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The Monthly Pulse – Recruiters (Dec. 2022)

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The Monthly Pulse
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Industry News
Top Five Mistakes Healthcare Recruiters Make and How to Avoid Them
The Story
As hospitals and other healthcare organizations strive to recruit top talent, even minor mistakes can be costly. Surgeons and other specialists have certain expectations when looking for jobs, and ensuring their wants and needs are met through the process is essential to sourcing excellent candidates. Fortunately, many healthcare recruiting mistakes have easy fixes.
     
What You Should Know
Some of the most common mistakes in recruiting involve simply not utilizing the tools that are readily available. For instance, social media platforms like Facebook groups and LinkedIn can be excellent resources for recruitment efforts, but they often go overlooked. Similarly, using mobile tactics like apps, texting, and chatbots can automate many steps of recruitment — and they can also help to avoid being unresponsive, another critical pitfall to avoid. Two final issues to address are lack of pay transparency and utilizing only generic job boards to fill specialized roles — such as cardiothoracic surgeons.
     
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The Power of Work Friends
The Story
People spend a lot of their time at work, but recent research shows only 30% of employees have a close work friend. In the demanding and often challenging field of healthcare, having work friends could be especially beneficial. Strong work relationships also support important business outcomes such as job satisfaction, retention, productivity, and profitability.
     
What You Should Know
While employers may not be able to force friendships among coworkers, there are steps you can take to facilitate a work environment where interpersonal relationships can thrive. For one, consider implementing a buddy system by pairing new hires with veteran employees. You can also encourage more face-to-face interactions by having leaders rely less on email and more on in-person interactions. Finally, consider hosting social events that bring teams together.
     
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Encouraging Resilience and Grit May Be Fueling PA Burnout
The Story
While burnout has impacted the healthcare workforce in its entirety, there has been little information about how physician assistants (PAs) have been affected. Interestingly, recent research indicates that PAs report having high rates of job satisfaction, but also high burnout rates. Although healthcare workers are often met with advice to become more resilient, these sentiments could be backfiring, especially among PAs.
     
What You Should Know
Encouraging PAs to become more resilient isn’t an effective solution for the root causes of burnout. In fact, most PAs are already meeting immense demands with as much resilience as possible. Instead, we must identify and address what’s really contributing to burnout. According to recent data, the biggest contributor of burnout for PAs is handling a heavy load of bureaucratic tasks. Exploring new solutions for managing these tasks could help give PAs more time and focus to dedicate to the aspects of their jobs they truly enjoy.
     
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Leadership Reflections
     
Economic Outlook
I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Marci Rossell speak last month at the Staffing Industry Analysts Healthcare Staffing Summit conference. Her outstanding keynote address, Economic Turbulence and the Healthcare Workforce: What’s Next? provided past, present, and future economic insights within the healthcare industry.

Here are some key takeaways:
  • The healthcare worker shortage is exacerbated by baby boomers retiring, millennials taking time off to start families, and fewer young people to enter the workforce. (Every year, there are 300,000 fewer young people turning 18 than a decade ago.)
  • Pre-COVID workers valued schedule flexibility by 8% of their salary, (meaning they were willing to accept 8% less pay for a role with flexibility). COVID technology adaptations have likely increased this. Post-COVID workers attracted to remote work are leaving high touch healthcare roles that cannot be remote.
  • Financially stricken healthcare organizations are facing: 1) severe wage pressure from below with no ability to alleviate, 2) inflation at the retail level of healthcare not keeping up with general inflation (6% vs. 8%), and 3) margin compression leading to bankruptcy or selling out to merger/acquisition.
  • While we’re experiencing the highest inflation we’ve seen in 40 years, we have not yet met the definition of a recession, and circumstances look more like late 1990-2000 vs. 2008-2009. Marci is anticipating the Federal Reserve will begin to lower rates in the second half of 2023, so there is hope of movement toward recovery in the next 12 to 18 months.
We recognize the significant challenges healthcare organizations are facing and are committed to partnering in sustainable ways. If you would like to hear more about this talk, please feel free to reach out - I would love to share more of what I learned and brainstorm ways you and your teams can creatively navigate this turbulent financial season.
     
     
Daryl Bert
Daryl Bert
CEO
e: daryl@ct-assist.com
t: 540-421-0696
w: www.ct-assist.com
     
Upcoming Events
     
STS 59th Annual Meeting
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Sat. Jan. 21 to Mon., Jan. 23
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The Future of Health Care
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