With an increasing demand for, but limited supply of, nurses in healthcare, it’s more important now than ever to attract and retain high-performing talent.
A 2019 Workplace Institute survey of HR, IT, and healthcare professionals found that around 90% believed healthcare staffing would undergo a major shift by 2025. Just one year later, that prediction came true when technology transformed the healthcare hiring process during COVID-19.
As healthcare undergoes digital transformation, maintaining physical HR file cabinets is quickly becoming a difficult endeavor. Not only can physical file cabinets raise the risk of audit citations, but they can also make securing personal employee information complicated for remote workforces. When hiring at volume, manual HR systems may slow down recruitment, especially as virtual interviews and remote onboarding quickly become the norm.
The implication is clear: a digital HR strategy is no longer optional for organizations looking to appeal to candidates in a tight, post-COVID job market.
How to Create Your Digital HR Strategy
Keeping pace with the industry means developing an HR strategy that incorporates forward-thinking digital solutions. Here are a few steps to take that will guide your facility towards a successful implementation.
Define Your Goal
Whether you’re working to replace a retiring workforce or improve your turnover rate, your goal should accurately reflect the result you have in mind. Use the SMART acronym to create a recruitment goal statement that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant to your facility, and time-based with a set deadline.
Example: In order to better retain our existing talent and reduce our cost-per-hire, our goal is to increase our annual retention rate from 50% to 70% by Q1 of 2022.
Remember, your strategic goal should not only make business sense, it should also keep the focus on the end-users: your employees. Ask staff for feedback on any new initiatives or technologies before you move forward.
Prioritize Initiatives
Now that you have a strategic goal in place, you’ll undoubtedly end up with a whole list of ideas for achieving it. As exciting as this stage is, it’s important to be realistic about what you can accomplish. List out all your ideas based on the resources and effort they require like budget, time, labor, and training as well as the potential impact of each. Prioritize the ones that will cost you the least amount of effort with the best results.
Determine Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Your goal may be the ultimate indicator of success, but you also need to assess your strategy’s effectiveness throughout the process by tracking milestones with key performance indicators (KPIs). These measurable values should always tie back to your goal to give you a clear idea of how close you are getting and what, if anything, needs to be adjusted.
Here are a few examples of KPIs:
- Reduction in days-to-hire
- Number of quality applications
- Monthly, quarterly, or annual turnover rates
Choose Your Tech Stack
The ideal tech stack should be tailored to your facility’s unique HR needs and existing setup.
Some platforms, like Apploi, can offer an end-to-end solution that includes talent attraction, acquisition, onboarding, and credentialing. Other platforms may offer single services you need, like an HRIS or payroll system, or may integrate well with your current solutions.
Just keep the big picture and your budget in mind along with your goals as you shop for technology.
Get Buy-in From Stakeholders
While you want to be sure that your healthcare staff and HR team are on board with the new strategy, it won’t go far without getting support from your stakeholders.
Ask yourself, who needs to sign off on any new technology or expenditure? Who will be responsible for building out system integrations and managing technology on the backend? Sit down with everyone to go over goals, end results, and be prepared to answer any questions they may have.
Measure Your Success
Once you have a plan, the tech, and the support in place, you’re nearly ready to implement your strategy. Before you do, however, ensure that you have the tools available to track the KPIs that will move you towards your goal.
Look for technologies that allow you to analyze each stage of your hiring process and combine the data into regular reports, so you can note trends over time. Make sure they integrate easily with your tech stack which will allow for more accurate, real-time information.
Interested in learning more about how you can quickly recruit, hire, and on-board healthcare staff? Contact us today for a free demo of our end-to-end solution.
