With talent shortages and increases in labour costs, there seems to be no end in sight for staffing challenges in US hospitals. Walk into any hospital HR department right now, and they’re likely to be grappling with high voluntary staff turnover rates. High-quality patient care is still of utmost importance, however hospitals aren’t coping without adequate numbers of frontline staff.
If high staff turnover isn’t enough of an issue, the financial strain on hospitals is only increasing. They’re investing millions of dollars with recruitment staffing agencies to ensure they have enough essential staff on hand. As ageing of the population continues to accelerate, so does the need for more healthcare jobs and staff.
What can be done to enable hospitals to gain back control of their agency spend? Here are some considerations which can have a positive impact on your organisationorganization’s overall recruitment processes:
1. Manage soaring agency costs
While recruitment agencies have their place in the hospital recruitment landscape, too often they are not used in a strategic way – which results in escalating costs for hospitals. A survey conducted by Leaders for Today in 2018, found that 78% of finance leaders project hospital labour costs to grow. As a result, reducing labour expenses is a top priority for hospitals over the next 12 months.
A cost-saving solution for hospitals could lie in a fully integrated Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
2. Implement an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
One way hospitals can immediately impact their labour expenses is by consolidating and centralising their agency activity into an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The benefits of ATS are numerous: ranging from automating mundane tasks to seamless tracking of the hiring process and reduced time on administration and paperwork. Increased efficiencies allow hospitals to reduce their spend and focus on other areas – like providing quality healthcare to patients. If your organisationorganization is ready to overhaul its current practices to save money, an ATS will enable you to:
Control your agency budget
Agencies can be tracked within the ATS portal, costs can be allocated correctly and payments can be streamlined, allowing for greater visibility into agency spend.
Eliminate paying for duplicate talent
Many hospitals find that they’re unnecessarily paying agencies for candidates who already exist in their internal talent pools. An ATS automatically detects duplicates through its intuitive algorithms: avoiding double-ups and more importantly, saving hospitals money.
Have visibility of volume discounts and measurement criteria
Having visibility into agency spend and results allows organisationsorganizations to establish and manage a strategic plan for engaging and managing agencies. This visibility allows for contract consolidation and the ability to negotiate deeper discounts with favoured staffing agencies.
Avoid disputes with agencies
Automating and streamlining agency management enables an auditable process to easily resolve disputes when a position is closed.
Maintain compliance
Keeping all recruitment activity online and auditable within an ATS allows for recording compliance actions – which is currently difficult for some hospitals with ‘rogue’ hiring occuring.
Automate candidate screening
By managing agencies within your ATS, your organisationorganization can benefit from added efficiencies, including automatic candidate screening.
Communicate clearly with agencies
An ATS facilitates automated communications with agencies when a position is open, filled or requires changes. An audit trail of all communications ensures transparency at every stage of the process: eliminating the need for multiple lengthy phone calls.
Develop proactive recruitment strategies
Develop a strategy to get a handle on managing passive candidates with a CRM (Candidate Relationship Management solution) that’s embedded into your ATS/Recruitment Software. A well-managed CRM will allow for talent pool development, marketing and communications to help promote brand recognition and drive engagement with your organisationorganization.
Once hospitals have oversight into their agency spend, how do they take the next step in reducing agency spend? We will cover this in our second blog: Decreasing staffing agency costs – how hospitals can implement cost efficient hiring.
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