How to attract and retain top talent in today’s healthcare market
Failure to identify, attract, and retain great talent is a top concern among today’s healthcare providers for good reason. Recent changes in the healthcare landscape have made recruiting and hiring tougher than ever. Most significantly, the healthcare job market has exploded, and healthcare is fast becoming one of the largest sources of jobs in the U.S. And more available jobs will force healthcare organizations to compete for top talent.
At the same time, an aging U.S. population is creating a higher demand for care, but the talent pool simply isn’t keeping pace. According to a 2015 Healthcare Recruiting Trends survey by Health eCareers:
“By 2020, the U.S. will face a serious shortage of both primary care and specialist physicians to care for an aging and growing population.”
Of course, as competition for top healthcare talent has intensified, so has the cost to hire. And all the while, providers are facing ongoing pressure to reduce HR costs.
There’s no question about it, talent acquisition professionals have a tough job, but getting it right is critical. As healthcare leaders know, better teams lead to better patient care. It pays to invest in recruiting the very best talent.
How to attract great talent
Are you confident your current recruitment strategies are the best they can be? As you assess your competitive positioning, here are some key things to consider:
- Are you using multiple channels for engagement? To optimize your recruitment efforts, you need to meet potential candidates wherever they are on any device or channel they choose.
- Are you making the most of modern technology? In the digital age, providers that fail to adopt advanced analytics and innovative solutions for recruitment and hiring will quickly fall behind.
- Are you communicating effectively? Finding and nurturing the very best talent requires consistent, personalized interactions.
- Are you tapping into your existing talent pool? Your employees are often the best candidates for future job openings. By creating an internal talent database, you’ll have quick access to a valuable pipeline of highly skilled workers. What’s more, by keeping your employees abreast of new opportunities within your organization, you can reduce the risk of losing them to competitors.
How to increase employee retention rates
Healthcare workers are highly mobile, and the turnover rate is high. This means once you’ve acquired the very best employees, you can’t rest on your laurels. You need to work equally hard to hold on to them.
To keep your best employees from leaving, it’s important to have a strong employee value proposition (EVP)—the unique and compelling benefits employees will gain in exchange for the talent they bring to your organization. Here are three effective ways to strengthen your employee value proposition:
- Improve the onboarding process for clinicians and other skilled workers
- Analyze employees’ skills on a regular basis, and focus on individuals’ key strengths
- Support career growth through ongoing training and mentorship programs
How Microsoft can help
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator is a holistic solution that enables systems and applications to help you streamline your HR processes so you can better identify top talent, lower your cost and time to hire, increase offer acceptance rates, and improve retention. Here are some tangible examples of what you can do:
- Reach and attract talent with multi-channel communications including optional integration with LinkedIn Recruiter.
- Simplify recruitment processes by importing potential candidate lists, tracking responses, and automating follow-up tasks.
- Improve clinician onboarding with relevant and timely communications.
- Build a culture of continued learning by providing ongoing training based on skills and competency analysis.
- Create mentorship programs so leaders can educate internally.
- Leverage talent insights from business intelligence to anticipate needs and improve employee satisfaction.
In today’s challenging healthcare job market, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator gives you the analytics, artificial intelligence, and talent-specific capabilities you need to attract and retain today’s top talent.
Read more by downloading this free eBook, Reimagining healthcare with Microsoft.
