Five strategies for finding and keeping the best healthcare talent.
By Debbie Bolla
A number of challenges are converging to create the perfect storm in the healthcare hiring market. Baby boomers are moving into retirement, the aging population needs more care, and there is less talent available to fill open positions. The crisis of supply and demand is as real as ever.
Healthcare is also going through a fundamental change in business model, says Staci Roberts, senior vice president for Cielo, the leading provider of recruitment process outsourcing solutions to the healthcare industry. “The industry is moving into a value-based reimbursement model with care being pushed outside of the hospital walls. Healthcare is becoming a consumer-driven market with increased competition and expectations for improved patient experience and price transparency.”
This is clearly impacting hiring, and requires changes in the way healthcare organizations recruit.
“Healthcare organizations need to think creatively when finding and engaging talent,” says Liz Bickley, senior vice president of healthcare client services for Cielo. “The industry needs to adapt to more innovative approaches.”
What are some ways healthcare organizations can get ahead? Bickley and Roberts suggest:
Offer flexibility. With increased competition for talent, healthcare organizations will need to embrace different work options than they have in the past. Organizations can benefit from offering remote opportunities when appropriate and flexible schedules.
- Provide career pathways. Retention rates are likely to increase among employees who are looking for a traditional route to career progression. Healthcare organizations that map out these career paths have the opportunity to increase employee engagement and loyalty.
- Create internal career mobility centers. Internal mobility is an excellent partner to career planning. By providing guidance counseling on what pathways exist, HR will also be better able to offer training to ensure employees are ready for their next move.
- Flex staff when necessary. Float pools are a great option when HR teams are looking to staff quickly for a short period of time. This is especially helpful due the cyclical nature of healthcare -cold and flu season, allergy peaks, etc. They are also a great way to be able to engage with the gig economy for non-traditional healthcare roles, such as highly specialized IT workers.
- Evaluate a total talent approach. Healthcare is one of the industries where a total talent approach can have the biggest impact. A total talent approach provides a holistic view of an organization’s talent by sourcing, attracting, and hiring all types of workers through one approach. For example in healthcare, this talent model will be able to handle various patient care volumes and expand robust residency programs by allowing organizations to support and train them. A total talent approach will act as a single source for the global talent needs for healthcare organizations.
“The war for talent is hard, but never waste a crisis,” Bickley says. “We just need to think differently in order to elevate process.”
