By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
The war for nursing talent has become intense in most geographic areas in the US. Recruitment under the best of circumstances is very challenging. Unfortunately, I have learned through my webinars that some health systems have an added challenge of archaic HR practices such as the following:
- Candidates need to apply for every position individually with no seamless transfer from one manager to another.
- No ability for candidates to apply during onsite recruitment events.
- A lack of HR urgency or accountability.
- No follow-up with candidates during HR processing.
- Recruitment advertising using traditional channels with no social media presence.
- A laborious application process that can’t be completed using mobile devices.
- Months in the processing of applicants from the time of interview to onboarding.
- Permanent movement of HR services offsite from hospitals served and no direct communication with nurse leaders.
In a recent Becker’s Hospital webinar on nurse recruitment and retention, Iman Abuzeid, the CEO of Incredible Health (an HR staffing company), cited hiring turnaround time as the single most crucial factor today in successful nurse recruitment efforts. Millennial and Generation Z nurses who order next-day delivery with Amazon have similar expectations with potential employers. When they experience long delays in the hiring process, they have unfavorable impressions of what it will be like to work in that health system. They vote with their feet and move on to other more responsive hospitals.
It is critical to engage our HR partners in this war for talent. Some best practices that I have heard about include the following:
- Monthly focus groups with new staff to look at pre-employment and onboarding challenges.
- Weekly huddles between HR and nurse managers.
- The establishment of a staffing incident command center manned by HR and other disciplines to look at staffing challenges in real-time each day.
- HR partners who book interviews right on nurse manager calendars.
- HR navigators help candidates schedule multiple interviews to assess the best unit placement.
- A race to the finish goal of 48 hours from interview to hire.
- A Youtube video channel featuring videos of all inpatient units with staff comments about why they work on this team.
- Engaging patients and families to help us to find the best nurses.
Many health systems are spending millions of dollars each month on travel nurses while failing to look at how their HR practices impact recruitment. Twice in my 25 year VA career, I was deployed into nurse recruitment positions because of severe staffing issues. I learned how important it is to engage our HR partners actively. Finding interested candidates is only the first step. Candidates watch how we manage the whole employee hiring and onboarding process. When done exquisitely well, it leaves a deep impression. When done poorly, it also leaves a deep impression that nurses are not afraid to share on social media. HR professionals need to feel like they are part of the healthcare team. Today, they play a critical role, and we need to keep them engaged.
© emergingrnleader.com 2022
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