Insights, Tips, & Guides

8 Optimizations to Beat Health Workforce Recruitment Challenges

The challenges healthcare facilities face today seem endless: staff burnout caused by the pandemic, high vacancy rates, lack of engagement in candidates for high-need positions, and an inability to attract the younger population and meet their workforce needs. This survey by SHRM reveals disheartening statistics, showing the healthcare industry as one of the most recruitment-challenged fields. Almost 60% of recruiters report a low number of applicants. The American Hospital Association is calling this issue a national emergency, urging Congress to address these workforce challenges that healthcare facilities are facing.

Luckily, the HWapps Team has a number of proven digital optimization solutions designed to address workforce challenges and achieve desired goals. Through extensive research, analysis, and years of experience deploying technology, digital media, and engagement projects, HWapps has identified 8 recommendations for organizations to consider to address their workforce challenges and achieve desired digital optimization goals. 

The 8 recommendations are spilt into two levels:

Level One – includes optimizations that can be done internally with little to no cost beyond staff time.

Level Two – includes optimizations that require strategic planning, design, development, and implementation to ensure the highest return on investment.

Level One Optimizations

By implementing these recommendations, organizations can expect more organic website traffic and an increase in brand awareness and engagement.

  1. Ensure your Google My Business listing is up-to-date and has relevant, up-to-date content, including images, videos, virtual tours, reviews, and links to services and career opportunities. This will help Google guide people looking for the careers you offer to your business first. Google will reward businesses with more content due to relevancy and value.
  2. Identify the top five questions your candidates have and make sure your website answers those questions either via blog posts, web pages, or video content. According to author and international keynote speaker Marcus Sheridan, when people Google the question, Google will recognize that your website provides a relevant answer and reward that by listing your web page high on the results page.
  3. Apply basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices to your website for Google to recognize your career opportunities for better ranking. Keywords for your industry, and also used by competition should be identified and strategically incorporated in your website content. 

 

Level Two Optimizations

By implementing these recommendations, organizations can expect to reduce vacancy rates for high need positions, reduce time-consuming HR-related operational tasks, and increase brand awareness and engagement with the community.

  1. Create mobile-accessible career specific landing pages to enhance the user experience and ensure your brand and career opportunities are accessible via any device and the content speaks to target audiences. The goal is to put your website to work captivating and motivating action from target candidates to achieve recruitment goals.
  2. Humanize your automated recruitment experience by providing candidates with a simplified application, personalized conversational communication, automated email and SMS responses, reminders, and follow-ups, the ability to check their own application status, schedule and reschedule interviews, one click reapply for new openings, effortlessly access helpful resources (guides, videos, Q&A), and easily connect with key contacts. Optimization in this area will save HR time by automating time-consuming burdens, ensure quality candidates do not slip through the cracks with advanced analytics and automatic processes, and reduce turnover by virtually engaging candidates and new hires through the first three months. 
  3. Personalize your digital recruitment campaigns to reach ideal candidates, gain their attention with captivating messaging, and motivate them to act. Each campaign should focus on one high-need career, one target candidate, and use research-driven best practices to ensure a return investment with vacancies filled. Want to see an example? Click here to see how a local community health center increased their DSP applications by 720% with targeted recruitment campaigns. 
  4. Digitally engage onboarding candidates with an internal online tool that provides 24/7 access to information, resources, guides, key contacts, internal career opportunities, company-wide news, and instant updates from the palm of your employee’s hand. Part of improving employee engagement is ensuring they have the tools they need to succeed in their roles. In return, organizations can expect to increase employee satisfaction and have better retention outcomes. 
  5. Let the community in with outreach campaigns and engagement tools that enable the community to respond and act to critical workforce needs. With the right tools, messaging, and strategy, organizations can build more awareness of the value of community health, their services, and opportunities. In return, organizations can expect an increase in donations, volunteers, and workforce support from local residents and businesses. Learn how these tools helped a senior care and assisted living services provider to overcome severe staffing and resource shortages during a COVID-19 outbreak. 

 

Bonus Recommendations

By implementing these recommendations, organizations can expect to reduce vacancy rates, increase brand awareness and engagement, and attract quality talent to the region.

  1. Grow a local health workforce by blending traditional and virtual career exploration opportunities with local high schools and colleges. By partnering with your local Area Health Education Center, high school students can be reached with in-person classroom presentations, MASH Camps, and Job Shadow programs. Virtual camps and job shadow experiences can easily be integrated with video and 360 technology providing a large number of students with immersive access to your organization, services, and career opportunities.
  2. Collaborate with local and regional partners to deploy a regional recruitment campaign designed to reach, engage, and support quality workers across NYS wanting to relocate to areas in need of healthcare workers. Check out the #BeYourLocalHero pilot regional recruitment campaign videos watched by more than 3000 people across social media channels.

 

Our HWapps Team has been able to rectify many of the problems healthcare facilities face by establishing these digital optimization solutions with the partners we work with. Through implementation of our recommendations, your organization can lower vacancy rates for high-need positions, reduce time-consuming HR-related operational tasks, increase brand awareness and engagement within your community, and attract quality talent to your region. Healthcare organizations have enough to manage in today’s world; let us take on the burden of these commonly shared issues and contact us today!

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