Abstract
In the US, there has recently been a workforce shortage in the health care industry due to increased number of patient to practitioners as the recruitment process has failed. Nevertheless, the urgency to look for the actual solution has at times improved because of the varying health care landscape. Health care organizations strategies for recruiting fresh workforce have cost most of the medical facilities in the US. With the improvement in technology, some health care organizations have found it difficult to recruit new workforce. The ability to retain physicians and maintain a smooth flow of workers has been a challenge to the majority of health care organizations. With the improvement in technology, medical care organizations ought to change their hiring techniques to maintain the flow of physicians in the health care industry. Improvements in the health care sector could result in positive effects not only on the patients, but also the workforce and health care executives in the respective organizations.
Recruitment in the Healthcare Industry and the Impact It Has
Healthcare industry is a domain that requires the hiring of the workforce now and then as work becomes rampant. Healthcare recruiters face all sorts of challenges in ensuring that they employ the best professionals in the medical domain. Healthcare executives normally go through difficult times in retention and recruitment of new workforce. As technology is improving, candidates who are looking for job vacancies are more focussed on social media platforms for them to land in their respective careers. Healthcare executives who do not venture in social media platforms may face difficulties in getting the required workforce (Rolls, Hansen, Jackson, & Elliott, 2016). To handle the increased number of patients and improve emphasis on the significance of patient’s proper care and satisfaction, organizations require employing additional skilled and experienced staff to accomplish their duties accordingly. However, either to hire or maintain new staff is easily uttered than done practically. To hire, retain, and have a competitive staff is a major problem of the healthcare executives especially in the current century when technology has rapidly improved.
The Contest for the Healthcare Recruitment Cure
Some of the health care recruiters are presently faced with a diversity of challenges. This comes as a necessity since physicians, nurses, and other medical administrators have become more extensive particularly in the 21st century as technology has brought about great impacts. Even when recruiters have announced astonishing job opportunities, the candidates have to develop much experience in other choices before being considered suitable for such vacancies. After accessing the available options, health care candidates are in a position of selecting the best choice from a million of other possible selections (Stanley, 2010). To maintain the attention of the health care applicants, recruiters ought to narrate a persuasive story about the job opening to convince the candidates to join their organization. It is not all about finding health care practitioners, but recruiters should have a narrative that ought to speak to the candidates for them to choose to venture in the respective health care organization. General information about a specific health care organization may not be enough to persuade professional health care candidates.
For instance, health care recruiters should narrate outwardly and internally on how, if the applicants venture in their organization, would cause more upward mobility or raise their exposure and capability to progress in their career. Applicants should be confident that they would independently advance their professions by venturing in a particular health care organization. Another motivating factor would be to feature genuine stories from actual professionals thus making a definite difference in comparison to other hiring organizations. For example, narrating about preceding employees who joined the organization and as result of their passion for artificial intelligence to produce solutions for microsurgery, finally got approval. These are some of the real narratives that would not only resonate with the healthcare applicants but also leave them feeling exited and encouraged. Health care executives should encourage fresh and emerging technologies to assist them source and select the best applicants. They should also employ social networks to persuade competent healthcare candidates to venture in their organization (Keane, Smith, Lincoln, & Fisher, 2011). Social media would help the health care executives to perform video interviewing approach thus easing the burden of candidates from moving far distances and also saving time for both recruiters and applicants.
Effects of Baby Boomers Retiring in Great Numbers
A massive section of the present working populace is the baby boomers generation. This generation is giving a blow as its members are starting to retire in huge figures. Presently, the universal industry is prevailed by boomers who are retiring from work now and then. The result of this is that there has been a shortage of physicians and nurses as the baby boomers form a major portion of the present populace in the health sector (Cumming & Mays, 2011). This outlines that as the baby boomers retire, more health care providers are needed to replace them. In spite of the retirement progress, very few health practitioners have been put in place. This comes because as baby boomers retire, the majority of the health care executives are not able to substitute them. Health care recruiters should ensure that baby boomers do not leave before they are substituted with fresh practitioners.
Retention Problems
The hiring of qualified medical practitioners does not mean that the race is over (Stanley, 2010). As the economy and technology improve, health care providers are shifting from their job positions because of lack of advancement, poor organizational culture, work overload, security purposes, and poor salary. These are some of the challenges, which have caused physicians to venture into other fields. Nevertheless, one of the major solutions in any industry is not only hiring practitioners but also retaining them in a firm as it is essential. This enhances their additional value for years to the organization. To increase retention, it is essential to form reasons for the staff to stay in an organization. Health care organizations must form environments that eliminate barriers to lasting job satisfaction. According to research conducted in the United States, it was noted that the major challenge that physicians face is lack of advancement chances. The research also found that majority of the physicians in the health sector could stay for long in their organizations only if they are allocated fresh roles with time, but they do not see ways to do so. Furthermore, some practitioners are squeezed in their places of work in that they cannot access supplementary training or education opportunities. Some are also bogged down with daily duties of patient care as health care organizations do not provide training and advancement chances (Happell, 2008). These occasions could make physicians move from a particular health care organization to another. This may also form a negative attitude in physicians towards particular health care organizations that do not provide career advancement and change of roles.
The Unique Problem
Currently, there exists a distinctive problem fronting healthcare organizations because of a combination of factors. While business is thriving in the industry, basically the practitioners are not sufficient. This takes place because of the increasing populace while the majority of the employees are aging simultaneously and are not supplemented automatically. This outlines that the number of individuals looking for healthcare facilities is enhancing whereas the figure of the practitioners is reducing. The gap linking supply and demand is enlarged hence placing pressure on healthcare organizations (Happell, 2008). This happens as the healthcare recruiters are looking for ways to hire fresh staff and deliver care to the increasing number of patients. Healthcare recruiters should at times offer competitive reimbursement packages and signing fillips to their workforce. They should also offer incentives to motivate the working physicians and persuade healthcare applicants. Furthermore, healthcare recruiters should take a universal approach to hiring practitioners by keenly listening to what the labour force require and providing professional advancement programs. Carefully listening to the workforce and giving them advancement chances, in combination with competitive salary and an equilibrated workload, are some of the methods that organizations could employ to remain militant in recruitment and also increasing retention rates.
Cultivate Younger Generations
With regard to how the majority of the healthcare work needs differentiated training, colleges and Universities are usually the best places to commence the recruitment process. As the students are preparing themselves to venture in the healthcare industry, organizations should ensure that they better their working conditions so that even after their course, most students may venture in the well-known establishments. Healthcare organizations should provide training to the students and motivate them simultaneously. This could increase the number of practitioners venturing in a particular organization. Moreover, it creates confidence to the healthcare organizations that the recruits are fully specialized in the health domain. During healthcare visits to higher education institutions, they should promise incentives and work advancements to practitioners who may venture in their institutions (Cumming & Mays, 2011).
Organizations in the health care industry ought to be vigilant to promises they could have given as they must be met to maintain a good flow of practitioners (Cumming & Mays, 2011). Directives from healthcare executives whereby they may send representatives to higher institutions may result in the triumph of methods of how one might attain a successful career. As certain specialized healthcare vocations are not as widespread as others, students may have an opportunity to comprehend the magnitude of the medical occupations that are accessible and economic for them in the future. Although this strategy does not provide immediate workforce in the current market, it could move a long way to creating competitive and productive young practitioners.
Staffing Agencies
Healthcare specialists like surgeons must undertake a high number of years of medical training, which outlines that it is problematic to fill such positions, and thus medical practitioners in such fields are always on demand. Therefore, advertising locally and globally could be essential to quickly get employees when there are no skilled candidates accessible for those kinds of jobs (Rolls et al., 2016). Through partnership of healthcare organizations with a staffing agency that functions on a countrywide level, an administration could have persistent communication with bodies that well knows the excellent practitioners and where they could be located. This could enhance the constant flow of workforce especially if a worker has resigned, when fired and during retirement. Through this forum, firms could advertise vacant job positions nationwide and contact workers whose credentials meet the required skills. Although occasionally a payment is needed when working with staffing agencies, a constant flow of specialized and skilled workforce could outweigh that cost in a few months.
Impacts of Sufficient and Skilled Practitioner’s in a Healthcare Facility
In a case where a medical care facility has specialized and adequate workforce, it could provide excellent service to the patients. When a health care organization has insufficient or unskilled personnel, it cannot serve the patients, their families and the community at large (Keane et al., 2011). Recruitment of the right practitioners and creation of a healthy environment could result in higher team spirit, minimal employee turnover, and a much sturdier bottom line. The current world is facing international extraordinary economic, demographic, and competitive contests, in addition to other medical care experiences and layoffs with inclusion of falloffs. As a result, a recently completed research in the US has outlined that health care industry may be the fastest developing sector in the economy for the subsequent ten years. Moreover, the research outlined that health care industry may account in any case three out of ten new occupations created. Developing an efficient talent gaining approach is a challenge in the medical care industry as the scarcity of health care workforce increases. Unluckily, there is no industry that is more out-dated in recruitment and talent management than the medical care sector. The method and general attitude present in medical care recruiting roles are frequently obsolete. These facts are directly from the observation of health care labour force in the US who has had an experience of more than 20 years in the medical care sector. Their suggestion is that healthcare organizations should enhance the effects of their recruitment and retention efforts of the workforce for an improved welfare of the patients and the practitioners (Stanley, 2010). Moreover, not all health care organizations are terrible at recruiting, but those who have not understood the 21st-century hiring methods to attain remarkable success. Unfortunately, 90% appear devoted to providing excuses for their inadequacies as the leading 10% is working hard to make a difference. In the health care sector, the ability to rapidly screen, recruit, and attain skilled practitioners could have a direct impact on the patients’ welfare. Therefore, hiring and retaining of skilled workforce in the health care industry must stand to be the top priority for the medical care recruiters.
New Moves in the Health Sector
Does the approach of recruitment require changing in future to be successful? Health care organizations of all magnitude must implement a variety of new procedures to maintain an efficient hiring and flow of workforce. As technology improves new strategies of recruiting practitioners should be implemented (Rolls et al., 2016). Social media networks should be employed to make the hiring process effective and for it to reach a big and diverse number of people. For instance, healthcare organizations could now employ software app that eases the recruitment process by easily posting occupations and corporate websites that extract curriculum vitae to databases and tracks candidates by pre-screening. Moreover, the software could check orientation schemes, interview, and retain electronic-mail in contact with applicants and make hiring offers. Therefore, healthcare organizations need to incorporate new techniques to hire and maintain a good flow of practitioners to prevent vacant job positions.
Conclusion
Recruitment in the health care sector requires strategies to have a successful working environment. Health care executives should take the battle and ensure that they maintain a good flow of workforce in their respective organizations. Health care recruiters should create and develop a skilled pool of medical care applicants for the present and future positions. In general, applicants, the staff, and health care recruiters ought to have a major role in the provision of a successful recruitment process and have a smooth working environment in the health sector.
References
Cumming, J., & Mays, N. (2011). New Zealand’s primary health care strategy: Early effects of the new financing and payment system for general practice and future challenges. Health Economics, Policy and Law, 6(1), 1-21.
Happell, B. (2008). Putting all the pieces together: Exploring workforce issues in mental health nursing. Contemporary Nurse, 29(1), 43-52.
Keane, S., Smith, T., Lincoln, M., & Fisher, K. (2011).Survey of the rural allied health workforce in New South Wales to inform recruitment and retention. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 19(1), 38-44.
Rolls, K., Hansen, M., Jackson, D., & Elliott, D. (2016). How health care professionals use social media to create virtual communities: An integrative review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 18(6), 4-7.
Stanley, D. (2010). Multigenerational workforce issues and their implications for leadership in nursing. Journal of Nursing Management, 18(7), 846-852.