Turning Staffing Challenges Into A Competitive Advantage

Healthcare recruiting is a microcosm of all the challenges teams face in the talent acquisition market. 

What once worked for recruiting new candidates — job boards, staffing agencies, etc. — aren’t producing the same results. There are fewer responses, the quality of talent isn’t meeting job requirements, hiring metrics are declining, and the TA team is succumbing to burnout.

Current processes are not only inefficient in the short and long term but are now preventing facilities from achieving their overall growth and revenue goals and serving their communities. 

The time is ripe for a new approach.

We spoke with George LaRocque, a leading global market analyst and the Chief Analyst and Founder of WorkTech, about how to overcome these escalating hiring hurdles during a recent webinar. According to him, organizations must learn how to transform staffing challenges into a competitive advantage.

George provided incredible insight into exactly how TA teams can lower costs while achieving higher ROI and increased candidate quality with a new hiring tech stack. 

You can download a recording of the full webinar here or continue reading our summary of his strategies.

The Current Healthcare Staffing Climate: A Perfect Storm

George began the webinar by zeroing in on the most pressing healthcare recruitment challenges. He explained how the current labor market and economic uncertainty are impacting and affecting how TA teams are working.

While many believe the Covid pandemic created these issues, George explained why it only accelerated workforce shifts that had been brewing for decades. With his 30+ years of industry experience in recruitment, staffing, HR, and talent management, he outlined the causes and effects of the:

• Decline in talent accessibility and overall workforce size
• Emergence of the contingent workforce
• Prioritization of employee and candidate experiences 
• Rise of data-driven talent solutions 

In the evolving healthcare staffing landscape, unprecedented talent shortages, skills gaps, skyrocketing wages, increasing burnout-fueled turnover, and an indisputably shrinking workforce have forced organizations to depend on staffing.

But this once creative outsourcing solution is now a cost center spiraling out of control. Many TA teams have begun avoiding staffing altogether, driving even greater talent shortages. Yet managing and logging into several sourcing tools isn’t a good use of time either. 

Every member of the HR and TA team is taking on a larger workload. So now it’s time to strategize about how to manage spend and time more efficiently and effectively. 

New Approaches Demand a Holistic View of Sources

George mentioned that what he most often hears from TA teams in 2023 is, “We’re doing more with less and still can’t get ahead.” So he explained where this feeling of spinning your wheels comes from:

Hiring the best candidates means your organization must compete for talent with the same agencies it’s become dependent on. And that’s a completely unsustainable and untenable model.

The only way your team can find success with this approach is to become a staffing firm, which just isn’t feasible. Sourcing is a staffing firm’s core business; they’ve been investing in tech infrastructure for a long time to leverage labor market and candidate data, drive efficiencies, and produce talent you’re fruitlessly trying to bring in-house.

The solution? Adopt a multi-channel approach that leverages a holistic mix of sources (including agencies). 

“Attempting to disintermediate agencies is a fool's errand. Sourcing talent is too hard, especially in markets like healthcare.”

George then outlines the six types of talent sources every TA team should capitalize on to decrease sourcing time, reduce spend, increase candidate quality, and attract and retain healthcare talent. He also provides a few tips for comparing the outcomes of these sources to discover which streams deliver the highest-quality talent and drive maximum ROI.

Leveraging the right processes and the right technology will help teams get out of an untenable situation and be more proactively strategic about workforce planning.

The New Hiring Tech Stack

In addition to your systems of core workflow and systems of record, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), or HRIS, teams need an upgraded tech stack optimized for the challenges ahead to support this new approach.

George categorizes these non-negotiable tools as:

• “Top Of Funnel Tech,” which takes teams from recruitment marketing to sourcing and selection. He presents an overview of the six core tenets for delivering talent via technology, then highlights the best companies to consider partnering with.
• Screening and Selection tools, which bring teams from selection to workflow. George offers three types of tools that empower organizations to make data-driven decisions about who to bring on board during low- and high-volume hiring.

Your new hiring tech stack should harness the power of external and internal data while seamlessly integrating with each platform to facilitate data fluidity. A greater ability to move data between systems increases collaboration, reduces bottlenecks, and decreases time-to-hire. Those perks contribute to hiring success and stellar ROI (and may even prevent new-hire turnover).

Q&A With George 

Wrapping up the webinar, George answered several attendee-submitted questions, such as:

• When organizations are looking to simplify their TA tech stack, where do you recommend they start?
• Your approach seems valuable during the current labor market, but how will it be effective and applicable if trends start to shift?
• What trends are you seeing regarding support personnel and other needed skill sets to take advantage of these strategies?
• How do you convince decision-makers to invest in these solutions beyond promising to reduce overall costs?
• How can TA teams work better with their sourcing partners to create a more strategic relationship and utilize them for better capacity?

➡️ Hear George’s answers in our free webinar recording here.

Download the eBook To Help Your Team Succeed

 To further explore the topics, data, and possible solutions we discussed, download the exclusive WorkTech + Relode eBook: Turning Staffing Challenges Into A Competitive Advantage.

You’ll discover George’s expert analysis on:

After you read the eBook, access the webinar recording to hear George expand on these talking points and discuss the strategies healthcare teams must deploy to succeed in this competitive market. It’s less than an hour, yet full of actionable advice.

George: “Relode is Pushing the Needle”

Everyone suffers when using outdated recruitment practices. Navigating the intricate realm of healthcare hiring requires an innovative approach, which is why we built Relode — a precision recruiting engine backed by game-changing technology, AI candidate matching, and the human expertise of our expansive network of recruiters.

From candidate sourcing to the final interview, you’ll experience a seamless, streamlined recruitment process, free from common industry hassles. When teams are expected to do more with fewer resources, Relode offers the speed, visibility, cost transparency, and overall candidate results they desperately need.

Join the Recruitment Revolution

Relode is ushering in a new era where healthcare hiring solutions align seamlessly with organizations’ objectives, culture, values, and DEIB goals. Whether fulfilling permanent, long-term, traveling, or part-time healthcare recruiting needs, faster access to premium talent means your operations will achieve a significant edge over competitors.

Industry titans like Cerner, Encompass Health, and Optum rely on our transformative approach to redefine their hiring by leveraging labor market data, circumventing outdated sourcing tactics, and confidently guiding their hiring strategies.

Learn how Relode’s healthcare-focused hiring solutions are challenging the status quo and delivering unmatched ROI.