Hiring Practices

As it stands today, 33 states and Washington D.C. have authorized the medical use of marijuana. Eleven of those states and Washington, D.C also allow the personal ‘adult-use’ of marijuana.  With 2020 being a presidential election year, efforts to include marijuana on this years’ ballot are rampant! While most of the past marijuana laws where approved by a majority vote of the people, a trend that we expect to see more are legalization efforts through state Legislature actions. 

With legal marijuana use laws continuing to make traction throughout the U.S., and the perception of a dwindling job applicant pool, some employers are asking if they should continue to conduct screening for marijuana. Some employers are also challenging the entire idea of performing drug testing in their workplaces.  Is there still a benefit to having a drug-free workplace program?

In short, the answer is, “YES!”  Why? Because the risks of not testing are real. There is no mystery why this is so, look at the latest statistics:

Many states are anticipating severe nursing shortages in the next few years, with some states projected to have nurse employee deficits of more than 10,000. As the patient population ages and increases, appropriate staffing poses a problem for healthcare HR teams.

Today’s workforce is more age-diverse than ever before. Age is often the forgotten demographic, but maintaining workforce diversity means hiring multi-generational employees.

Compassion is a ubiquitous human trait, and it goes by a lot of names. One such iteration has the power to decide the fate of healthcare professionals everywhere: bedside manner. Patients want the doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals they interact with to be engaged, understanding and good at listening. Anything short of that can have negative repercussions for the patient.

The 45th National Association for Health Care Recruitment (NAHCR) Conference took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this past week. By practicing self-discovery, healthcare recruiters can become better leaders in the workplace. In the increasingly competitive healthcare hiring environment, recruiters are challenged with distinguishing their employer brand in order to tackle the industry’s biggest issues such as the ongoing talent shortages and passive talent pools. 

For 15 years, the National Diversity Council (NDC) has been a resource and an advocate for the value of diversity and inclusion (D&I). NDC’s efforts include its annual diversity and leadership conference, but this year, the healthcare industry will also receive its very own diversity conference focusing on the issues unique to healthcare organizations.

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.

The European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which enforces a set of laws designed to protect European citizens’ personal data, went into effect on May 25, 2018. It affects all companies that deal with personal data, and even non-EU-based companies will still have to comply. GDPR impacts not just companies who are hiring in the EU but also those that are employing citizens of the EU who live in different areas of the world.