A strategic solution the reduces reliance on premium pay
Our team of Healthcare Industrial Engineers created this newsletter to share the industry’s best practices with leaders who can apply operational efficiencies in their daily work.
High performing leaders ensure the right number of staff are available at all times to provide quality patient care. While the complexities of healthcare certainly make this a challenging endeavor, perhaps the biggest barrier to success in this area is unavailable staff due to turnover and FMLA.
Experienced leaders know the turnaround time for hiring and orienting staff creates a greater vacancy burden than is typically seen on paper. When staff are unavailable to work, we rely on premium labor such as overtime or travelers to care for our patients, which can adversely impact our culture, outcomes, and hospital finances.
Hiring ahead is a strategy that allows us to quantify the true vacancy burden and hire the perfect number of FTEs and reduce avoidable premium pay.
TOP TIP
Put these open shifts into perspective by comparing vacant FTEs due to recruiting and onboarding turnaround time to total department FTEs. If the percentage for the department is greater than 10%, you should highly prioritize the hire ahead strategy.
Psst... the hire ahead FTE value for a 6-month gap for one position is 0.5
VACANCY MANAGEMENT IN THE NEWS
Does your department struggle with chronic vacancies?
The hire ahead strategy quantifies the number of FTEs that should be hired above the budgeted staff members to account for the gap in time between position approval and the replacement being ready to work. It incorporates historical turnover as well as recruitment metrics to determine how many FTEs a department should hire ahead.
Nursing vacancy figures can arise for a number for a combination of factors. This can be unfilled vacancies, uncovered maternity leave, long-term sick leave. Covid-19 is also contributing.
Hospitals rush to fill nurse vacancies before patient volumes swell
Last week, the company placed 100 nurses and it is still trying to fill almost 2,000 vacancies posted by hospitals. "They can't get them in fast enough. Especially in the intensive care unit and the emergency department.”
1) GATHER TURNAROUND TIME AND TURNOVER METRICS Obtain turnaround times from recruitment and learn the estimated orientation weeks from department leaders to total the time from resignation to replacement ready to work.
Obtain the budgeted hire target from finance and the historical turnover from HR.
2) QUANTIFY THE VACANCY GAP Sum the turnaround times to calculate the number of weeks the vacant position will require additional coverage to accommodate for the team member’s departure.
3) PROJECT HIRE AHEAD FTES Use the vacancy gap calculated in step #2 and the total vacancies per year provided by HR to project the FTEs required to cover the gap.
4) UPDATE THE HIRE TARGET TO INCLUDE HIRE AHEAD PROJECTION Finally, add the hire ahead FTE projection (step #3) to the department’s current hire target. Updating the hire target to accommodate turnover will ensure that shifts left open due to vacancy are covered by regularly priced labor.
Ensure that the hire ahead FTEs are recalculated regularly – especially for departments with high or varying turnover as this will impact the calculation.
