A Spotlight on Staffing: Current Hiring Trends in Healthcare
The demand for healthcare workers is on the rise and finding the talent to fill jobs is becoming harder and harder.
Healthcare staffing shortages are no secret — but how can you target qualified candidates that will last?
To attract and proactively recruit for open healthcare roles, facilities and organizations need to engage potential candidates and keep them interested in coming on board throughout the hiring process.
If you’re looking to hire, read on to learn about nine current hiring trends in healthcare and how you can utilize them to secure the talent you need.
Table of Contents
- What Are the Current Hiring Trends in Healthcare?
- 9 Healthcare Hiring Trends To Expect for 2023 and Beyond
- Trusted Managed Services: A Comprehensive Solution to Your Company’s Staffing Challenges
What Are the Current Hiring Trends in Healthcare?
Today’s current hiring trends in healthcare center around:
- Expediting the hiring process
- Streamlining onboarding for both the new employee and facility; and
- Prioritizing prospective employees’ expectations and values
There are a number of reasons for the increase in demand for healthcare workers, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has forecasted 1.26 million new healthcare jobs each year for the next ten years. So recruitment, hiring, and retention are more important than ever.
Leaning into the trends below can help facilities and organizations get on top of recruitment, focus on talent retention, and work toward growing the community.
9 Healthcare Hiring Trends To Expect for 2023 and Beyond
#1: Dedicating More Resources to the Hiring Process
More talent recruitment typically means more talent onboarded. But harnessing recruitment technology and strategies takes time and attention that could be better used by interviewing prospective employees or working to retain current ones.
Healthcare facilities that utilize a managed service provider (MSP) along with a vendor management system (VMS) have access to multiple vendors with a single line of communication. Your point of contact grants the resources of multiple staffing vendors in one place.
Trusted Managed Services provides quicker access to high-quality talent, centralizes your contingent staffing, saves time by simplifying the staffing process, reduces vacancy rates, and increases retention. Request a demo today.
#2: Reducing Time-To-Fill Rates
The shortage of qualified candidates coupled with the increasing demand for them makes a swift and streamlined recruitment and onboarding process essential for staffing success.
A study by DHI Group, Inc. found that the average time to fill a position in health care is 49 days, making it the longest time-to-fill of any industry in the US. If facilities aren’t quick to pull candidates through the hiring process, they risk losing out on qualified prospective employees.
Strategies like texting versus emailing can aid in upping employer responsiveness and work to create a brand image that prioritizes communication.
Another strategy is introducing tech that can help automate the recruitment process and reduce the time-to-fill gap.
Choosing to work with a managed service provider like Trusted Managed Services gives healthcare facilities access to staffing partners throughout the industry.
Instead of your human resources department having to sift through thousands of candidates and resumes, your MSP can connect you directly with candidates that meet your specific requirements and expectations.
Trusted Managed Services centralizes your contingent staffing and saves time by simplifying the staffing process. Request a demo today.
#3: Automating Onboarding Processes
The less time that passes between a position becoming vacant and being filled, the better. An MSP helps streamline the onboarding process by automating:
- Credentialing
- Drug testing
- Background checks; and
- Certifications
Anything that can be done before a new nurse steps foot in the healthcare facility — including online training modules, badge creation, and ensuring correct scrubs/attire — can be completed with the help of an MSP compliance team.
Another way MSPs help automate the onboarding process is by saving time down the line. A nurse’s certifications may often be due to expire sometime during their contract. With a VMS, all related data and docs are available for viewing by the facility. The software can track when existing certifications will be expiring, which allows the facility to get ahead and ensure it’s addressed during the onboarding process.
#4: Embracing Technology
Innovative recruitment strategies involve adopting new technology strategies. This includes virtual hiring options like remote interviews, digital assessments, and data aggregation and reporting.
Trusted Managed Services provides detailed reporting, workforce analytics, and insights allowing for more informed contingent labor decisions through their VMS, including:
- Staffing headcounts and average bill rates
- Reporting on spend utilization
- Bill rate details; and
- Worker quality and survey details
#5: Providing Transparency in Pay Rates
During the COVID pandemic, when travel positions were in such high demand, pay transparency became the norm — not the exception. Today, the healthcare industry is seeing this trend continue as the norm.
This is especially true for travel and temp positions. With candidates increasingly searching for the stability of permanent positions, the more relevant information you can supply them with at all recruiting and hiring touchpoints, the better. Establishing pay transparency can also aid in creating a strong brand image.
Many jurisdictions have since implemented policy changes to include compensation ranges in their job postings, including:
- New York
- California
- Washington
- Rhode Island
- Nevada
- Connecticut; and
- Colorado
#6: Prioritizing Flexible Schedules
The emphasis on flexible schedules is a common priority for today’s healthcare candidates.
Many nurses who have been traveling may be ready to accept a permanent position — but many have become accustomed to the flexibility of short contracts. To combat this mentality, healthcare facilities will likely need to start accommodating requests for flexible schedules if they want to retain permanent staff and attract qualified candidates.
The same goes for positions like billing specialists, many of whom prefer to work from home.
#7: Supporting a Commitment to Employee Well-Being
Giving prospective candidates a realistic inside look at life as an employee is a great way to showcase how your healthcare facility supports its community’s well-being.
Consider using social media and your facility’s blog to highlight related videos and pictures, employment opportunities, and benefits related to wellness.
In order to target the types of applicants you’re after, you’ll need to first understand what they’re most looking for out of an employer. Leverage related feedback from interviews, candidate surveys or questionnaires, and current employees.
Pay attention to whether responses show a preference for:
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion focus
- Flexible workplaces or schedules
- Work-life balance
- Salary, benefits, and PTO perks
- Opportunities for growth
- Social impact and corporate responsibility
- Continued education
- Mentorship
Let these findings dictate the type of messaging you push out to prospective employees.
#8: Projecting Company Branding That Potential Employees Will Value
Implementing consistent branding strategies across all platforms is essential to attracting potential employees.
By highlighting benefits that employees enjoy, as well as any unique perks offered, healthcare facilities can set themselves apart and help solidify their brand image.
Workplace culture and benefits offered should be easy for candidates to find — this means sharing them clearly on all channels including websites, social platforms, job postings, portals, and all email communications to prospective employees.
A clear brand will not only help attract talented and qualified applicants but can go a long way in helping retain employees as well. In fact, 59% of millennial job applicants already seek opportunities to learn and grow when applying for a job, according to a recent report.
Sharing stories from current employees and highlighting ways your organization supports internal growth and professional learning opportunities throughout all candidate touchpoints can help reinforce your brand strategy.
Lastly, leaning into mentorship, continued education, and/or training programs can be a concrete way to show candidates that your facility is invested in its employees, which will reinforce and support retention efforts, too.
#9: Placing Value in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Potential employees on the job hunt today are placing more focus on organizations who emphasize making their employees feel included and respected.
The same goes for hiring practices. Implementing DEI into recruiting might look like:
- Recognizing unconscious bias
- Understanding microaggressions
- Increasing personal awareness
- Looking for “culture adds” that can bring value to the existing culture with their diversified ideas and experiences
Organizations and facilities that make a point to address a thoughtful, established philosophy around DEI, and whose recruiting practices reflect those inclusive thoughts, will likely see themselves attracting like-minded candidates.
Trusted Managed Services: A Comprehensive Solution to Your Company’s Staffing Challenges
Adjusting current recruiting processes to meet trends can work to alleviate hiring difficulties. But individually addressing each trend, plus staying on top of new ones as they come up, can be both time-consuming and unfruitful.
Instead, utilize a single software for all of your workforce solutions.
A managed service provider like Trusted Managed Services provides software that allows healthcare facilities to manage staffing, billing, time tracking, and more from a single point of contact and understands the difficulties today’s facilities have when staying on top of current hiring trends in healthcare.
Our software allows C-suite level (ie. CEO, CFO, etc.) management in the hospital to access all data in the VMS, including:
- What types of nurses are working
- How many hours they are working
- How much the bill rate is for each nurse
- How much money they’re spending on travel nursing
- How much money they’re spending on ER nursing
Trusted Managed Services can create customized reports and send them on a weekly or monthly cadence for easy sharing. Management also has access to the system and can pull and create those reports in live time when needed to help forecast spend on staffing throughout the year.
