How to Improve Healthcare Hiring Outcomes – Best Practices

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021

“Big data” can make an important difference in the world of healthcare hiring, retention, and employee satisfaction, according to Bryan Warren, Director of Healthcare Solutions, and Dr. Ted Kinney, Vice President of Research and Development, at Select International.

Make the Most of Healthcare Workforce Analytics

“Workforce data is any data that can be leveraged to provide strategic insights on people and can be connected directly to business outcomes,” Warren explains. “Another term you hear a lot these days is workforce analytics. This is a little more specific in that it usually involves combining software, methodologies, and statistical models to the data, so that you can make predictions that can be used to optimize human resource management.”

Use Your Data to Better Understand Your Problems

Data can be used to address bottlenecks in the hiring process, as well as finding and selecting the right people. That, in turn, supports the mission of aligning talent strategies with business strategies. Warren says that smart hiring teams are looking at data in several areas of hiring and ongoing employee management:

  • Performance
  • Training and Development
  • Employee Engagement
  • The Hiring System
  • Retention
  • Recruitment

Focus on What Matters for Healthcare Hiring

Warren advises leaders to focus on the hiring-system metrics that matter—what is being measured should reflect the enterprise’s goals for maximum effectiveness. “We want to understand in great detail the candidate experience, we want to understand time to fill, turnover, and whether or not the system is working for hiring managers.”

Strengthen the Role of Hiring Manager Accountability

Warren offers, “A few years ago, Ted and I and our team started to see a shift in healthcare from a mindset of ‘HR sends candidates to the hiring managers, the hiring managers chose whom they like, if that employee doesn’t work out the hiring manager goes to HR for the next batch of resumes and candidates.’ Organizations now are asking their managers to take more accountability for the team, for selecting it and for building it.”

Measure for Healthcare Candidate Fit

In the current healthcare environment, tools for candidate assessments have come into play. They provide data around strengths and weaknesses to hiring managers, and also show potential employees that this is an organization that wants to know where they can shine as well as areas where they might need support, such as continuing education or development.

Be Flexible about Solutions

A multifaceted problem requires a nimble, evolving approach, Kinney says. That means not just creating platforms and programs that utilize data to further hiring and other goals, but making sure those efforts are constantly scrutinized, evaluated, and reconfigured so that maximum benefit is achieved in an ongoing manner.

Collaborate to Understand what Really Works for Healthcare

One area where healthcare performs well is sharing information around evidence-based best practices. That can be used for data and data usage, Kinney says. “We can learn a lesson from our clinicians,” he says. “Healthcare created an approach to evidence-based practice. There is a natural tie-in here to hiring and how we use predictive analytics.”

Learn more about HealthStream solutions for selecting and retaining the best healthcare employees.