the Healthcare Talent Acquisition and Management Summit held in New Orleans earlier this year. Miller’s presentation covered a wide range of topics related to HR technology and its impact on healthcare HR professionals. Below, we take three items from Miller’s HR technology “to-do” list and explore the ways in which emerging technology is helping HR professionals achieve success in these areas.

Leverage HR Technology to Reduce Time Spent on Administrative Tasks

Administrative tasks are the backbone of a well-run healthcare organisation’s HR department. They put into action the ideas and concepts developed during HR strategic planning and include educating employees on benefits, keeping employment records and processing essential paperwork, from job applications to time sheets and travel per diems.

Keeping up with administrative tasks can be daunting for healthcare HR professionals. This may be why more and more HR professionals are turning to HR technology to alleviate some of the burdens. A robust HR technology platform can help manage many basic HR functions — including payroll, benefits, employee onboarding and time off tracking. An HR technology platform will also organise these tasks into categories so users can easily navigate information from a single platform. With multiple HR functions organised in one space, healthcare HR departments can be more efficient and productive in handling administrative tasks.

Before sitting down with potential vendors, HR professionals should outline a list of questions including:

  • Will the platform integrate with current systems?
  • How secure is employee data inside the platform?
  • Will the vendor or a third party be involved in training staff on the technology?
  • What proprietary features does this platform offer?
  • Is the interface easy to navigate?
  • How customisable is the platform?
  • What ongoing support can be expected of the vendor?

Outsource Important HR Functions to Tech-Capable Partners

While HR professionals are adept at managing a wide variety of critical HR functions, there are only so many hours in a day to get things done. Outsourcing HR functions to companies who possess the know-how and technology to manage them efficiently can help maximise productivity. In fact, according to a SHRM survey, 18 percent of companies surveyed outsource HR functions to take advantage of technological advances.

For instance, in the healthcare industry, attracting and retaining qualified talent can be challenging.   Competition is fierce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics believes the total healthcare labor market will grow to 22 million jobs, or a 29 percent increase in overall employment, in the next decade. What’s more, according to a SHRM survey, 46 percent of HR professionals reported it was “very difficult” to fill full-time roles for high-skilled medical positions such as nurses, doctors and specialists.

To brace for the looming surge in demand for healthcare talent, HR professionals should look to recruitment outsourcing as a viable and necessary solution. Talent acquisition experts at recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) companies can manage recruiting functions for healthcare organisations. An RPO provider can deliver a comprehensive assessment of the whole talent spectrum and can source and hire clinical and non-clinical healthcare workers.

The right RPO provider can employ cutting-edge recruiting technology to help manage all aspects of the recruiting process, from identifying talent to creating a more efficient applicant experience. For example, AffinixTM, PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology platform, combines AI, predictive analytics and machine learning to deliver speed and scalability to a user’s recruitment process. Affinix can also improve candidate experience with a mobile-first application process, digital assessments and video interviews. If you would like to learn more about Affinix, please download our fact sheet here.

Use Technology to Organise and Track HR Metrics

Tracking HR metrics is important for healthcare HR professionals and leadership teams looking to better understand the health and vitality of their organisation and its workforce. However, according to research conducted by XpertHR, 95.5 percent of HR professionals have experienced problems gathering and analyzing HR metrics data.

HR technology can make tracking, measuring and analysing the value of employees easier. Advances in technology such as HR dashboards allow organisations to gather data better. An HR dashboard can be used to analyse performance and identify areas for improvement in an organisation. Executives and HR leaders can work together to review the data they need in order to make fact-based decisions when it comes to the development and management of HR and personnel resources. We have outlined some measurement best practices:

Keep HR metrics focused

Even though technology has made it easier to gather and report HR metrics, it is still important to be discerning and careful about what metrics are measured and reported on. Healthcare HR professionals should focus on tracking metrics that directly impact key performance indicators. This can be achieved by determining the key factors impacting an organisation’s staff from turnover to employee satisfaction to tell the story of what is happening with employees.

Align reports with the organisation’s strategic goals

Healthcare HR professionals need to be deliberate about aligning metric analysis with overall organisational goals. This is important to show how HR programs are driving progress and helping the organisation reach its strategic goals as well as illustrating the value and impact employees make every day.

Use metrics to drive executive action

One of the main objectives of reporting key metrics is to compel the executive team to take action on HR-related issues that may need attention and improvement. Healthcare HR professionals need to be sure to illustrate where employees are struggling as well as the progress of HR programs to give leadership a clear picture of where to allocate resources.

Conclusion

The world is rapidly evolving with apps, big data, real-time communication and increasing use of artificial intelligence, chatbots and predictive analytics playing a larger role in our everyday lives. These technologies are quickly bringing new functionality to the world of HR. The future success of healthcare HR professionals will be directly linked to how well they adapt to new developments to create and design the workplace and employee experience.

Healthcare Recruiters: How Technology is Improving Healthcare Recruiting

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The Australian Healthcare and Social Assistance sector workforce has a projected growth rate of 14.9% or an additional 250,300 positions in the 5 year period from 2018 to 2023. 28% of all new jobs in this period will be in this sector.   (Source: Industry Outlook – Australian Jobs, Australian Bureau of Statistics)  In one scenario presented by the OECD, healthcare spend could account for nearly 14% of Australia’s GDP by 2030. (Source: OECD Report)

For healthcare organisations looking to keep pace with growth, investing in the right recruiting technology can streamline the recruitment process and help them keep up with staffing demand. In this post, we outline how recruiting technology helps healthcare organisations stay ahead of the talent curve from the beginning to the end of the hiring process.

Optimised Job Descriptions

A well-written job description is essential for attracting the best candidates for open positions. Accurate and optimised job descriptions not only engages great talent but clearly outlining the scope of the position also ensures that once hired, healthcare workers can fulfill their duties and responsibilities.

Optimised job descriptions also enable healthcare recruiters to match the right candidates with available positions by documenting the specific responsibilities of each role, including the certification and licensing requirements, the physical demands of the job and the location of the facility.

By creating more appealing and inclusive job descriptions, healthcare organisations can also increase the diversity of their candidate pool while attracting better-fitting candidates to open positions.

Tips for creating appealing job descriptions include:

  • Use keywords in job titles and descriptions so applicants can find the postings more easily.
  • Make job descriptions concise and easy to read on mobile devices.
  • Answer the “so what?” question: what makes your healthcare organisation a place job seekers should want to work at?

How technology can help optimise job descriptions

Technology can be leveraged to optimise and create more engaging job descriptions for both clinical and non-clinical healthcare positions. For example, some recruiting technology platforms can conduct sentiment analysis on job descriptions to identify the potentially biased language and suggest alternatives and synonyms for more objective and neutral terminology.

Removing biased language is not the only way technology helps healthcare recruiters optimise job descriptions. At PeopleScout, our Affinix™ platform can help healthcare organisations improve job descriptions by optimising career pages and job postings for search engines. One way the tool does this is by offering suggestions for optimised title tags for every job posting.

Examples of optimised title tags are:

  • Nursing Job Opening | XYZ Healthcare
  • RN Jobs Available, Chicago | XYZ Clinic
  • Hospital Food Service Jobs in Chicago | XYZ Hospital

Technology platforms that provide SEO guidance are also powerful tools for adding relevant keywords, which are crucial for job description optimisation. Once relevant keywords are identified, recruiters can add them to the job description text, especially in the page title and subtitles, in order to help the page rank higher in search engine results for those specific keywords.

Helping Healthcare Recruiters Source Candidates

For healthcare recruiters, maintaining a steady pipeline of qualified talent is essential. Unfortunately, the tight healthcare labor market can make consistently sourcing qualified candidates difficult. What’s more, it can be difficult for healthcare recruiters to identify and keep track of previous applicants who may be a good fit for new roles.

The unfortunate reality is that many healthcare organisations lack the time and resources to source high-quality candidates consistently. This can add up to a lot of stress for those responsible for maintaining a healthy talent pool for an organisation’s open positions.

How technology can improve sourcing candidates

Recruiting technology can help reduce the amount of time recruiters spend on sourcing candidates by finding more platforms, channels and databases to search for passive candidates. Beyond time savings, one of the more significant developments in recruiting technology is the proliferation of AI-enabled candidate sourcing, which has the following benefits:

  • AI-enabled sourcing tools can discover patterns in resumes, social profiles and other sources of data to find candidates that are ideal matches for a job’s requirements.
  • AI technology can help reduce bias in candidate sourcing by disregarding candidate demographics (e.g., race, gender, age) in its decision making.
  • AI algorithms crawl potential candidates’ online profiles and portfolios to help source passive candidates.
  • AI can be used to source both external and internal candidates by screening the existing resumes in a healthcare organization’s applicant tracking system (ATS) to find strong matches for current open positions.

Screening Candidates

The process of screening candidates, much like candidate sourcing, can be time-consuming for recruiters who are already stretched thin. Recruiters need to analyse workforce data, formulate job descriptions, verify candidate information and check references. To make sure recruiters are able to perform all of these functions, it’s important that the screening process is as efficient as possible.

How technology can help healthcare recruiters screen candidates

One of the most efficient applications of recruiting technology is utilising AI to automate the resume screening process, especially for high-volume or high-turnover positions. Intelligent screening software that incorporates predictive analytics and machine learning to understand top talent behaviors and predict factors such as cultural fit. Smart screening that analyses a healthcare organisation’s existing ATS or CRM to figure out which candidates became successful and unsuccessful healthcare workers based on their performance and tenure and turnover rates make screening and hiring the top candidates easier than ever.

Digital assessments that test an applicant’s skills and capabilities are also making screening candidates easier. Hiring managers can deploy digital assessments to test aptitude, personality, and skills and use the objective data and results to help make more informed hiring decisions.

Interviewing and Hiring Healthcare Candidates

In the healthcare industry, it is crucial to attract and hire the most qualified candidates because many positions have a direct impact on patient care. Hiring the wrong candidate can be not only dangerous for patients but also costly, as healthcare organisations can face litigation for injuries sustained or maltreatment of patients by staff. The right healthcare recruiting strategies and interviewing techniques can ensure that healthcare facilities hire the best candidates.

How technology can improve the interview process

There are a variety of ways that recruiting tools and technology can improve the interview process, such as:

  • Automated interview scheduling that allows candidates to schedule or reschedule interviews themselves. All recruiters have to do is provide candidates with available time slots.
  • Digital video interviews that can be conducted be pre-recorded and viewed when it’s convenient for recruiters and hiring managers.
  • Chatbots that can help answer candidates’ questions and provide information on next steps in the recruitment process.

Conclusion

Technology streamlines the healthcare recruiting and hiring process by providing an improved experience for both recruiters and candidates. While technology can assist recruiters in improving the functions of the recruiting process, it cannot replace human touch, experience and instincts when it comes to hiring the best talent. Employers should look for a talent partner with comprehensive talent acquisition and workforce management solution, where technology is just one part of the puzzle.

How To: Sourcing Healthcare Workers

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Sourcing healthcare workers has become a top concern of leaders in the medical industry. More than 90 percent of the 301 hospital executives surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit of Prudential Retirement said they expect their organisations will face a serious talent shortage in the next 10 years that will affect their ability to deliver high-quality care. One of the first steps in preparing for changes in the talent landscape is to establish an efficient method of sourcing talent. In this post, we outline how healthcare organisations can better source quality healthcare workers to avoid understaffing issues in the coming years.

Preparing to Source Healthcare Workers

Before a healthcare organisation can adequately source healthcare workers, it needs to first evaluate its needs, what it can offer prospective workers and if it is prepared to make competitive offers to candidates.

What qualities are you looking for in a healthcare worker?

A healthcare worker who is willing and able to perform the necessary duties associated with their position is essential, but what particular hard or soft-skills and credentials does an organisation’s ideal candidate possess? Are candidates with roots in the community or region of an organisation preferred? Are candidates with leadership experience or qualities the best fit for a role? Is a background in customer support helpful? If an organisation has a clear vision of the type of healthcare worker they want to employ, sourcing the right candidates becomes easier and less subjective.

What does your organisation have to offer healthcare workers?

Healthcare organisations need to not only carefully evaluate each candidate, but also evaluate what they have to offer potential employees. An honest exploration of what an organisation has to offer can provide insights and help in the creation of a realistic and attractive compensation package, increase the odds that offers will be accepted and help retain candidates once they are hired.

Is your organisation prepared to make an offer?

Whether a healthcare organisation is a large medical research center or a small community clinic, organisations need to make sure they are prepared to make an offer to the right candidate. This includes offering a competitive compensation package, preparing training and onboarding procedures and making sure there is a comfortable ready-to-use workspace for the new hire. Being prepared to make an offer makes it easier for timely follow-ups with candidates and increases the chance that an offer will be accepted.

Sourcing the Ideal Healthcare Worker

The role of an RPO solution or internal recruiter is to source and hire top talent. However, the success of a candidate depends on whether a healthcare organisation has thoroughly outlined the traits, experience and competencies of an ideal candidate for both clinical and non-clinical healthcare workers. Below, we list a few ways healthcare organisations can narrow down their ideal candidate.

Must-have traits

The healthcare industry can place varied demands on workers. To ensure new hires can meet the unique challenges presented by a healthcare organisation, it is essential for organisations to specify the must-have skills and traits candidates should possess.

HR, management and employees currently in the same or an adjacent role should work together to compile a list of must-haves. Traits should be a good mixture of hard and soft-skills such as a passion for work, technology proficiency, proper certifications, discipline, positive attitude and ambition. Must-haves should include the traits that will make a candidate an excellent cultural fit such as communication skills, shared values and experience working in a similar environment.

Outline key responsibilities

When sourcing healthcare talent, it is important to find candidates whose experience matches well with the key responsibilities of a position. For every open position, organisations should outline 10 key responsibilities fulfilled by that role to gain a better idea about the previous responsibilities of an ideal candidate. Responsibilities can include management of a team, project management, food preparation, dispensing medication and other tasks critical to the position. By outlining key tasks, a healthcare organisation will not only increase the chances of making the right hire, but they will also be able to write more accurate job descriptions that attract the right talent.

Job descriptions

An optimised job description is one of the most potent weapons in a healthcare recruiter’s arsenal. Great job descriptions tell potential hires the exact requirements of a position and decrease the number of unqualified applicants. Job descriptions should draw from must-have traits and key responsibilities to form an accurate representation of the job and who would best fit the role. Before drafting a job description, it can be helpful to gather a team of current employees who represent the best qualities of the people who currently hold the same or a similar position and ask them how they would describe their job and what it takes to be successful in their role.

Source Healthcare Workers by Referral

One of the best ways to source top-quality healthcare workers is by tapping into the professional networks of current employees. The tight healthcare labor market means more competition for talent, with healthcare organisations all vying for talent from similar pools and sources. To get an edge over the competition, organisations should look to one of the unique and trustworthy sources of expertise, their employees.

An employee referral program helps a healthcare organisation expand its network and gives them a ready-made talent pool. Employees have contacts with former classmates and co-workers, and their referrals are more likely to be qualified and the right cultural fits.

Organisations should post open positions in common areas, announce openings at company meetings and share growth plans with staff members, so they keep referrals top of mind. Also, employees should be made aware of the rewards for references such as financial compensation or other perks. If an employee referral candidate is not a good fit for the position, healthcare organisations can still keep that candidate’s information for different roles, which can help supplement a robust talent pipeline.

Source Healthcare Workers from Professional Association Memberships and Trade Shows

Participating in and networking at industry groups, conferences and trade shows is a great way to meet healthcare professionals who may be interested in new opportunities. Before attending an industry event, develop a plan for networking with professionals and gathering contact information from interested job prospects.

When positions open up that align well with a prospective contact’s skill set, recruiters can contact the individual and share a job description with them through email, LinkedIn or by contacting them directly over the phone. If a candidate is interested, recruiters can invite them for an on-site visit where they can interview and meet with hiring directors and department heads regarding the open position. Healthcare organisations can also post on professional association webpages, industry journals and in local organisation’s newsletters.

Source Healthcare Workers Where They Are

Meeting candidates where they are is not only an efficient way to source talent; it is also a way to improve the candidate experience. When sourcing healthcare workers, organisations should look to identify candidates’ preferred news sources, professional forums, discussion groups and social networking sites.

Recruiters can use this information to develop creative and engaging recruiting strategies to source candidates for job openings. Healthcare organisations can engage potential candidates on social media and publications and use the opportunity to sell the vision and the advantages of the organisation. Effective engagement with candidates will portray an organisation as an exciting and rewarding place to work and make healthcare workers want to apply to open positions whether they are passive or active candidates.

Healthcare employers should also make sure their application and hiring process is optimised for smartphones. In fact, 80 percent of job seekers expect to be able to conduct their job search easily on a smartphone. Many healthcare organisations have not invested in recruiting technology to help them become more mobile-friendly. Optimising mobile experience should be a top priority for healthcare organisations to get an edge over the competition in the coming years.

Engage a Healthcare RPO Provider

For some healthcare organisations, the time and resources it takes to source quality talent are prohibitive. What’s more, a healthcare company may not be able to source candidates in certain hard-to-fill positions. Vacancies in open jobs can be very costly for healthcare organisations, but more importantly, they can affect the ability to provide quality care to their patients.

RPO solution providers who specialise in healthcare recruiting can help source quality talent and develop a healthy candidate pool. A healthcare RPO provider’s networks, contacts, know-how and dedication to sourcing talent will not only help find candidates, but it will also free up time and resources for internal HR teams, allowing them to focus on other important matters.

If your organisation is looking for additional ideas about sourcing healthcare workers, contact PeopleScout today and ask how we can help you source and hire the best healthcare talent quickly.

Medical Staffing: How to Engage and Retain Healthcare Workers

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The lifeblood of a healthy healthcare organisation is a happy and well-engaged staff, from food service and facility maintenance employees to clinical professionals like physicians and nurses. To ensure a happy healthcare workforce, medical staffing, employee engagement and retention need to be top priorities of healthcare HR professionals.

Unfortunately, many healthcare organisations lack concrete plans or programs for healthcare talent management, or the programs they have in place are antiquated and in need of updating. In this post, we educate healthcare HR professionals on ways to improve medical staffing by better engaging and retaining employees.

Why Engagement and Retention is Important for Medical Staffing

Healthcare employee turnover is high, according to a Leaders for Today (LPT) survey report, which included 852 participants of both clinical and non-clinical healthcare workers. The survey found that 43 percent of respondents reported they have been with their current organisation for fewer than two years and 65.7 percent reported they have been with their hospital for fewer than five years. More than one-third of LPT survey respondents plan to leave their current organization within two years, and 68.6 percent plan to leave in five years.

What’s more, the financial costs of high turnover can be significant for healthcare organisations. The turnover of a physician represents a $200,000 loss for a healthcare organisation, according to a 2016 report from B.E. Smith, while the loss of a nurse can cost up to $58,400 annually according to NSI Nursing Solution’s report. By better engaging employees, healthcare organisations will not only raise morale and lower employee turnover, but they will also improve their bottom line.

Four Key Areas of Medical Staffing and Employee Engagement

Developing an effective medical staffing strategy is a challenge, especially with the healthcare industry experiencing a shortage of medical professionals. Healthcare workforce planning can help resolve some medical staffing issues. However, organisations also need to factor in the following areas to ensure strong employee engagement and retention:

  • Onboarding new employees: Involves training, educating and getting new employees comfortably situated in their new position.
  • Engaging employees: Involves managing and developing employees to become more engaged with the organisation.
  • Retaining employees: Involves expanding responsibilities of employees as well as offering incentives to stay with an organisation.

Medical Staffing Basics: Onboarding New Healthcare Employees

Making sure new hires are comfortable, connected and productive as soon as possible is essential for the success of a comprehensive medical staffing program. New hires need to know how they fit into an organisation and understand how their roles support the healthcare organisation’s goals. When a healthcare organisation takes the time to cultivate relationships with new hires, those employees feel like part of the team from day one and are more likely to stay in their positions.

Having a strong support structure is vital for new hires, managers should work to create a support network for their new hires in their departments to help them get up to speed as soon as possible. Managers should also be as available as possible to answer questions and provide feedback to new hires.

Instead of waiting for new hires to introduce themselves to their new co-workers, healthcare HR professionals should actively introduce new hires to their teams before their start date. This can be done with email notifications or a brief in-person meeting. Veteran employees should also conduct regular follow-ups with new hires once they have started to make sure they are acclimating well to their new environment.

Additional on-boarding suggestions:

  • Appoint point persons and mentors to welcome and orient new hires for the first 90-days of employment.
  • Before a new hire’s start date, send him/her a card or letter welcoming them to the organisation and include important paperwork, employee handbook and benefits package along with an agenda letting them know what to expect on their first day.
  • Make sure the employee’s work area is ready.
  • Create lunch plans for new hire’s first few days, helping her/him feel at ease and welcome. This can also can serve as a way to introduce them to the team.
  • Promptly educate new hires on the healthcare organisation’s culture and unwritten rules. For example, what is the preferred method of communication – email, phone, chat programs or in-person meetings?

Successfully onboarding employees can be one of the most effective weapons in a healthcare organisation’s arsenal. Studies have illustrated that well-designed onboarding programs can quickly transform new hires into dedicated employees, reducing the costs associated with turnover and improving overall employee morale.

Engaging Healthcare Employees

Employee engagement is one of the most important elements of successful medical staffing. Highly engaged employees often have persistent feelings of work fulfillment. This work fulfillment can often translate into increased enthusiasm and passion in employees, resulting in higher than average levels of focus and energy put into their jobs.

Employee engagement has become more important to healthcare HR professionals because there is growing evidence that employee engagement correlates to positive outcomes for individual, group and organisational performance in the areas of productivity, retention, turnover, patient care and loyalty. Here are a few practices healthcare organisations can do to better engage employees.

Professional development: For healthcare professionals—especially clinical employees—the opportunity to learn and grow professionally is very important. To better engage employees, healthcare organisations should look to create a positive learning environment for employees who seek additional skills and professional experiences. Learning opportunities can pay long-term dividends, the skills and new experiences gained by employees through education and training can be utilised to improve performance in their current position, or they can transition into vacant positions, lessening the need for hiring new personnel.

Offer better work-life balance

Healthcare workers experience the same challenges in their personal lives as employees in other industries, they are trying to balance childcare, school schedules and needing time away from work. Adding some freedom to an employee’s daily, weekly or monthly schedule is often seen as a big plus for employees and can be more important than compensation in some cases.

Working relationships and mentorship

Strong bonds and relationships between team members are important for professional growth. Veteran employees who have been with an organisation for years have a lot of experience, knowledge and advice to impart to younger and less experienced employees looking for career guidance. To build better employee engagement, healthcare organisations should create a formal mentoring program. Healthcare organisations can ask seasoned employees to guide younger ones in their careers to help engage both the mentor and mentee, giving a sense of purpose and direction to both parties.

Additional employee engagement suggestions:

  • Make staff meetings a time to celebrate successes and highlight individual achievements.
  • Have managers involve employees in determining their career path goals and development plan.
  • Promote values such as integrity, empowerment, perseverance, equality, discipline and accountability into the organisation.
  • Let employees know they matter and make a difference within the organisation.
  • Give employees responsibilities and new challenges.
  • Give employees thank you cards for going the extra mile.
  • Implement employee suggestions and ideas to show you care and value their input.
  • Create opportunities for employees to become a “leader” in something they are interested in and knowledgeable about.
  • Ask employees work-appropriate questions about their family life, hobbies and interests.
  • Always provide staff the care, tools and resources needed to be successful in their position.

By better engaging employees, medical staffing efforts will see reduced turnover and higher levels of job satisfaction among employees. Remember, managers are key in engaging employees and must pay attention to staff needs to help create a positive working environment.

Retaining Healthcare Employees

Employee retention is certainly one of the most important ingredients for success for healthcare organisations. Improving employee retention allows organisations to avoid the high cost associated with replacing employees, improves patient care and enhancing the overall quality of service to the communities served. Below are a few ways healthcare organisations can improve their employee retention efforts.

Offer flexible scheduling: Scheduling can be a rather difficult part of medical staffing. A healthcare workers’ schedule can be exhausting, as they often have to work long and unpredictable hours. To better retain employees, healthcare organisations should consider offering a wide array of scheduling options. Employees will appreciate an organisation’s attempts to accommodate their personal lives and needs, and in turn, become more loyal to an organisation as a result. Employees who have more control of their schedules tend to feel more job satisfaction and often stay with an organisation longer.

Remove frustrating obstacles: Many employees may truly love their jobs, but due to obstacles and unnecessary challenges associated with performing their duties, they become burned out. For instance, nurses might get inundated with never-ending paperwork. This may result in nurses feeling unsatisfied with their work. A solution to this challenge could be to implement a new technology to streamline the paperwork process. Without an overload, nurses will most likely feel greater satisfaction because their workload is more balanced between administrative and clinical work.

Conduct stay interviews: Interviewing employees is often reserved for before hiring or after an employee resigns their position. Stay interviews should be conducted at least once a year with employees on a one-on-one basis in a neutral setting. Employees should be asked questions about their frustrations and issues and about ideas on how improvements can be made for them.

Questions to include in stay interviews:

  • What about your job makes you eager to get to work?
  • What makes you want to hit the snooze button instead of coming to work?
  • If you were to leave the organisation, what would you miss the most?
  • What would be the one thing, if it changed in your current position, would make you consider leaving?
  • What would be the one thing you would change about your department if you could?

Employees who are treated well will often feel a sense of obligation or duty to their organisation. As a healthcare employer, each action an organisation takes to improve employee job satisfaction, morale and productivity is a step towards improving retention and improving medical staffing outcomes.

Conclusion

For healthcare organisations, medical staffing is only as successful as their ability to engage and retain the best healthcare professionals. To achieve this end, organisations must be consistently vigilant of their employees’ needs and must develop talent carefully to keep employees engaged and committed to their job.

Healthcare Workforce Planning

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In 2010, the then Department of Health and Ageing estimated that the aged care workforce in Australia would need to increase between two and three times before 2050 in order to provide care to the growing number of aged care residents. Other challenges include that the aged care workforce itself is ageing, the overall labour market will be more competitive as a result of the ageing of the population and the sector already faces difficulties in attracting and retaining workers.

The projected growth of the senior population present both opportunities and challenges for healthcare organisations. To meet the rising demand on the healthcare system, it is imperative for healthcare organisations to proactively plan for the future. In this post, we outline the steps organisations can take towards healthcare workforce planning to ensure they are well-equipped to handle the changes and challenges in hiring for healthcare.

The Case for Healthcare Workforce Planning

“A number of reports have pointed out that new models of care are unlikely to work if they are underpinned by old models of health professional training. In addition, new models cannot work if existing health workforces are unwilling to adapt, and while various components do not cooperate and collaborate to work more effectively within teams. Finally, health workforce analysis has concluded that realigning workforce structures must be an essential element of a new health workforce model that needs to include new types of workers and revised roles for existing workers”.

Healthcare organisations that lack a clear healthcare workforce planning strategy may experience an imbalance in staff that can result in an inability to achieve business objectives and hinders the ability to provide adequate care for patients in the face of growing demand.

By developing a healthcare workforce plan that is responsive to hiring needs, healthcare organisations can more effectively manage recruiting and staffing challenges. What’s more, healthcare workforce planning can give organisations an advantage in attracting top medical talent. In turn, helping improve patient care.

Challenges in Healthcare Workforce Planning

With dramatic shifts occurring in the healthcare workforce, the leadership of healthcare organisations needs to identify challenges to their respective organisations and lead the discussion on workforce planning and development. Leaders need to ensure that healthcare workforce planning is a part of comprehensive strategic planning for their organisations, not a far-off solution to future issues not yet manifested.

The American Hospital Association’s Committee on Performance Improvement surveyed healthcare leaders and experts in the field to identify the key workforce challenges highlighted below:

  • Rural communities are facing challenges in recruiting healthcare professionals and providing education and training opportunities to current staff.
  • Healthcare leaders report facing an inadequate supply of behavioral health professionals to fill roles within their organisations.
  • The need for an improved educational pipeline and partnerships between academic and medical institutions need to be strengthened.
  • Identifying and harnessing technology to meet future workforce needs.
  • Improving commitment to workplace diversity in all aspects — race, ethnicity, gender and age.

While addressing these challenges head-on with healthcare workforce planning is a step in the right direction, healthcare leaders need to also effectively communicate the importance of upcoming changes to their organisation.

Navigating Healthcare Workforce Imbalances

Effective healthcare workforce planning takes imbalances in available talent and resources needed to meet organisational staffing requirements into account, whether those imbalances are due to insufficient financial resources to recruit healthcare professionals or a shortage of qualified candidates to fill positions. To address imbalances, healthcare organisations should conduct an internal review of resources available for recruiting and survey the healthcare talent market for insights.

To properly understand potential imbalances, healthcare organisations should take the following factors into account:

  • Traditionally, the unbalanced distribution of the healthcare workforce resulted in greater disparity in available healthcare professionals between rural and urban locations. As the healthcare talent gap widens, urban communities are now seeing similar imbalances between available talent and open positions.
  • The availability of healthcare workers and financial resources is influenced by whether a healthcare organisation is public or private. Depending on an organisation’s alignment, they should plan to address limitations and capitalize on advantages respective to their private or public status.
  • The government can also influence the healthcare worker talent market by creating laws or establishing public policy to regulate the talent market.
  • The healthcare educational system and professional institutions are verdant talent pipelines and also play a role in healthcare imbalance, impacting the number of candidates available.

Once a review has been conducted, healthcare organisations can then draft a plan of action to address challenges in healthcare recruiting.

Defining Workforce Planning Roles and Responsibilities

Before creating a healthcare workforce plan, stakeholders need to identify why a workforce plan is needed and for whom ownership of the planning process belongs. Stakeholders should clearly communicate the intended use of the healthcare workforce plan and its scope; whether it will cover a single service area, a particular patient facility, or an entire nationwide healthcare network.

Once need and scope are established, stakeholders should communicate who will be responsible for ensuring the plan is delivered and who will be involved in the planning process, including senior and executive staff, physicians, HR professionals, community relations and outreach staff and others who may have a role in the plan’s implementation.

Defining the Required Workforce

After establishing roles and responsibilities, healthcare workforce planners must assess their organisation’s hiring needs and what skills and specialised labour are required to fill positions. Workforce planners will also need to determine the number of workers needed to fulfill the healthcare organisation’s workforce demand. In order to estimate workforce demand, planners must consider their existing workforce, turnover rate, current hiring model and average time-to-fill metrics.

Assessing Healthcare Workforce Availability

This step involves surveying the existing healthcare workforce both nationally and regionally, the number of credentialed candidates available to fill positions and assessing issues arising from retirement or turnover. Healthcare workforce planners should consider the practicalities and cost of any retraining, redeployment and/or recruitment activities that could increase or change their organisation’s workforce.

Developing a Plan

A crucial element of healthcare workforce planning is the development of a plan to acquire and retain the necessary number of qualified candidates and employees to fill an organisation’s talent pipeline. To achieve this, workforce planners should identify the specific policies and practices for acquiring, developing, assessing and retaining talent and look for areas of improvement.

While identifying policies and practices, planners should outline specific recommendations and changes they believe will improve workforce planning and share them with leadership for future action. Planners need to take into account the potential effects and outcomes of new policies and practices when making suggestions to ensure that short-term solutions do not mask long-term and reoccurring issues.

Community Partnerships

The role of healthcare providers is changing, and to meet the needs of patients and the communities they serve, each organisation needs to evaluate its role within the community and how they can better partner with local organisations.

Community partnerships are not just outreach vehicles; they can also enhance talent pipeline sustainability and help an organisation’s recruitment efforts. The primary partnerships that should be considered are local universities and community colleges.

In addition to partnering with educational institutions, healthcare organisations should consider partnering with public health departments, social service organisations, law enforcement and community development groups. Developing relationships with both private and public institutions should become a key to any successful healthcare workforce plan.

Monitoring and Refreshing the Healthcare Workforce Plan

After a healthcare workforce plan is implemented, periodic reviews and adjustments are essential for continued success. Workforce planners need to establish a review and monitoring process so they can amend the healthcare workforce plan according to changes in the organisation’s healthcare hiring needs. The plan should be explicit about how success will be measured so stakeholders and leadership can have transparency on the success of the workforce plan. What’s more, a proper monitoring program can help identify any unintended consequences of changes and offer leadership the opportunity to take corrective action if needed.

A well-crafted monitoring program should take into account the future strategic direction of an organisation and how specific successes and failures will affect workforce needs in the future. Assessments are also useful in evaluating the skill sets of current staff, determining the future needs of patients and identifying the actions needed to build partnerships for a steady talent pipeline.

Conclusion

For the success of any healthcare organisation, workforce planners must continually assess the impact of their hiring model, employee retention strategy and talent sourcing methods. Workforce planners should be clear about what they expect to achieve through planning. Their objective should allow the development and maintenance of a health workforce with the skills to support their organisation.