human resources Archives

by Dixie Somers

Quality medical staff can be difficult to find. Scouring resumes for good employees, interviewing, and checking references is also a time-consuming process. You want to be certain you’re hiring dedicated professionals. The following suggestions can make it easier to find and recruit caregivers you can rely on.

1. Write Effective Job Descriptions

Craft job descriptions carefully. This is important from both a legal and employee retention perspective. Be certain you’re clear on duties and credentials. To get quality employees, you want both those that meet your standards and those that are willing to go the extra mile. Setting higher expectations will tend to weed out applicants at the lower end of the scale.

2. Find a Recruiter

You can also partner with respected staffing agencies that specialize in medical professionals. They do all the hard work of finding and vetting candidates. This can save you some time and money over handling the entire process yourself. Just be clear about your criteria. For these staffing agencies their own professional reputation is dependent on finding you the employees you’re looking for.

3. Ask the Right Questions

Make the most of the job interview to learn about the candidate. Let them know honestly what your work environment is like. Emphasize how important your own reputation is to you. Come up with in-depth questions about how the candidate reacted in past situations to challenges like pressure, long hours, demanding patients, emergencies, and other things that give you real insight into applicant character and commitment.

4. Create a Recruitment Strategy

In addition to exacting job descriptions, you might consider a software system that allows you to track aspects of recruiting, rate applicants, and organize files to make searches and reporting easier. Put together a list of alternative resources like job fairs and jobs websites, such as HealthJobsNationwide.com and HealthJobs.com. Network with medical schools, and visit healthcare blogs or forums to identify top talent. Use social media to find and connect with prime candidates.

5. Background and License Checks

Medical background checks are often performed by outside services to ensure you’re getting employees who are properly credentialed. You want to avoid high-risk candidates like those with criminal records and licenses that have expired or been suspended or revoked for misbehavior. Verifying the medical practitioners’ licensing status of your candidates allows you to have more confidence in your new hires and the reputation of your practice.

In a demanding field, high-quality candidates can be hard to find and retain. But finding the best employees is worth the effort for you and your patients.

Dixie Somers is a freelance writer and blogger for business, home, and family niches. Dixie lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and is the proud mother of three beautiful girls and wife to a wonderful husband.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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by Eileen O’Shanassy

Human resource investments tend to wind up on the back burner in most businesses. The focus needs to be on the customers, right? Yes and no. Customers are the ultimate source of revenue, so they need attention. But if you have miserable, undertrained employees that half-wish your business would fail, customers will get terrible service. To help avoid that, there are some HR investments worth making.

Employee Training and Development

Initial employee training is all about teaching people how you need them to do a specific job. It turns out that poor job training is one of the top five reasons new employees quit. Taking the time to train employees properly will cost something, but reduce turnover in the long run. Development is all about offering paths to ongoing educational opportunities. Employees get bored when they master their jobs. Providing a way for them to expand their skills keeps them engaged and makes them more useful to you. Even if you can’t cover total costs, getting your employees discounts on training goes a long way.

Flexible Schedules

Not every business is structured in a way that allows for flexible scheduling, but it’s worth the effort if your business can do it. The benefits to the business are numerous. You’ll usually see a sharp drop off in missed days of work and tardiness. Turnover goes down and morale and engagement go up. It’s a huge selling point for recruiting new, talented staff. Your employees will benefit too. It helps them achieve substantially better work-life balance. Stress levels go down. Fewer employees suffer burnout. It also allows employees to enjoy shorter commute times.

Cleaning Staff

There is some limited evidence that a messy environment encourages creativity, but a messy, unhygienic work environment is more likely to make people disengage or quit. Since disengaged employees are usually bad employees and replacing employees is expensive, it pays to err on the side of cleanliness. Just hiring a maid or local services for cleaning to come in a few times a week can go a long way toward maintaining a clean, productive environment.

Outsource or Automate Mundane Work

Every business has some tasks that are tedious and, in all honesty, probably a terrible use of employee time. Look for ways to outsource or automate those tasks. This will free up your employees’ time to work on the higher-level tasks that only they can perform. They’ll be happier, which will make them more productive and profitable.

HR investments don’t get much coverage because they aren’t sexy. They’re inward-focused, rather than customer-focused, so they often seem like they’re of secondary importance. Yet, making those HR investments can go a long way toward creating happy employees that sell your business to every customer they meet. That is something worth the investment.

Eileen O’Shanassy is a freelance writer and blogger based out of Flagstaff, AZ. She writes on a variety of topics and loves to research and write. She enjoys baking, biking, and kayaking. Check out her Twitter, @eileenoshanassy.