When it comes to hiring, senior living communities need to stand out from the competition. Your staffing practices need to be unique, streamlined, and effective in order to attract the best senior living talent. Here are seven senior living hiring strategies to help you differentiate your community from the rest.
1. Craft a Strong and Unique Mission Statement
There are some missions that most senior living communities will have in common, such as providing quality patient care. But there’s so much room to differentiate yourself further with your missions and goals. What can your community offer that other communities cannot? What do you hope to offer in the future?
Tie those unique values to your hiring and onboarding process by crafting interview questions specific to your values and mentioning your mission statement in your job descriptions and career landing page, You’ll attract senior living talent who also have those same values. If you’re interested in updating your mission statement, pursue feedback from current employees and residents: the people who know your community best.
2. Make Speedy Offers
Staffing shortages continue to hit senior living communities hard. According to a 2021 industry survey, only 1% of nursing homes and 4% of assisted living facilities report being fully staffed. When there’s a shortage of senior living talent, you risk overburdening your employees. They’re less likely to create social bonds and meaningful connections, which can damage your culture and make it hard for you to stand out among the competition during recruiting. Not to mention, new candidates aren’t attracted to jobs where they have to take on a larger burden due to severe understaffing.
Speedy offers can mean a world of difference. According to CareerBuilder, over half of candidates will give up and move on from a potential job if two weeks pass after an application has been submitted.
3. Foster Two-Way Communication
Transparency from employers is important. A lack of communication can be frustrating for employees, employers, and new candidates.
Candidate surveys, both for those who were hired and those who were not, are a helpful way to gather and incorporate feedback about the candidate experience. In-person check-ins are even more important for healthcare jobs where employees aren’t always at a computer. When you empower your employees to share feedback through surveys, check-ins, and even more unique approaches, like a digital “suggestion box,” it boosts your reputation as an employer who listens (as long as you share and act on your findings).
4. Make A Plan for Tackling Burnout
Burnout among healthcare workers is a major issue, and it’s been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Your candidates, whether they’re new to healthcare or have been in the industry for a long time, are looking for an employer who understands burnout and actively works to prevent it.
It’s important to prevent burnout. Encourage full use of PTO, hire quickly to prevent understaffing, and provide mental health benefits and care. An open-door HR policy, or accessible office hours, can make it clear to employees that you’re there to offer support. When you let candidates know that you have a plan in place to prevent burnout, you stand out among the rest.
5. Use Technology to Stand Out in the Senior Living Market
The best senior living hiring plans involve hiring quickly without sacrificing quality. Digital records can be the key to faster hiring and onboarding. It might take a push to move from paper to digital, but the return on your investment will be high. Digital hiring can eliminate confusing paperwork, make it easier to fill out lengthy documentation, and reduce errors in communication. Digital onboarding continues where the senior living hiring process left off, and helps employees feel connected to their new positions before they even walk in the door
6. Offer a Robust Suite of Benefits
A 2022 Pew research center survey found that 43% of survey respondents who quit their jobs in 2021 did so due to a lack of benefits. When it comes to attracting senior living talent and supporting your staff, it’s best to invest in benefits. Be creative about benefits to really get your candidates’ attention. Non-traditional benefits, such as tuition reimbursement and on-site childcare, for example, might have initial start-up costs, but could make all the difference in your senior living staffing.
For a less costly option, consider flexible benefits, which would allow employees to choose the plan that works best for them.
7. Create Career Paths for Employees
According to Global Talent Monitor, a lack of future career opportunities is a key factor in employee attrition. Senior living communities that take the time to understand their employee’s career goals, both long and short term, as well as provide mentorship, training, and advancement opportunities, will attract new candidates and increase retention. Candidates will be interested in a company where they can visualize a future.
Better Hiring With Apploi
When you hire quickly and efficiently, you’re already a cut above the competition. Apploi’s platform streamlines your recruiting, hiring, and onboarding process, so you can gain full control of your senior living staffing.
Interested in learning more about how you can recruit, hire, and onboard healthcare staff quickly? Contact us today for a free demo of our end-to-end talent management solution.
