3 Secrets to Build a Strong Healthcare Team

Posted by Jamie Nguyen on November 6, 2019

With a healthcare boom underway and a growing gap of middle-skilled job candidates, it's time to rethink hiring practices and move from the familiar, reactive model to one that allows you and your practice to build a strong, dedicated talent pipeline - while decreasing your turnover rate.

Historically, positions in healthcare have been highly competitive, allowing employers to be selective from a stack of qualified and eager applicants. Now, with an aging generation of baby boomers demanding more healthcare services, there are more available jobs than there are skilled applicants to fill them. The asymmetry of the number of healthcare roles that need to be filled versus the number of qualified candidates to fill them is only expected to grow, with more than 2.4 million new jobs in healthcare needing to be filled by 2026.

Not only is there higher demand for employees to fill these roles, there are also increased complexities in training and high turnover rates to manage. Among healthcare workers, turnover in the first year accounts for more than 50% of a hospital's turnover rates for all staff. Besides dealing with the loss of revenue that accompanies vacant positions, the burden on the healthcare staff will likely result in increased workload, more stress, lower quality of care, and loss of dedicated employees as a result of burnout. The best strategy to counteract this snowball effect of understaffed medical practices and hospitals? Plan ahead.

You've anticipated your hiring needs and have started looking to bring on new employees. Finding and actually hiring appropriately skilled and credentialed healthcare workers, could take more time than you originally expected. That may not be due to the lack of qualified applicants, but to potential inefficiencies in the hiring process.

Applying the same lengthy process to middle-skill positions as you would for specialized roles like physicians and registered nurses only holds up adding new and needed talent to the practice. The process can also be frustrating for applicants who can't spend months shuttling back and forth to interviews and meetings before they're offered a position. Otherwise talented and enthusiastic applicants may accept another job offer, leaving you to start the candidate process over or having to fill the position with a less-qualified candidate because of need.

Offering professional development opportunities to your current staff, allows you to promote trust and loyalty. Providing workforce training and education programs will also act as an incentive for new hires to stay and grow with the practice, hospital, or nursing care facility.

Based on LinkedIn's 2018 Workforce Learning Report, 93% of employees stated that they would stay with an employer longer if the employer invested in their career. Professional development and opportunities on the job, in fact, is no longer considered just a perk for talented employees; it's expected.

Planning ahead, accelerating your hiring and screening procedures for healthcare positions, while also offering the hands-on experience that a nearly-perfect candidate may lack, ensures you don't lose out on qualified candidates. It also allows you to build a sense of loyalty that can be invaluable to your practice and your staff retention rates, which in turn impact your quality of care for your patients.

Integrating plans to upskill current employees into your budget and strategic plan can allow your practice to thrive and help you retain committed and qualified healthcare professionals. Penn Foster's Healthcare Academy provides flexible online-learning solutions that allow your employees to develop new skills, reinforce current knowledge, advance in their careers, and prepare for industry-standard credentialing around their work schedule. Contact us today to learn more about our training programs for your healthcare professionals, along with a complimentary ROI assessment to understand the long-term benefits of workforce development for your practice.