Healthcare recruiting. It comes with its own set of recruitment challenges when it comes to attracting the right nurses into the healthcare industry.
There are nearly 4.2 million nurses working across the country. That means that there has to be enough healthcare roles out there to meet this demand.
An Overland Park, Kansas staffing agency may have run into certain recruitment challenges in healthcare that they want to tackle. However, you may not even be sure of what your biggest recruitment challenges in healthcare are.
These are a few of the biggest recruitment challenges that you need to be aware of.
Scarce Location
The first challenge some healthcare recruiters might face is being located somewhere that is scarce. That can be just because the talent around them is limited and the area they are working in could be more rural than most of the country.
Well, a Kansas healthcare staffing agency may know this problem all too well.
Healthcare recruiters are likely aware that the Kansas population is limited. The state has less than three million people in it, making it one of the lowest-populated states in the country.
On top of this, the state is rural compared to certain areas of the country. For example, in Kansas, you may drive 50 miles without seeing a gas station.
Then, you can drive through east coast states that are heavily populated, such as New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maryland for a comparison. There, you will notice that stores, homes, businesses, and necessities are much closer together compared to states in the western half of the country.
A Kansas healthcare staffing agency needs to be aware of this limitation when trying to recruit nurses for healthcare roles in this area. Come up with a way to work around this limitation.
Demand for Nurses
Another big challenge in healthcare recruiting is how much demand there currently is for nurses.
Think about it. The field has expanded more than ever due to how long people are living now and how many more options there are for nurses to take part in the healthcare industry.
An example could be that nurses do not have to work in hospitals now. They can choose to work in a senior living facility instead.
Nurses also may have more opportunities to work with an individual patient rather than a hospital. That is because some older citizens and their families may prefer for someone that can’t fully live on their own to still be able to stay in their own house.
In that situation, a nurse can help someone that is struggling with some daily needs live in place. Essentially, that nurse is working in someone’s house rather than a public building.
When it comes to healthcare, it is a field that is not dying or threatened compared to other fields. The reason is that people are always going to need others to take care of them if they get sick or when they get older.
So, with the demand for nurses being high and more healthcare roles available, it makes recruitment challenges in healthcare increase to land the top prospects.
High Turnover
Jumping off of our last point, when nurses have more options, it makes their tolerance for a bad work environment go down. As a result, you have a higher turnover.
When there is high turnover, healthcare recruitment services have to work fast when it comes to filling that position. It also makes hospitals along with these services have to anticipate sudden job openings.
In 2022, the turnover rate for nurses was 22.7%. In the year prior, the turnover rate was 25%.
What this means is that most hospitals are expecting to lose a quarter of their staff. That means that not only do some feel they may have wasted energy trying to teach new staff members how their hospital runs, but also that they have to do this all over again.
Constantly changing employees can demoralize a work environment. It can also put more stress on upper management to replace them and to get the new nurses on the same wavelength as the more experienced members of the team.
High turnover means that hospitals need to look inward and address what is making their nurses leave. Doing this can help improve the chemistry your hospital staff has.
Poor Communication
Finally, hospitals need to have good communication when it comes to what they want from new nurses. This can be one of the biggest recruitment challenges if there is poor communication or no communication at all.
If a hospital fails to properly communicate with an Overland Park, Kansas staffing agency, then they will not be able to promote a job that the hospital has open properly. On top of this, if the hospital has poor communication with the nurses, then it will take them much longer to get on the same page.
Upper management in hospitals need to know the exact requirements they have for new nurses along with how those nurses are doing and if they have questions. Communicating efficiently can get everybody on the same page faster and even improve the turnover rate.
Get Help With Healthcare Recruiting
These are some of the biggest challenges you may face when it comes to healthcare recruiting. You have to deal with the current demand for nurses, the high turnover rate in the industry, being in bad locations, and improving communication before it is too late.
If you address all of these issues, you should see improvement in no time when it comes to recruiting.
Do you want to know more? Please, message us with your questions here.
