What’s it going to take to acquire and keep the best talent in the LTPAC sector?
Human capital professionals in long-term and post-acute care have a double-barreled challenge: Workforce shortages and shockingly high turnover rates. Staying ahead of the curve in LTPAC HR trends can make all the difference in getting talented employees to accept your job offers and developing those hires into a quality-focused workforce that will stay onboard.
- Competition for the Best Talent
Workforce shortages and rising acuity levels within each care sector are tandem forces wreaking havoc on the ability to find and acquire the right employee skills mix. LTPAC HR teams need to be masters at promoting the organization’s branding story from the very first job posting and should plan to retool the selection process with fresh interviewing techniques. HR directors also should be prepared to get creative with benefits and scheduling—shift pools, flexible scheduling and even transportation and housing benefits are becoming more popular as strategies to acquire and keep the best talent.
- Employee Engagement for Retention
Increasingly, a paycheck isn’t enough to keep an employee’s loyalty and dedication. Many LTPAC employees crave meaningful engagement with the mission of long-term and post-acute care, and trends show a clear shift toward team-based workflows that include everyone who interacts with patients and residents. Being engaged in purposeful work is especially important to Millennials, a generation that has shown little hesitation in moving on if they don’t feel connected to the organizational mission and culture. engagement keeps employees happier, less likely to leave and less likely to need conflict management.
- High-Tech Tools
Big data is a major driver in healthcare, and its powerful tools are revolutionizing LTPAC HR. It’s no longer enough to conduct local and regional analyses without technology support, experts say—in a competitive market, the one with the most business intelligence data often wins. Likewise, software and cloud-based analytics tools can provide insights on employee performance, training and credentialing and even the company’s own culture through employee surveys and exit interviews.
- Regs, Regs, Regs
While SNFs are the hardest hit by CMS regulations, rumblings in the industry hint toward growing state and federal regulatory involvement in assisted living, and eventually, many experts suspect, in home health. Heightened attention to deficiencies and penalty phases puts the HR bullseye directly on workforce training, not just for compliance but also for employee engagement in the success of the workflow processes they touch each day.
- Corporate Culture and Your Workforce
Size and annual revenue aren’t the only things that define an organization, especially in the LTPAC market. Organizational culture is emerging as one of the top factors in a potential employee’s decision to join a company, and an even stronger influencer of how long they stay. Corporate culture involves employee engagement, wellness and work/life balance initiatives community involvement and a vibrant corporate identity that employees are proud to resonate to others. Playing a strong role in developing corporate culture means working closely with executive leaders and marketing team members, taking on new roles in employee engagement and community outreach, and doing everything possible to make employee satisfaction the hallmark of your organization.
