How to Attract, Nurture and Retain Top Talent in Healthcare

A recent article published on Healthcare Dive states, for today’s healthcare industry, finding and keeping top-notch physicians, nurses and other providers is key to patients’ wellbeing and high patient satisfaction scores. But competition for higher-quality talent is fierce and turnover can be high. According to Nursing Solutions’ 2016 Healthcare Staffing Survey, 67% of hospitals report rising turnover rates, with an average rate for bedside RNs of 16.4%. And according to the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration, 20.4% of healthcare employees — one in every five — quit their jobs each year.

So how can an organization boost job satisfaction and retain talented staff?

David Wilkins, chief marketing officer at talent and learning management software solutions firm HealthcareSource, offers three key strategies to accomplish that goal: Attract and hire the right people for your organization; “grow your own” long-term loyalty; and keep the folks you already have.

Attract And Hire

To effectively attract and recruit new talent, hospitals need to have 21st century technology. Wilkins suggests investing in sourcing-specific talent to identify and source potential candidates as well as search engine-optimized career websites and assessment technology to screen candidates against behavior markers specific to medical jobs.

“Integrate all of the above with strong applicant tracking and workflow technology to manage the hiring and onboarding process,” he tells Healthcare Dive.

Grow Your Own

As soon as employees are onboarded, hospitals should begin working with them to fill long-term talent needs, especially for hard to fill roles, Wilkins says. They may also want to create individual career paths that combine an employee’s long-term goals with the organization’s needs. These career paths can then be linked to development plans and specific learning activities so that the objectives are visible and actionable to the employee on an ongoing basis, he adds.

Regular appraisals of an employee’s performance can encourage feedback/communication and help to align career aspirations with a hospital’s goals, Wilkins says.

To learn more on how to successfully attract and retain the right employees for your agency follow the link below:

Healthcare Dive – How to attract, nurture and retain top talent in healthcare