Healthcare

The healthcare workplace has long been plagued by a shortage of qualified workers and an employee turnover rate of around 20% in 2018, higher than the all-industry average of 15%. In the face of these challenges, healthcare HR professionals must develop thoughtful, effective retention strategies to help their organizations attract and retain top talent, reduce the costs associated with employee hiring and turnover, and remain competitive.

Recruiting and retaining top candidates has long been a challenge for the healthcare industry. Besides the risk of working around patients with infectious disease, as seen in the COVID-19 outbreak, healthcare organizations and their workers face a number of other difficulties:

This year marks a special time for the nursing profession. Beginning today, National Nurses Week—an annual event held May 6-12 to honor the late Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing—will not only recognize the critical role nurses play in our healthcare system, but it will also celebrate Florence’s 200^th birthday. Her innovative ideas and contributions helped to shape the way nursing is practiced today.

Healthcare organizations around the world face a growing pandemic, and with it, the need to quickly staff for a surge of critically ill patients. 

With high turnover and staffing shortages, healthcare recruitment can be challenging in the best of times, but now countries face the critical need to quickly bring thousands more healthcare workers into their health system.

Healthcare organizations across the country face stay-at-home orders that make it difficult to deliver in-person care. But even outside of the urgent need for providers to provide care to critically ill patients with COVID-19, patients need access to care when they are ill or injured by other causes. 

Healthcare HR professionals face sweeping changes in medical care delivery, evolving technology standards, staff shortages and shifting workforce demographics. Additionally, the evolving Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic brings its own set of challenges for the immediate future.

Patient Safety Awareness Week, which runs March 8-14, encourages healthcare providers, organizations, patients, and the general public to learn about local and global healthcare safety issues. 

Healthcare safety issues, or “medical harm,” are a significant cause of death in the United States. Even when such errors do not result in death, they can still have long-term negative effects on a patient’s health and finances. Patient Safety Awareness Week is an opportunity for healthcare organizations to consider the potential causes of medical harm and how to prevent it.

The healthcare industry is in a constant state of change, driven in part by regulatory developments. Resisting or avoiding such change could result in financial penalties and other negative consequences for healthcare organizations.

Lifelong learning can help HR and other healthcare professionals develop the resilience and flexibility to adapt to such changes. With lifelong learning, healthcare professionals contribute to their professional long-term success, and that of their organizations.

Talent recruitment and retention remain among the top challenges facing healthcare organizations in the new decade. According to a SHRM survey, 46% of HR professionals rated highly skilled medical positions as very difficult to fill.

It’s no secret that patient experience in a healthcare setting is deeply connected to the employee experience of healthcare workers. 

Organizations have been able to improve patient loyalty by moving the needle on their employee engagement. One healthcare organization increased its workforce engagement from 9% to 30% and saw a nearly 5 point increase in the number of patients likely to recommend their services.