Tag: #healthcare

Finding the right recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) provider is critical for healthcare organisations looking to hire top healthcare talent. Whether a healthcare organisation is looking to improve its recruiting processes, become more efficient or enhance its employment brand, developing a strong relationship with a trusted RPO provider begins with the selection process. In this post, we review the best practices when it comes to selecting the right RPO provider for your healthcare staffing needs.

What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing for Healthcare?

To understand RPO solutions, it’s important to understand what they are not. RPO providers are not healthcare staffing companies, head-hunters or quick-fixes for one-time healthcare hiring needs. Rather, RPO providers implement solutions designed to streamline and improve the hiring process, and as a result, improve overall business performance.

From employer branding to employee engagement, hiring, onboarding and much more, a well-executed RPO program can make a huge impact on a healthcare organisation. RPO solutions are not one-size-fits-all plans. Each RPO solution must be tailored to meet an individual company’s needs and take industry specific concerns into consideration while developing an RPO program.

Healthcare Staffing and RPO: Getting Started

Before contacting an RPO provider, a healthcare organisation must first assess both its hiring and business needs. The following is a list of common needs fulfilled by RPO solutions:

• Recruit a small number of employees for niche positions.
• Fill a large number of open positions quickly with high-quality candidates.
• Help healthcare organisations increase employee retention and improve employee turnover rate.
• Help healthcare organisations staff positions that require specific technical experience or certifications.
• Provide scalable engagements tailored to fit the healthcare hiring needs of clients.
• Provide transparency by tracking metrics and milestones outlined in SLAs.

Once you have considered your own healthcare staffing needs, you need to research to see what your prospective RPO partner brings to the table. When consulting with a prospective RPO provider ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the prospective RPO have expertise in fulfilling the specific staffing needs of healthcare organisations?
• Do they have multiple healthcare organisations as current clients?
• Can they provide scalability with full-cycle and partial-cycle recruiting?
• Where do they source healthcare professionals to build their talent pipeline?

Following an in-depth consultation with an RPO provider, you will learn if they can help your healthcare organisation achieve its staffing and business goals.

When Do You Need an RPO Provider for Your Healthcare Staffing Needs?

If you are looking to streamline your healthcare organisation’s talent acquisition processes and procedures as a means to become more cost-effective, then engaging an RPO provider can help you reduce spend with healthcare employment agencies, yield lower turnover and create a higher quality pipeline of candidates for your open positions. The work of a good RPO provider will save your organisation money throughout the new employee’s tenure at your organization, beyond when they’re hired.

Does your healthcare organisation need specialised talent?

The right healthcare RPO provider understands the unique challenges presented by the healthcare industry and has experience sourcing quality candidates for niche/technical healthcare positions.

RPO providers with expertise in the healthcare industry will quickly target and assess both passive and active candidates for hard-to-fill positions rather than placing an ad and waiting for job seekers to answer it. By understanding your healthcare hiring needs, an RPO provider reduces the need for training internal personnel or hiring those with healthcare-specific experience.

RPO providers can provide scalable solutions to accommodate growth

The need for healthcare services is on the rise. As a result, many healthcare organisations are growing rapidly to meet the demand. If your organisation is experiencing growth, an experienced RPO partner can source the right talent quickly to make sure your organisation is staffed adequately to meet growth demands.

RPO providers can handle background checks, drug screens and other onboarding tasks as needed. They will make sure that all the applicants presented to you for interviews have the specific skills required for your open positions.

RPO providers can improve your employment brand and attract better talent

Whether your healthcare organisation is an established medical provider or a new player in the industry, building strong employer brand appeal can attract the best talent to your job postings. An RPO provider can help build your brand and your reputation as a good place to work. An RPO engagement can provide solutions to help you maintain healthy relationships with both prospective candidates – including ones that are not hired for open positions – former and current employees, which improves your employer brand in the healthcare industry.

Which RPO Provider is Right for Your Healthcare Staffing Needs?

Choosing the right RPO partner for your healthcare staffing needs is a carefully thought out process with many factors to take into consideration. You are not only selecting a company to help you with your recruiting processes, but you are also choosing a partner that will help you improve multiple business functions for your organisation. Just like when choosing other products or services, you need to identify your specific business needs and what you want an RPO provider to handle or assist you with. This primarily means identifying your weaknesses/pain points and your organisational objectives, such as staffing cost reduction, organisation expansion or reconfiguring your recruiting structure.

The right RPO provider values accountability

When hiring for healthcare, accountability is one of the most important factors in the relationship between an organisation and an RPO provider. When you select the right healthcare RPO provider, they will deliver a high level of transparency and will encourage you to hold them accountable for how well the hires they make work out for your organisation. A good RPO provider will also want to be judged on how quickly they can fill open positions and on how cost-efficient their service is for you.

The right RPO provider understands the healthcare industry

The right RPO provider knows healthcare staffing top to bottom. They have strong connections with healthcare professional organisations, they understand the technology used to source top healthcare talent, they know how to screen candidates effectively and they understand the compliance requirements for each healthcare position.

An RPO provider who is knowledgeable about healthcare hiring can easily fill any position in your organisation and will help you find the best candidate both in terms of cultural fit and fitness for the position.

They understand your healthcare organisation’s needs

Each healthcare organisation is unique, so a cookie-cutter approach to your healthcare staffing needs may not work to your advantage. The right RPO provider will take the time to form an in-depth understanding of your staffing needs and preferences, and will work to tailor a seamless RPO plan for you.

No matter how many positions you need to fill, the right RPO provider will take that into consideration and make sure your new 10 or 1,000 employees all hit the ground running and seamlessly integrate into your organization.

They employ proprietary technology and unique sourcing methods

In a tight healthcare labor market, sourcing and attracting the best talent can be difficult. The right RPO provider understands this, and will employ cutting-edge recruiting technology and sourcing methods to meet a client’s healthcare staffing needs.

Healthcare recruiting technology that utilizes AI and machine learning to source and screen candidates give healthcare organisations a distinct advantage in finding the right candidates quickly.

What’s more, recruiting technology can reduce the cost-per-hire and streamline the often disjointed healthcare staffing process by merging multiple recruiting functions into one easy-to-use interface.

They understand your talent market

Whether your healthcare organisation has one location or multiple locations across many regions, the right RPO provider understands the laws, regulations, customs and structures in your regions of operation. Your RPO provider should possess the know-how and have experience in sourcing candidates in your talent market(s) to make sure you hire the best talent available. The right RPO provider will take as little time and money as possible sourcing your new workforce, and get them hired as quickly as possible.

Healthcare staffing can be complicated, that’s why partnering with the right RPO provider is crucial for success. Once you have found the right RPO provider for your staffing needs, it can take time to build a strong relationship. Once the relationship is established, you will see all of the benefits the right RPO provider can bring to the table, and you will see how much easier the healthcare staffing process can be.

According to U.S. Census data, there are 49.2 million individuals age 65 and older living in the U.S., accounting for 12.4 percent of the total population. The aging Baby Boom population and increased life expectancy in the U.S. have created a need for more healthcare professionals. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that healthcare occupations will grow 18 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations, adding nearly 2.3 million new jobs to the economy.

Challenges in Healthcare Recruiting

The healthcare industry faces widespread talent gaps and shortages that are expected to grow worse over the coming years. A study conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Center for Workforce Studies revealed there will be 45,000 too few primary care physicians—and a shortage of 46,000 surgeons and medical specialists—in the next decade. Beyond clinical and medically trained professionals, the healthcare industry is also facing a shortage of non-clinical workers such as food service workers, facility maintenance staff and security guards.

The healthcare turnover rate exceeds 19 percent, further exacerbating the talent shortage and skills gap issues prevalent in healthcare, and making it more difficult for healthcare organisations to hold onto their top talent. So, how can organisations overcome these challenges in healthcare recruiting to find the talent they need? Below, we list six strategies to optimise healthcare recruiting practices in the face of these challenges.

Technology and Healthcare Recruiting

The rise of talent acquisition technology means that healthcare organisations have new and powerful tools for healthcare recruiting. Advances in technology not only make recruiting easier, but technology can also help make healthcare recruiting more cost-effective by improving costly time-to-fill metrics, reducing agency spend and streamlining the hiring process.

In addition to improved metrics and efficiency, technology can help healthcare organisations meet candidates where they are—on their mobile devices. More and more, candidates are using their mobile devices in the job hunt. In fact, 89 percent of candidates think that their mobile devices play a critical role in the job hunting process. Talent acquisition technology can help healthcare organisations offer a more mobile-friendly job search and application process to capitalise on this trend.

Improve Employer Branding

Whether candidates are recent graduates or seasoned professionals, the modern job hunter is likely to research prospective employers before applying to or accepting job offers. To increase the number of candidates accepting offer letters, healthcare organisations need to make sure their employment brand is positive. One of the best ways of doing this is by highlighting company culture and benefits.

For example, healthcare organisations can illustrate their culture by telling compelling stories about their workplace and employees.

Healthcare providers can also attend in-person employer branding activities, like maintaining a presence at local health fairs and sending talent teams to job seeker events at local medical and nursing schools.

Improve Benefits

The healthcare industry has become more competitive when it comes to attracting the best and most qualified candidates to fill positions. To get an edge over competitors, healthcare organisations need to become more innovate when it comes to compensation, benefits and flexible work environments.

Healthcare organisations need to look for ways to implement policies around flextime and telecommuting where it makes sense and talk to potential candidates about the benefits that matter most to them. Some candidates will prefer traditional benefits packages, but others might prioritise opportunities in learning and development, mentoring and career growth.

According to Barkley Davis, senior director of physician recruitment at LifePoint Hospitals, debt relief is the top priority for nearly all new physicians, and hospitals should explore new types of financial incentives beyond just salary. For example, LifePoint offers some doctors monthly stipends if they accept a job offer while they’re still in training—building employee loyalty months before these new hires are even on the job. Other healthcare organisations are attracting talent by experimenting with new types of teams and scheduling models to meet staffing needs while offering greater flexibility to employees.

Create Candidate Pipelines

Being proactive is one of the keys to success in healthcare recruiting. Healthcare organisations should work towards building strategic talent pipelines that cover both regional and national talent pools. According to the American Hospital Association, partnering with national and state job boards, public health departments, professional societies, universities, colleges, academies and high schools is a good way to develop comprehensive talent pipelines for healthcare recruiting.

Healthcare organisations can also emphasise diversity recruiting as a priority, not only to demonstrate a commitment to better serving the community, but also to ensure sufficient talent for candidate pipelines in the coming years.

Utilise Innovating Sourcing Methods

With the current healthcare talent gap, organisations need to source talent from a diverse range of places. A skilled RPO provider will have their hands on the pulse of the healthcare talent landscape and will be able to source top level talent from a variety of sources such as veterans transitioning into civilian employment.

When it comes to staffing for healthcare, veterans have the training, discipline and work ethic to make great hires. An RPO provider with a long and proven track record of veteran hiring can help healthcare organisations find quality candidates to help bridge the talent gap.

Think Long-term in Healthcare Recruiting

As a healthcare organisation becomes better and more adept at recruiting, they may find great candidates that are not a fit for current open positions but could be good potential additions in the future. Healthcare organisations should place top candidates into a talent pool and make sure to communicate with them on a regular basis to keep them informed of new positions that could be a better fit for their skills.

Ignoring, overlooking or not providing proper communication to good talent in the hiring process can leave a poor impression on individuals, thereby negatively impacting a healthcare organisations’ employer brand. What’s more, 33 percent of job hunters are likely to share their negative experiences with companies on social media.

This, in turn, can come back and harm a company’s reputation and employer brand. Thinking long-term makes sure that hiring teams acknowledge the importance of initiating, nurturing and maintaining an ongoing relationship with top candidates and the overall talent pool. These talent pools will help organisations find great talent fast when they are looking to fill an important position in the future.

Conclusion

With many older healthcare workers retiring, healthcare organisations need to keep pace with industry recruiting trends and make the much-needed changes to their staffing models to meet the demands of the new and still emerging healthcare talent landscape.

For healthcare recruiting to be successful organisations need leaders that understand the benefits of the above-described tips. Integrating these tips into a healthcare recruiting strategy will result in a workforce with lower turnover rates, higher job satisfaction and improved ROI for recruitment efforts.