If you're in healthcare HR, you're thinking about how hard it is to recruit specific positions including nurses, tech, and leaders.
Such targeted talent shortages were among the key conversations during this year's LEAP HR healthcare summit in Chicago, where industry leaders met to discuss pressing concerns, and "getting creative around how we do HR in healthcare."
What else were people talking about this year?
Know your data
Analytics monopolized an entire conference track. But the importance of data filtered through virtually all of the sessions, illustrating an industry grappling with the best use of human capital metrics. An oft-repeated impression was that the healthcare industry is data rich but insight poor. In other words, It's not enough to merely propose strategies - today's healthcare HR needs to understand how to use data to back them up.
Connect data to business value
Nikki Slowinski from Advocate Aurora Health Care offered a model of evidence-based decisions: using hard, irrefutable data to show what drove her organization to make benefits changes. She also showed the recruitment and retention power of the employee-development program created as a result (check back here next week for the full details). As she put it, "You can't just do nice things for nice people; you have to build the business case."
Culture in all Caps
The star of the conference was unquestionably culture - how to get employees to feel like a part of the "tribe"; the value of connecting healthcare employees to the organization's mission; the role of culture in avoiding burnout; and how to identify, shape, and support your employer brand. This connects to research we've done at Bright Horizons showing that job seekers prioritize the right organization over the ideal role in job choice. And in the competitive healthcare industry, where highly recruited employees have the ability to pursue both their dream job at their dream company, culture is an unquestionable recruitment edge.
Finally, with learning a mandate for both the healthcare field and its employees, there are new questions about delivery. In the fast-changing field of healthcare, new hybrid learning models are emerging that pair traditional classwork with on-the-job components. It's a pathway worth exploring, and one that we've got our eye on.All the better to appeal to the next generation of nurses, tech, and leaders.
