Healthcare

New initiatives are a powerful driving force in healthcare, helping organizations reach efficiency benchmarks and harness new technologies to better serve patients. But they also can be overwhelming, giving employees a mountain of goals and responsibilities: Improve patient care. Digitize all patient and employee data. Improve provider retention. Shorten patient wait times.

Recruiting top talent in healthcare is no easy feat. With growing staffing shortages and a tight labor market, healthcare recruiters continue to face challenges unique only to the field. For example, according to research by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), only 39 percent of respondents said that they had adequate staffing with the right knowledge and skills at least 75 percent of the time.

There are few industries more important to our daily lives than healthcare. Its importance is reflected in its sustained growth — even during the Great Recession, the healthcare industry continued to expand. As life expectancies increase and technology improves, there will be even more growth in an industry that shows no sign of slowing down.

Nurses are a critical part of the healthcare workforce, so the ongoing nursing shortage is a big challenge. Research by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses says that while nurses report being highly satisfied with their career path, 54 percent said they plan to leave their current job within three years.

This week, National Nurses Week, is an annual event held May 6-12 to not only honor the late Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, but also to celebrate the nursing profession and the important role nurses play in providing the highest level of quality care to their patients. This year’s theme, “4 Million Reasons to Celebrate,” aims to recognize the vast contributions and positive impact of America’s four million registered nurses as well as their ongoing commitment to their work.

Healthcare organizations are facing a workforce crunch. The combination of an aging population and the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of access to healthcare has increased the need for health services and resulted in employee shortages throughout the industry.

Design thinking. It’s a popular buzzword in HR and operations circles these days. But while you might associate “design” with creative fields or Silicon Valley startups, there’s a new movement to use design thinking in healthcare organizations.

A job candidate’s journey with a company from application to hire (or not hire) is no longer just a process, it’s an experience. As a job seeker travels through the different recruitment phases—sourcing, interviewing, screening, hiring and onboarding—they naturally develop their own perception or opinion of your company. Whether it’s a positive or negative experience, it can have a lasting impact on your employer brand.

While the healthcare industry has made substantial progress in patient safety over the past 20 years, there is still much work to be done in this vital facet of medical care.

With the combination of an aging workforce and a growing demand for services, the ongoing search for talent will continue to rank among the top human resources concerns for healthcare organizations through 2019 and beyond. 

While the talent shortage alone would be enough to test HR departments for the next several years, ongoing digital transformation and the incorporation of emerging artificial intelligence and automated tools — particularly in the recruiting space — are forcing further adaptation.