Attract More Candidates With These Tips to Improve Your Clinical Workplace Culture
The healthcare labor market has become more competitive than ever, with nurses and clinicians able to choose from opportunities in hundreds if not thousands of facilities. In the face of this competition — and at a time when it’s never been more important to attract and retain talented workers — what can hospitals and other healthcare facilities do to stand out to job seekers?
6 Steps to Improving Your Clinical Workplace Culture
Step 1: Assess your reputation. When a potential job seeker looks up your website, your profile on LinkedIn, or your employee reviews on Glassdoor, what will they find? Will they see an active, engaged employer with an exciting and welcoming culture? Or will it be mostly negative reviews of a company that’s difficult to work with? Or, just as bad, perhaps, do they find outdated info, or nothing at all?
» Action Item: It isn’t difficult to assess how potential workers perceive your facility. Giving your staff that chance to leave anonymous feedback will provide more insights than you may expect. You can also help cultivate a better image for yourself by monitoring what people say on sites likes Glassdoor and working to correct the criticisms you discover there.
Step 2: Think about your branding. Answering the (sometimes difficult) question of how workers see your facility helps you do the work needed to correct negative perceptions. It’s important to not only correct the shortcomings that come to your attention, but also to let workers (both current and potential) know what you’re doing to improve culture and offer them a better place to work.
» Action Item: Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date, and that it reflects your mission to provide workers with a positive home. Even better, get active in LinkedIn groups and publish blog posts and other content that keeps staff and job seekers informed and engaged with your brand.
Step 3: Focus on your culture. Improving your clinical workplace culture begins with the staff members you already gave. Of course, the better your ability to retain staff, the less you’ll need to recruit new nurses and clinicians. Culture goes beyond pay and benefit and extends to the level of comfort and fulfillment people feel with your organization.
» Action Item: Reach out to your current staff members and ask what they’d improve in their day-to-day rounds — chances are pretty good that they’ll give you honest answers. Brace yourself for some honest criticism, and be prepared to begin to implement solutions to the challenges your workers are facing.
Step 4: Beef up your benefits. Remember, even in the age of social media, word of mouth remains a powerful part of your reputation. A great way to build great words of mouth is by offering workers outstanding benefits. During a time when skilled nurses can pretty much choose their assignment, such enticements can include flexible contracts, signing bonuses and, of course, premium compensation.
» Action item: Culture isn’t just the work environment, but the general treatment that workers receive. Making sure they have enough time off — and then making sure that they can actually take that time off — is critical to keeping folks on your side.
> Don’t miss: How to detect burnout and compassion fatigue — and what to do about it
Step 5: Support your staff with a contingency backup. Having a culture that’s enticing to job seekers means making sure your permanent staff members aren’t overworked, and that they can take time off when they need to. Contingency staffing can give you access to additional workers on a temporary, per diem or travel basis to make sure your facility handles seasonal fluctuations in stride.
» Action item: Partnering with a contingency staffing partner gives you access to thousands of additional workers across your home state and even the entire United States. Using temporary workers like travel and per diem nurses to meet seasonal and unpredictable spikes in utilization has long been an effective way to for facilities to stay fully staffed — and it’s become even more important during Covid-19.
> Need travel or per diem nurses? Fill out our quick nurse staffing request here.
Step 6: Find a partner that can help you accomplish all of the above. Skeptical of your ability to put together a great benefits package? Or do you simply lack the time or resources to focus on culture right now? You’re not alone. These are complex operational adjustments, not superficial fixes. To really make sure you’re making the best clinical workforce culture you can, you may need a partner with expertise in healthcare workforce management.
» Action item: Partner with a healthcare managed service provider (MSP) like CareerStaff and you’ll have instant access to a nationwide network of workers available on a contingency or permanent basis. You’ll also receive a complete, customized mechanism for sourcing, hiring, recruiting, onboarding, paying and providing quality benefits for those workers.
Clinical Workforce Solutions From CareerStaff
At CareerStaff, we specialize in providing facilities across America with the clinical workforce solutions they need to meet their patient care goals, even during a global pandemic. Want to hear more? Contact us here to consult a CareerStaff specialist today.