The difficulties of healthcare recruitment and how to overcome them
Every industry brings its own specific set of recruitment challenges; however, the healthcare sector is arguably one of the most difficult to recruit for. Changing legislation, patient needs, protocol, high risks and outdated systems all mean that placing candidates into healthcare roles isn’t always a straightforward process. The industry also comes with a historic difficulty to attract and retain skilled workers. According to Health Business, the essential challenge remains ‘getting the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time to meet service and patient needs.’
This leads to enormous pressures on healthcare recruitment agencies, as they try to place a backlog of workers into the healthcare system to meet the demand and need of hospitals and trusts. Below we’ve outlined some of the major difficulties of healthcare recruitment and what you can do to combat them:
High demand, high churn, high volume
Like most industries, healthcare is a candidate driven beast, with most hospitals and trusts desperate to find skilled workers. As the largest sector in the UK, employing over four million workers, there’s tough competition to find and keep clinicians, nurses, doctors and technicians. Moreover, with many healthcare professionals coming from across Europe, imminent Brexit plans are bound to impact the freedom of movement, which could result in even greater shortages to the industry.
At times like this the candidate experience and onboarding process becomes even more important for agencies wanting to maintain a competitive advantage. Offering the right packages and perks for employees is also an effective method of retaining workers, while agencies can negotiate and advise their clients.
Finding graduates
Graduates are often the answer to worker shortages for many hospitals and private healthcare institutions. However, they’re in high demand and are already being snapped up by their internship employers during their academic career.
Agencies hoping to recruit talented graduates need to establish processes and schemes early on, before the rush to start looking for work hits in third, fourth and fifth years or university. Partnering with local universities is a valuable strategic decision as it keeps your agency front and center at events and graduate fairs. It will also provide you with access to the university's database of healthcare students.
Outdated technology
As the healthcare industry has spiraled and grown over the years, much of the system hasn’t been able to keep up with its rate of growth. As a result, much of the outdated technology and inefficient contractor payroll methods are slow and ineffective for recruitment agencies. Managing rates, contractor cards and compliance often leaves consultants struggling to place workers fast enough.
Thankfully, new software systems and technology has been developed to help recruiters out, including Access’s own Healthcare Recruitment Software. With specific medical staffing software, recruiters can improve candidate attraction, manage complex and changing NHS rates, as well as ensure they’re staying compliant with all legislation and healthcare requirements.
A retiring workforce
With an ageing workforce, it’s only natural that huge numbers of baby boomers will begin to retire from the healthcare industry, especially from jobs that are physically demanding or require complex shift patterns. Their withdrawal from the workforce leaves healthcare institutions painfully understaffed, with a shortage of skills in the industry.
It’s crucial that agencies look to the future of healthcare recruitment. They can do this by working with their clients to develop proactive recruitment strategies that can manage the flow of supply and demand. Agencies are in a prime position to consult and offer knowledge, expertise and years of experience to hospitals and clinicians.
As the pendulum continues to swing between supply and demand, along with the changing political currents, it’s safe to say the healthcare industry will change and face greater challenges over the next few years. However, this is a wonderful opportunity for healthcare recruitment agencies to step up as trusted experts to the industry, offering new technology and greater experiences to both candidate and clients.
