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Career Pathing in Behavioral Health

June 20, 2022
June 20, 2022

You’ve done all the right things. You have hired a team member that is sure to be a great fit for the organization. You have asked the skill-based questions that help determine whether or not a candidate has the required skill set. You have also been sure to include peer interviewing in the hiring process to address topics such as retention, supervisory abilities and communication skills.  Your team has integrated the appropriate behavioral questions about flexibility, diplomacy and decision making to help ensure that the candidate is a good fit for the organization. Peer interviewers have also addressed behavioral-based issues to ensure that your candidate will be a good ethical fit in terms of their ability to adhere to your organization’s ethics and performance standards. The process is complete – it worked well and now it is time to onboard that employee and move them quickly and efficiently into productivity.

 

Onboarding That Works

If the recruiting and peer interviewing processes have gone well and resulted in great hires, it is now time for the onboarding process to help that new hire understand that they have made the right decision and it is time for the organization to help seamlessly integrate that new team member. Having the right tools like Onboarding with Jane® to make this a seamless experience on both sides is critical.

Automate and streamline where possible. While subjects such as compliance and regulatory issues may be difficult to make appealing during orientation and onboarding, they are critical. Using online learning tools can help employees address these subjects at a time and pace that works for them.

Onboarding providers is complicated by numerous credentialing and privileging tasks. Automating these tasks means that they happen more efficiently and accurately and that they can be completed prior to the first day of work while giving the organization the comfort of being able to easily retrieve and report credentialing information for their entire staff. Faster, more efficient onboarding means providers being able to treat patients and generate revenue sooner.

 

Career Pathing in Behavioral Health

If your organization provides a broad scope of services, there is likely a broad scope of associated career paths as well. Connecting behavioral health providers to the next step in their careers and working with them to identify professional goals is a great engagement strategy. Behavioral health professionals have a wide range of options. They may choose a path to a leadership position, or they may consider moves to such varied therapeutic roles as music therapy, social work, psychiatrist, psychologist, case management, addiction counseling and literally dozens of others.

Leaders can use their own observations about a provider’s skill set and where that intersects with various provider roles in the behavioral health arena. For example, an employee who has been observed to have good listening skills may result in a leader recommendation for marriage and family counseling. Strong problem-solving skills might result in a recommendation for social work. Strong organizational skills may result in a recommendation for a leadership position.

Leaders may also choose a more quantitative approach to help them make stronger recommendations. HealthStream has tools that can help providers meet the changing and growing needs of the behavioral health patient population. Many of these same tools can help providers and leaders make more informed decisions about career paths.  Tools like CE Unlimited with Jane® provide content that includes literally thousands of multi-disciplinary titles. It helps to create a culture of lifelong learning and it helps leaders identify areas of strength. It can also identify gaps in knowledge where more instruction is necessary. These tools also provide the kinds of insights that leaders can use to help develop personalized development plans that will put employees on a wide variety of career paths.