Hospital Candidates Don’t Exist Finds New Survey from Leaders for Today
WELLESLEY, Mass. (PRWEB) March 08, 2018 -- Leaders for Today (LFT), a leading management staffing firm for hospitals, has released its latest survey report, Talent Acquisition Strategies & Results Hospital Recruiting & Hiring: The Candidates Don’t Exist, which highlights the ongoing talent shortage in the hospital industry regardless of organization size or location. The report identifies that while hospitals may take a different approach to recruiting depending on location, general size and number of beds, each faces the same shortage of qualified talent and the current recruiting environment isn’t helping.
More than 200 healthcare leaders shared a variety of perspectives and opinions around recruiting and hiring. Representatives from urban medical centers to critical access hospitals were included in the survey. Hospitals ranged in size from less than 25 to 1,000 plus beds, and encompassed individuals in leadership positions, including the C-Suite, clinical and non-clinical administration and human resources.
“The findings tell us is that there simply isn’t enough qualified talent to go around and that frustration levels are rising,” said Bill Haylon, CEO of Leaders for Today. “No matter how many HR people hospitals have on staff to recruit and retain employees, significant gaps exist. In general, hospital HR teams have too much on their plates and this data raises questions as to whether available time is being allocated properly.”
When asked to summarize their organization’s current recruiting situation, nearly a third (31 percent) of respondents said they can’t find enough candidates. However, the problem is even more problematic than it first appears. Almost a quarter of respondents (24 percent) indicated that while HR may move quickly, the qualifications of the new hires are questionable -- raising the question as to whether hospitals are lowering the bar to fill longstanding vacant positions.
There is also a question as to whether hospitals are being penny-wise and pound foolish. Sixty-two percent of hospital-based HR recruiters handle ten or more searches at any given time, while 27 percent handle 20 or more. These are heavy workloads for any recruiter. Seventy-four percent of searches for hospital leaders (managers and above) take more than four months to fill and 35 percent take longer than seven months, leaving far too many vacancies. It is hard to imagine the impact on a hospital’s profitability and quality in critical service lines when missing leadership for such prolonged periods.
“The healthcare industry can have a here and now mentality when it comes to dealing with human capital problems,” says Haylon. “Too often the focus is on solving the problems of today and worrying about tomorrow, tomorrow. In a business that is based primarily on human talent, this approach can be short-sighted.”
To that end, when asked to rank the top priorities for their organization’s HR team, employee retention and related issues like career development and improving organizational culture fell towards the bottom in terms of priorities. These responses only served to reinforce LFT’s findings from last spring’s survey report – Hospital Staff Hiring & Turnover: The Other Elephant in The Hospital Room – that current practices aren’t effective in addressing employee retention.
Read the full survey report, Talent Acquisition Strategies & Results Hospital Recruiting & Hiring: The Candidates Don’t Exist for further survey findings.
About LFT
Leaders for Today is a 15-year-old national healthcare interim and permanent staffing company headquartered in Wellesley, MA. When your healthcare organization is pressed to fill staffing gaps, you can rely on LFT's flexible staffing solutions to address your unique needs. We work closely with both healthcare organizations and talented candidates, helping them make the right connection at the right time, so everybody wins.
Learn more about LFT, our interim and permanent solutions, our process, and view job postings at: http://www.leadersfortoday.com
Media Contact:
Charlotte Jolicoeur
Account Executive
Corporate Ink for LFT
[email protected]
617-969-9192
Charlotte Jolicoeur, Corporate Ink, +1 6179699192, [email protected]
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