vacancy Management top tips
RECRUITMENT & RETENTION
While chronic vacancies have always been a pain point in the hospital and healthcare sector, it somehow feels worse than ever. While it is difficult to define in a single metric, the impact of the post COVID environment and Great Resignation seem to have facilitated unprecedented recruitment and retention challenges. Unlike many challenges in hospital operations, recruitment and retention truly has no silver bullet. However, there are many proven best practices in this space and we are excited to share with you some that we see used infrequently in the field over the coming weeks.
DIAGNOSING THE PROBLEM
When solving a problem with many variables, it is important to break it apart into pieces. When it comes to not having enough people to do the work, we first break it down into 1) too many people are leaving and 2) not enough people are replacing them (aka retention and recruitment). However even recruitment can be broken down into pieces such as 1) posting the right number of positions 2) compensation 3) marketing of positions 4) delays in the interview or onboarding process and more. In this series, we’ll break best practices into 3 parts: Intake, Retention, and Exit.
INTAKE - RECRUITMENT
Many organizations believe that they monitor SLA (service level agreement) data because they publish TTF (time to fill), but this drives a false sense of security. In reality, there are many steps and responsible parties involved in the process of replacing a team member. Often the lack of available data prevents us from creating a “who has the ball” dashboard, but this is critically important piece to solving this problem. Without it, the root cause analysis required to drive improvement is impossible!
NEVER COMPROMISE
In the face of such an intense need to replace vacancies with new team members, it can be tempting to skip the important steps that support candidate quality, ensure good department fit, and are proven to reduce turnover. Be sure to stay strategic with the recruitment process or your turnover can increase significantly - especially in the first year!
ANALYZING DATA
Looking for a silver bullet? Join the club! Unfortunately, there are no easy answers in the world of retention. We talk about data-driven decision making frequently, but particularly when it comes to retention, each department/shift is different and generational differences matter! Work with HR to understand the differences between groups and curate strategies that support retention for each population. Be sure to monitor improvement monthly for course correction!
ONBOARDING
True or false: we are so busy in our jobs – and relieved to finally have some help – that we often overlook the first impression new employees have in their first days at work. Based on our experience, this is unfortunately very true. It is tough to prioritize a new person who does not know where the bathroom is or where to sit at lunch when we are appropriately preoccupied with critical issues. While this is just a small part of onboarding, consider reflecting on the golden rule when designing the first 30 days for your new team member. Success in retention depends on it!
FIRST YEAR
Have you ever seen a hospital with first year RN turnover that is lower than tenured RN turnover? We haven’t either. Perhaps this is because addressing turnover in the first 1-3 years of employment requires very different tactics than for our tenured team members. Part of the difference is generational, and part of it isn’t, but the moral of the story is – to meaningfully impact turnover, you must have a specific strategy curated for this high-churn population of RNs.
STAY INTERVIEWS
While exit interviews are relatively commonplace (although few utilize findings from them effectively), stay interviews are rarely seen. Hospitals who have the insight to implement stay interviews know that when resignations occur, time is of the essence! Some hospitals have identified first year turnover as the top driver of their contract labor spend and decided to treat resignations much like a sentinel event, including timely escalation protocols. While labor-intensive for HR, data demonstrates that this method is impressively effective in solving problems for the resignee and retaining their employment, even if it means moving them to a different department.