Healthcare talent management professionals must continually address three

strategic goals: reducing costs, improving patient satisfaction, and improving

patient safety. 

Reduce Costs 

Tight budgets and increased workloads are the norm for healthcare professionals.
When it comes to cutting costs, most organizations are pursuing HR initiatives
related to more efficient processes and employee retention. According to a 2014
survey by HealthcareSource®, the leading provider of talent management solutions
for the healthcare industry, 74 percent of respondents plan to streamline HR
processes. Meanwhile, 69 percent are planning to implement initiatives that
improve employee retention to help reduce costs. 

“Turnover is costly for organizations. When a person leaves, it costs the

organization one to two times an employee’s first year’s salary. One of the reasons
retention is such a chronic problem in healthcare is because the work can be highly
stressful and skills utilized are often easily transferred from one organization to
another. It’s beneficial to use behavioral-based assessments during the hiring
process because this can help you identify and select those who are more likely to
stay,” said Dr. Frederick Morgeson, Eli Broad Professor of Management for
Michigan State University and Scientific Advisor for HealthcareSource. 

Improve Patient Satisfaction 

Improving employee satisfaction and improving organizational culture are top

priorities related to patient satisfaction. Top initiatives uncovered by the survey
include: 

 improve employee satisfaction; 79 percent

 foster a culture of employee accountability; 68 percent
 create a service-oriented culture; 67 percent. 

“Senior leaders must make accountability and service excellence a strategic

priority. Implementing goals focused on these elements can help, particularly if
they are supported and reinforced from the top of the organization. Without these
things, organizations will have a hard time changing their culture,” said Morgeson. 

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Improve Patient Safety 

To improve patient safety, healthcare organizations are focused on driving

behavioral change among employees. To encourage behaviors, organizations are
investing in employee education and professional development. Specifically,
respondents to the survey are focusing on: 

 employee education and development; 69 percent

 improving employee satisfaction; 59 percent
 hiring for cultural fit; 54 percent. 

“People go into healthcare careers because they want to make things better—that’s
what drives employee engagement. The key is to ensure employee education stays
focused on the outcome, not just the process,” said Donna Wright, MS, RN, a
consultant for Creative Health Care Management. 

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Achieving these goals may prove difficult, however. For instance, survey
respondents reported that they are challenged with having to deal with competing
initiatives (67 percent), as well as having to manage initiatives with insufficient
budgets (49 percent). “HR needs to be in the right meetings at the right time when
budgets are put together. They must be a part of those conversations, rather than
someone handing HR a budget and saying ‘make this work’,” said Ursula
Pawlowski, MSHR, HR concierge and membership specialist for The American
Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA). 

According to 49 percent of survey respondents, another major issue is inadequate

technology. Healthcare HR professionals recognize that technologies can help as
they try to meet their organizational goals, while simultaneously streamlining
important processes and reducing costs. For instance, performance management
technologies (30 percent) and e-learning content (25 percent) were identified as
clear opportunities technology enhancements for helping achieve strategic talent
initiatives.  

“HR and education see each other through a glass wall, but their activities often
aren’t integrated. Technology is a way for these functional areas to connect,
identify the organization’s true needs, and evaluate the return on investment of
different activities. Too often systems are siloed—we need one integrated systems
and processes,” said Wright. 

Despite the fact that the healthcare industry is subject to continual change due to
the evolution of regulations and policies, care delivery and payment models, and
the rising demand for health services—based on the past five years of data, it can
be assumed that healthcare talent management professionals will always be
expected to do more with less. Year over year, results have shown that the main
objectives are to deliver their services as efficiently and as cost effectively as
possible. This translates into the ever-increasing interest in the adoption of
technology solutions to ease the burden of manual work by automating processes. 

When talent management teams succeed in recruiting and retaining the right
employees, healthcare organizations are in stronger position to deliver high quality
care—translating into high levels of patient safety, satisfaction and overall
organizational excellence. 

The healthcare industry is certainly no stranger to changing compliance and

competency requirements, but the latest shifts are changing the game as we know it
for healthcare organizations concerned with providing top patient care. New
regulations under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act give patients more
opportunity to decide the fate of a healthcare organization’s financial wellbeing.

Now, high scores in the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and
Systems (HCAHPS) patient surveys result in higher government reimbursements to
healthcare organizations, giving patients a significant ability to affect a provider’s
profitability. Given that most healthcare firms are experiencing talent shortages in
areas such as nursing and IT, it’s essential for these organizations to provide
ongoing training and development to their staff to ensure they are able to drive
retention and provide a positive, compliant experience for their patients.

Why Talent Management?

Key to helping healthcare organizations keep pace and still provide a top-notch
patient experience is an agile, focused and aligned employee experience that meets
generational expectations.

With an agile talent management infrastructure in place, healthcare organizations

can respond more quickly and cost-effectively to shifts in compliance and validation
standards, talent loss or shortage, and overall, gain better insights around how to
best develop staff to drive quality patient care and employee retention.