Tag: #healthcare

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 organization” 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 healthcare HR technology is helping achieve success in these areas.

Leverage Healthcare HR Technology to Reduce Time Spent on Administrative Tasks

Administrative tasks are the backbone of a well-run healthcare organization’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.

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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 organize these tasks into categories so users can easily navigate information from a single platform. With multiple HR functions organized in one space, healthcare HR departments can be more efficient and productive in handling administrative tasks.

Before sitting down with potential vendors, healthcare staffing teams 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 customizable 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 maximize 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 healthcare recruitment. A healthcare 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 talent acquisition 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 Healthcare HR Technology to Organize and Track Metrics

Tracking HR metrics is important for healthcare HR professionals and leadership teams looking to better understand the health and vitality of their organization 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 analyzing the value of employees easier. Advances in technology such as HR dashboards allow organizations to gather data better. An HR dashboard can be used to analyze performance and identify areas for improvement in an organization. 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 organization’s staff from turnover to employee satisfaction to tell the story of what is happening with employees.

Align reports with the organization’s strategic goals

Healthcare HR professionals need to be deliberate about aligning metric analysis with overall organizational goals. This is important to show how HR programs are driving progress and helping the organization 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 healthcare workforce and employee experience.

Healthcare Recruiters: How Technology is Improving Healthcare Recruiting

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According to a recent study conducted by Georgetown, healthcare providers in the U.S. will need 5.6 million more healthcare workers by 2020 to meet the growing demands on the healthcare system. From 2010 to 2020, the healthcare industry will grow by more than 70 percent, from $1.8 trillion to $3.1 trillion. This will require the most dramatic workforce growth of any sector in the U.S. within the next decade. For healthcare organizations looking to keep pace with growth, investing in the right recruiting technology can streamline the recruitment process and help healthcare recruiters keep up with staffing demand. In this post, we outline how recruiting technology helps healthcare organizations stay ahead of the talent curve from the beginning to the end of the hiring process.

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Optimized Job Descriptions

A well-written job description is essential for attracting the best candidates for open positions. Accurate and optimized 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.

Optimized 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 organizations 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 organization a place job seekers should want to work at?

How technology can help optimize job descriptions

Technology can be leveraged to optimize 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 optimize job descriptions. At PeopleScout, our Affinix™ platform can help healthcare organizations improve job descriptions by optimizing career pages and job postings for search engines. One way the tool does this is by offering suggestions for optimized title tags for every job posting.

Examples of optimized 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 optimization. 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 organizations 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 organization’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 analyze 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 utilizing 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 analyzes a healthcare organization’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 organizations 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 is increasingly challenging for leaders in the medical industry. With demographic shifts and burnout leading to turnover, healthcare talent shortages are affecting the ability of health systems to deliver high-quality care. According to McKinsey, an additional one million nursing care jobs will be added by 2031, primarily for certified nurse assistants. Yet, across the United States, colleges and universities are failing to close the gap as vacancies continue to outpace the number of graduates from relevant degree programs. 

In order to boost resilience amongst this challenging talent landscape, healthcare organizations must establish an efficient method of sourcing talent. In this post, we outline how healthcare organizations can better source quality healthcare workers to avoid understaffing issues now and in the coming years.

Preparing to Source Healthcare Workers

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

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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 organization’s ideal candidate possess? Are candidates with roots in the community or region of an organization preferred? Are candidates with leadership experience or skills the best fit for a role? If an organization 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 organization have to offer healthcare workers?

Healthcare organizations must also evaluate what they have to offer potential employees. An honest exploration of your employer value proposition 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 employer brand in order?

A study conducted by Healthcare Recruiters International found that over 90% of candidates think employer branding is an essential recruiting resource. Evaluation your employer brand strategy will help make a healthcare worker’s offer acceptance easier and provide assurance that they have chosen the right employer.

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 organization 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 organizations can narrow down their ideal candidate.

Must-Have Traits & Key Responsibilities

The healthcare industry can place varied demands on workers. To ensure new hires can meet the unique challenges presented by a healthcare organization, it is essential 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 also cover cultural fit like traits including communication skills and shared values.

Responsibilities will vary depending on role and could include management of a team, project management, food preparation, dispensing medication and other tasks critical to the position. By outlining key tasks, a healthcare organization 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 optimized 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 healthcare professionals. The tight healthcare labor market means more competition for talent. Demand is increasing in both acute care and community settings, including large health systems, public health organizations, tech companies moving into healthcare, travel nursing firms, long-term care facilities, the military, healthcare research, mental health agencies, insurance and managed care companies, and even other industries.

To get an edge over the competition, look to one of the unique and trustworthy sources of expertise, your employees.

An employee referral program helps a healthcare organization 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.

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, make employees 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, consider that candidate for other roles, and add it to your talent pipeline.

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, organizations should look to identify candidates’ preferred news sources, professional forums, discussion groups and social networking sites. For example, 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. Healthcare organizations can also post on professional association webpages, industry journals and in local organization’s newsletters.

Plus, engage candidates on social media via recruitment marketing campaigns is a great way to sell the vision and the advantages of your organization. Effective engagement with candidates will portray an organization 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.

If social media is a focus ensure your application process is mobile-friendly. Many healthcare organizations have not invested in recruiting technology to help them become more mobile-friendly. Yet, 80 percent of job seekers expect to be able to conduct their job search easily on a smartphone. Optimizing the mobile experience should be a top priority for healthcare organizations to get an edge over the competition.

Engage a Healthcare RPO Provider

For some healthcare organizations, 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 organizations, but more importantly, they can affect the ability to provide quality care to their patients.

RPO solution providers who specialize 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 organization is looking for additional ideas about sourcing healthcare workers, contact PeopleScout and ask how we can help you source and hire the best healthcare talent quickly.

Healthcare Recruiting Lexicon

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Hiring the right candidates is critical for any healthcare organization looking to stay ahead of the challenges facing the healthcare industry. However, the terminology and processes involved in the world of healthcare recruiting and talent acquisition can seem daunting. Below, we provide a healthcare recruiting reference glossary to help you decipher healthcare recruiting terminology.

Common Healthcare Recruiting Terms

Allied Health Personnel: Trained and licensed healthcare workers other than physicians, dentists, optometrists, chiropractors, podiatrists, and nurses. The term is sometimes used synonymously with paramedical personnel, all healthcare workers who perform tasks that must otherwise be performed by a physician, or health workers who do not usually engage in independent practice.

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Applicant Tracking System (ATS): An ATS is a software application that enables the electronic management of recruitment functions. An ATS stores candidate data to allow recruiters or hiring managers to search, filter and route applications. ATS software can also be known as Talent Management Software (TMS), Candidate Management System (CMS) or Recruitment Management System (RMS), with some ATS platforms being tailored or designed specifically for healthcare recruiting. ATS solutions are often used in conjunction with an RPO program for more efficient hiring.

Assignment: An assignment is a temporary task, project or job performed by a contingent worker. Assignments may also refer to the length of time a temporary employee, such as a traveling nurse, will be working for a healthcare organization.

Blended Workforce: A blended healthcare workforce uses both full-time and contingent, or temporary, workers. Blended healthcare workforce planning uses both RPO and MSP programs to fill positions and manage talent and vendor services.

Business Intelligence (BI): BI tools provide a powerful analysis of program-specific data and metrics. BI tools are used with RPO, MSP and Total Workforce Solutions programs and provide transparency between a healthcare organization and healthcare staffing providers.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): BPO uses third-party business service providers to perform business activities and functions vital for running an efficient healthcare organization. BPO services may include payroll, medical coders, insurance specialists, healthcare IT, HR, accounting or customer service.

Candidate: A candidate is a person who has applied for a job and is qualified for temporary or full-time consideration by a healthcare organization. Candidates can apply to positions that are managed by an internal healthcare HR team or a Healthcare RPO provider.

Consultant: A consultant is another term used for temporary employees or contingent workers. Consultants often perform professional work for healthcare departments such as IT, medical billing, revenue cycle management, policy, project management and clinical roles.

Contingent Worker: Contingent is an overarching term that covers freelancers, independent contractors, consultants or any other outsourced, non-employee workers. They are generally hired on a per-project or temporary basis.

Clinical Staff: Clinical roles often have face-to-face contact with patients for the purpose of diagnosis, treatment and ongoing care. Some clinical professions are behind-the-scenes, such as laboratory professionals whose work supports diagnosis and treatment. Clinical roles often require certification or licensing by the state and local government.

Contingent Workforce Management (CWM): CWM is the strategic approach to managing an organization’s contingent workforce.

Contract Worker: A contract worker is also known as a 1099 or independent contractor. There are very specific guidelines for classifying workers as independent contractors, including whether the worker controls when and where work is to be completed if the worker provides their own work equipment and supplies, and how the workers are compensated.

Customer (or Contact) Relationship Management (CRM): CRM systems manage a company’s interaction with current and prospective customers or contacts – including employees.

Direct Hire: Direct hire positions are permanent, usually full-time with benefits.

Diversity Supplier: Diversity suppliers refer to minority, woman, disabled or veteran healthcare recruiting and staffing suppliers.

Employee: An employee works directly for an organization in a job with no specific end date. Employees may be full-time or part-time.

Employer Branding: A talent acquisition strategy designed to make a healthcare organization an appealing place to work. This targeted marketing effort attempts to shape the perceptions of potential candidates and current employees.

Employer Value Proposition (EVP): A unique set of offerings, associations and values to positively influence target candidates and employees. EVP benefits recruiting, healthcare employee engagement and retention and can reduce the need to pay a wage premium for top talent.

Exempt Workers: An exempt worker must be paid at least $23,600 per year on a salary basis and perform exempt job duties Exempt workers are not entitled to overtime pay for hours worked outside of normal 40-hour work week.

Healthcare Locum Tenens Staffing: Staffing of physicians, advanced practitioners, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists and dentists who take temporary assignments which involves temporary relocation and staffing firm coverage of housing expenses. Locum tenens workers are typically paid as independent contractors rather than employees.

Healthcare Skills Gap: The healthcare skills gap is the difference between the skills required for a healthcare job and the actual skills possessed by a candidate or employee tasked with the job.

Healthcare Staffing Services: Provide temporary hires that include supplemental staffing to medical facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes and outpatient clinics as well as the provision of licensed nursing personnel RNs, trained medical technologists, and unlicensed staff home health aides, homemakers, personal assistants, etc.

Healthcare Workforce Planning: The process a healthcare organization takes to develop a holistic, long-term and proactive approach to strategically assessing and accessing all forms of talent. Specifically, healthcare workforce planning links strategic objectives and their associated workforce implications with multiple avenues of talent engagement and resourcing such as direct hire, contingent, SOW and temporary staffing.

Non-Exempt Workers: Non-exempt workers are entitled to overtime pay for work done outside of a standard 40-hour work week.

Independent Contractor (1099): The general rule, according to the IRS, is that an individual is an independent contractor if the employer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done. Independent contractors are also known as contractors or freelancers or gig workers.

Job Board: Job boards are internet-based talent acquisition websites that aggregate either local, national or international job offerings.

Job Requisitions: Refers to a request to a staffing firm or employment agency to supply applicants for a specific position. A job order is the specific set of requirements set forth by an employer for an actual open position.

Per Diem Nurse Staffing: Staffing of registered nurses, licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses and nursing assistant on assignments of less than four weeks, which typically does not involve relocation for the worker.

Permanent Physician Staffing: Staffing an open physician position with a permanent hire.

Predictive Analytics: In an HR and healthcare recruiting context, this refers to the ability for a healthcare organization to use information and analytics to determine future outcomes for better workforce management. For example, predictive analytics may be used to analyze data from resumes, job descriptions, ATS and HRIS systems to predict various talent management outcomes.

Pre-employment screening: Pre-employment screening services are critical to healthcare staffing, ensuring candidates are certified and include background verification, drug screening, skills assessment and behavioral assessment tools. A thorough background screen verifies important factual information about a prospective employee (i.e. identity, employment history, education credentials). It also helps gain critical information about an applicant’s character and past history that isn’t always apparent in an interview or application, such as criminal history, credit history, driving record, etc.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI): A KPI is a measurable goal that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs to evaluate their success related to specific business metrics.

Machine Learning: Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. In an HR setting, an example of machine learning is the ability for a computer program to identify patterns and relationships in data to predict a specific outcome such likelihood of a candidate changing jobs within a certain period of time.

Managed Service Provider (MSP): MSP programs provide end-to-end workforce and vendor management for users of contingent labor.

Non-Clinical Healthcare Staffing: Non-clinical staffing encompasses positions in a healthcare setting such as front and back-office roles across a variety of departments and patient care settings.

Non-Traditional versus Traditional Employee Benefits: Traditional benefits include life, retirement, health and disability benefits. Non-traditional benefits include various types of perks such as child and elder care options, work-from-home days, casual dress code, lunch allowances, etc.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO): RPO programs provide direct-hire talent acquisition services for professional and non-professional positions that solve compliance, scalability, cost, quality or other recruiting challenges.

Service Level Agreement (SLA):  An SLA is a commitment between a service provider and customer. Aspects of the partnership – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed upon between the service provider and the service user.

Social Media Healthcare Recruiting: Social media recruiting is a technique that sources or recruits candidates through the use of social media platforms as promotional and/or advertising channels.

Statement of Work (SOW): An SOW is a document that captures the work activities and deliverables to be supplied as part of a contract or project timeline. SOW arrangements are used in contingent workforce programs.

Supplemental Staffing: The provision of temporary workers to a company to supplement the current workforce for peak loads, special projects, or planned and unplanned worker absences. Also describes the regular practice of using contract healthcare staff in hospitals and other medical institution settings.

Temporary Workers: Temporary workers are generally hired to fill short-term positions or to complete specific projects with a set time frame. Temporary workers also fill positions that have irregular or seasonal work schedules.

Temp-to-Hire Workers: A temp-to-hire worker is hired as a temporary worker with the knowledge that the short-term position may transition to a full-time job. Temp-to-hire workers can be managed by an MSP program and then transitioned to the employer once they become permanent employees.

Total Workforce Solutions: Total Workforce Solutions blend Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and Managed Service Provider (MSP) capabilities in one integrated program.

Travel Nurse Staffing: Staffing of primarily registered nurses (RNs) on assignments of four weeks or more. A traveling nurse assignment can involve temporary relocation and housing expenses are paid for by an employer, but not always. Despite the use of the word “travel,” local nurses are sometimes used for travel assignments. The most common assignment length is 13 weeks, which may be renewed.

Vendor Management System (VMS): VMS platforms help businesses manage and procure staffing services – temporary, and, in some cases, permanent placement services – as well as outside contract or contingent labor. VMS platforms are generally used with MSP programs.

Workplace Diversity: Workplace diversity refers to a collective mixture of differences and similarities that may include: individual and organizational characteristics, values, beliefs, experiences, backgrounds, preferences and behaviors.

Regardless of the size of a healthcare organization, recruiting the right candidates is an integral part of growth and sustainability. By understanding some of the most commonly used terms in healthcare recruiting, you will be better equipped to meet with healthcare recruiting service providers and more efficient in sourcing, screening and hiring top healthcare talent.

Medical Staffing: How to Engage and Retain Healthcare Workers

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Retaining healthcare staff and medical staffing are more important than ever. The lifeblood of a healthy healthcare organization 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 organizations 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

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 organization 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.

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What’s more, the financial costs of high turnover can be significant for healthcare organizations. The turnover of a physician represents a $200,000 loss for a healthcare organization, 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 organizations 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, organizations 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 organization.
  • Retaining employees: Involves expanding responsibilities of employees as well as offering incentives to stay with an organization.

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 organization and understand how their roles support the healthcare organization’s goals. When a healthcare organization 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 organization 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 organization’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 organization’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 organizational performance in the areas of productivity, retention, turnover, patient care and loyalty. Here are a few practices healthcare organizations 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 organizations 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 utilized 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 organization 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 organizations should create a formal mentoring program. Healthcare organizations 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 organization.
  • Let employees know they matter and make a difference within the organization.
  • 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.

Medical Staffing Retaining Healthcare Employees

Employee retention is certainly one of the most important ingredients for success for healthcare organizations. Improving employee retention allows organizations 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 organizations 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 organizations should consider offering a wide array of scheduling options. Employees will appreciate an organization’s attempts to accommodate their personal lives and needs, and in turn, become more loyal to an organization as a result. Employees who have more control of their schedules tend to feel more job satisfaction and often stay with an organization 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 organization, 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 organization. As a healthcare employer, each action an organization takes to improve employee job satisfaction, morale and productivity is a step towards improving retention and improving medical staffing outcomes.

Conclusion

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

Recruiting a Traveling Nurse: What You Need to Know

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Traveling nurses have become more popular in the past few years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates more than a million registered nurse openings by the year 2024, twice the rate seen in previous nursing shortages. With current nursing shortages, healthcare organizations are looking for ways to recruit additional nursing staff quickly. Because of this, how to recruit a traveling nurse is a growing concern in healthcare.

What is a Traveling Nurse?

Traveling nurses are healthcare professionals who provide care for chronically-ill or homebound patients, or assists medical facilities with staffing shortages. Traveling nurses assume all of the duties associated with nursing, however, they are travel from location to location, from patients’ homes to a variety of healthcare facilities such as hospitals, clinics and out-patient care facilities. Education prerequisites may vary, though a basic requirement is a nursing license.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, traveling nursing are projected to grow by 19 percent by 2022. Recruiting a traveling nurse who possesses all the qualities and qualifications a healthcare organization requires for its clinical staff can be difficult. For starters, traveling nurses enjoy more competitive salaries than traditional nurses. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, regular licensed practical nurses and licensed vocational nurses earn $43,170 per year on average, while according to Payscale.com, a travel nurses’ salary can reach up to $103,893.

The higher wages and a higher level of freedom make it essential for healthcare employers to understand how to hire traveling nurses in a cost-effective and timely manner. In this post, we inform healthcare organizations of the best practices when it comes to hiring traveling nurses.

Set Up for Success

Creating a robust recruiting infrastructure is the key to successfully recruiting traveling nurses. The goal of healthcare HR professionals should be building a cost-effective recruiting program that fosters a talent pipeline filled with candidates that meet all of the organization’s traveling nurse requirements.

The recruiting program should be focused on quality and include processes such as clinical liaison reviews of nurse applications and yearly reference checking to ensure compliance and licensing issues are minimized. Once a healthcare organization had established the groundwork for successful travel nurse recruiting, they can then focus efforts to ensure they attract the most qualified candidates to their organization.

Assessing Traveling Nurse Staffing Needs

Because of the transient nature of their work, recruiting a traveling nurse requires a longer lead time than that of a traditional nurse. Healthcare hiring managers who are able to assess future staffing needs accurately have an advantage in recruiting traveling nurses because they can reach out to candidates proactively, long before the start date of an open position.

The closer a healthcare organization reaches out to a position’s start date, the higher the risk that qualified candidates will have already extended current assignments or accepted new ones. Early outreach also allows healthcare organizations the luxury of additional time to find candidates that are best suited for open positions.

Hiring managers need to take inventory of current nursing staff and account for maternity leave, retirement, medical leave, turnover and available local talent pool. This enables hiring managers to forecast staffing needs well ahead of time and provides the opportunity to source and recruit travel nurses who can provide a high level of patient care quickly.

Provide Detailed Traveling Nurse Job Descriptions

When recruiting a traveling nurse, it is important to provide very detailed job descriptions. The more information provided in a job description, the better the chances of finding an ideal match in terms of skills, licensing, experience and cultural fit.

Job descriptions should provide traveling nurse applicants with full details about the type of unit they will work in, specialty training or licensing requirements needed for the position and what shifts they will be required to work. For example, is there special equipment a potential candidate should be proficient in using? Should candidates possess training in multiple specialties? By providing a clear and detailed portrait of requirements, a healthcare organization will better filter out candidates who are poor fits and find better matches more quickly.

Reaching Out to Candidates and Conducting Traveling Nurse Interviews

Speed is essential for healthcare organizations looking to hire the best traveling nurse talent. Once applications are submitted and qualified candidates screened, HR teams need to move swiftly to schedule phone interviews with candidates. The availability of a traveling nurse can change in an instant, so it is imperative that top candidates are made aware of an organization’s interest as soon as possible.

When hiring traveling nurses, telephone or video interviews sometimes take the place of traditional in-person interviews. When interviewing candidates, it is best to ask unambiguous straightforward questions about the candidate’s clinical expertise and experience, so the candidate clearly understands what will be required of them in the position. Candidate’s responses to questions should clarify their specific skills and experience in detail. Aside from analyzing the candidate’s credentials and experience, the interview should also give a sense of the candidate’s personality.

While conducting an interview, it is important to remember that interviews are a two-way street. While a healthcare organization is evaluating the traveling nurse candidate’s credentials, experience and abilities, the candidate is simultaneously assessing how well an organization measures up to their expectations. Traveling nurse candidates may ask healthcare organizations the following questions:

  • What is the nurse-patient ratio at the facility?
  • What is the demographic make-up of your patients? Seniors, children, women, low-income?
  • How are the hours scheduled? Is there schedule flexibility?
  • What are the responsibilities of this position? Will the scope be expanded?
  • What is the housing policy and stipend? Will I be assisted in securing housing or am I on my own?
  • What are your orientation and onboarding policies for traveling nurses?

After interviews have been conducted, hiring managers should identify the candidate who exhibited traits of a quick learner that can adapt to new situations easily and someone who is a team player. Besides strong clinical skills, hiring managers should look for a positive attitude, enthusiasm, flexibility, good interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively with others.

Selling the Position

In a tight labor market, healthcare recruiting is more than just sourcing and interviewing candidates; it is also about selling the job to talent. Healthcare organizations need to keep in mind that most traveling nurse candidates will have multiple options when it comes to selecting their next nursing assignment. To keep a candidate interested, healthcare organizations need to provide as many details as possible and take care in explaining the advantages of the offered position.

Bearing this in mind, healthcare organizations should work to foster favorable impressions of their staff and facilities during interviews and while extending offers to candidates. Healthcare organizations should also ask candidates about their interests and highlight amenities and attractions in the surrounding area that may be of interest.

Common selling points for traveling nurses:

  • Awards, recognition, rankings and accolades earned by the organization
  • State-of-the-art equipment and medical treatment being performed by staff
  • Recent renovations to the facility
  • Commitment to nursing staff and how well travel nurses are treated
  • Opportunities for professional development

Conclusion

Given the demands and challenges of today’s healthcare talent landscape, applying each of these hiring suggestions may not always be possible. However, if given the opportunity, these tactics can help ensure a successful and mutually beneficial arrangement between a healthcare organization and a traveling nurse.

PeopleScout Ranked a Top Enterprise and Healthcare RPO Provider on 2017 HRO Today Baker’s Dozen

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Chicago – September 29, 2017 – PeopleScout, a TrueBlue company and leading global provider of talent solutions, is recognized as a top Enterprise RPO Provider on HRO Today’s 2017 Baker’s Dozen Customer Satisfaction Ratings. PeopleScout was also ranked a top Healthcare RPO Provider on this year’s survey.


“We are pleased to be ranked a top Enterprise RPO Provider again this year and grateful for this recognition by our clients,” PeopleScout President Taryn Owen said. “We are also thrilled that our ability to deliver high-value RPO solutions for healthcare clients was recognized. Healthcare has been a significant growth area for PeopleScout, and we are focused on using our expertise and superior technology to take our talent acquisition services for the healthcare industry to the next level.”


“HRO Today congratulates PeopleScout on its first appearance on the RPO Baker’s Dozen for Healthcare Providers and its consistent ranking as a top Enterprise RPO Provider,” Elliot Clark, CEO and Chairman of SharedXpertise and HRO Today said. “PeopleScout’s strong track record delivering some of the largest and most complex RPO solutions combined with their expanded focus on healthcare makes PeopleScout an RPO to watch in the healthcare space for 2018.”


The HRO Today RPO Baker’s Dozen is a recognition of top RPO providers based solely on feedback from buyers of RPO services. HRO Today surveys RPO buyers and analyzes the results across subcategories of quality, breadth of service and size of deal to calculate the final rankings.


About PeopleScout
PeopleScout, a TrueBlue (NYSE:TBI) company, is trusted by businesses in North America and around the world for recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), managed service provider (MSP) and total workforce solutions. PeopleScout consults with clients to solve complex hiring challenges and achieve their growth and revenue goals. PeopleScout provides cost-effective delivery of scalable, integrated and highly customized staffing solutions to more than 70 countries worldwide, with offices in Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., Sydney, Krakow, Gurgaon, Beijing, Toronto, and Montreal. PeopleScout is a recognized leader in innovative talent management solutions, repeatedly honored as an RPO and MSP industry leader. Learn more at peoplescout.com.