Community healthcare is facing unique and growing challenges. Chief among those issues is the staffing conundrum we all face. Finding the right candidates in healthcare is difficult, but community organizations, including FQHCs have added problems recruiting staff. Rural and underserved communities often struggle to bring in the clinical and administrative teams we need to do the job well. This blog will provide suggestions for planning, recruiting, and retaining a high-quality workforce for your community health organization.
Why You Need a Workforce Planning Model
Good recruiting strategies start with a workforce planning model. These tools allow for the analysis of current recruiting data to retirement succession, to help plan for the successful recruiting and retention of your staff. Some of the issues that should inform your plan include:
- What is the volume of new hire turnover? Is it an acceptable level? If you consider it to be high, what is causing the problem? Alleviating staff turnover is key to your workforce planning goals.
- Are you promoting from within? What is the plan for internal career-building to aid in the retention of top employees? How does this jive with retirement planning? Creating strategy these areas will help you stay ahead of the hiring game.
- Assess your hiring strategies from a cultural perspective. Are the candidates you’re employing a good fit for your organizational culture? Is there a correlation between culture fit and retention in your organization? What can you do to hire for culture fit?
- Are your job descriptions appropriate for the role? Sending the right leader to the right job begins with a well-structured and defined job description.
In addition to having a well-defined workforce planning model that helps you stay on top of hiring; you must also have a plan for retaining your best employees. Here’s how to do it.
Sustaining Your Quality Workforce
Two critical pieces of your staff retention plan that often are missed by healthcare organizations. The first is a career roadmap.
A career roadmap begins after the 90-day mark after the employee has gotten their sea legs. This is an opportunity for a manager to talk with the new employee to find out how they’re doing but also to discuss career goals. The job during these in-flight performance reviews is to determine a path for the employee’s longevity in the organization. Then, with training, tools, and resources, you chart a roadmap for the employee to attain any educational or career goals that are possible for you to provide. This roadmap is a fluid document that will change over the years but it’s critical for employee engagement and retention.
The second retention tool that we like to see is employee satisfaction surveys that management actively speaks to as part of a regular “state of the union” address. Supervisors should address concerns on the ground, but leadership should also illustrate to clinical and administrative teams that they are actively listening to feedback and making changes to improve the organization.
Recruiting 101 for FQHCs
The final hiring puzzle piece is for FQHCs to partner with an organization like UHC Solutions. Our community healthcare recruiting firm devotes our efforts to proactively finding and building relationships with passive candidates. This technique alone sets us apart. There is not enough time in the day for your HR teams to build a passive candidate pipeline. This active network allows us to find you the candidates you need faster and for less expense than a DIY approach. Talk with our team today about how we can help you build a high-quality workforce for your health center.
