Focus #1: More Employer Branding
With the growth of social media channels and employer review sites such as Glassdoor, hospital HR departments will continue to evolve their external branding as it relates to social networks. Your team likely has little say in your hospital’s overall brand direction, but you can monitor what people are saying about you online as an employer. The best way to mitigate the risk of bad reviews? Increase your focus on the candidate’s experience, and you can expect that will reflect in the number of negative social media posts about your recruiting process. Speaking of candidate experience…
Focus #2: Relentless Focus on the Candidate Experience
In order to find the best people, recruiters need to put absolute focus on providing candidates with the very best experience. Although there are a million ways you can improve the candidate experience, here’s one you may not thought of: shorten your application. Examine your application and determine what is really necessary. A top candidate won’t want to spend hours filling out your application. Think about what’s the least amount of information you can gather in order to build a strong foundation for recruitment. Also, technology tools such as pulling data from a candidate’s LinkedIn profile can smooth the application considerably.
Focus #3: “You can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure”
Author H. James Harrington was on to something when he said “Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” Today’s healthcare recruiters are relying more than ever on data from HR to make difficult decisions. Why is studying metrics important? Because if you have hard numbers, you can then attach real costs (or cost savings) to the recruitment process. And once you have that data, it becomes much easier to focus resources where they’ll do the most good. Speaking of data, transparency is another big trend we’ll see in the future. The best HR departments pay attention to their process and work closely with other organizations to increase effectiveness, both inside and outside the hospital. Capturing the data that comes out of reporting, and then sharing that data, will be key in the coming years.
Focus #4: Retention rules
An improved economy and skyrocketing demand for healthcare means that retention will continue to be one of the top concerns of hospital HR departments. Technology will play a role in retention as employees are given more tools to improve their career opportunities as well as their day-to-day experience work. We also expect to see further development of internship and mentor programs that help reduce first year turnover and help maintain the top new hires.
Focus #5: Responsible Recruiters
Healthcare recruiters often have the mistaken belief that patient satisfaction is a clinical issue, not a recruitment issue. But HR can have a major effect on a hospital’s bottom line by making sure they hire the right people. HR departments need to make sure the people they hire are capable of providing high-quality, safe care to their patients. Since HR owns such a large element of that process, and recruitment has increasingly been tied to the overall hospital performance of hospitals (especially as it relates to increasing HCAHPS scores), you can expect to see more focus in this area. Have more questions about how your hospital HR department can be prepared for the future? Contact us, we love to help!
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