OAKLAND, CA – Approximately one in every eleven residents in the United States is employed in the healthcare sector, but one-in-seven new hires in the healthcare industry will leave their job within the first year, according to new research by Bersin & Associates.
The report, “Selection Assessments for Acquiring and Developing Talent in the Healthcare Industry,” shows that even with an abundance of eligible job candidates, healthcare human resources executives are often conflicted when trying to determine the best candidate for a job.
“In today’s economy, highly complex healthcare organizations are in a constant state of flux, and cannot afford to make wrong talent or people decisions,” said Kim Lamoureux, principal analyst with Bersin & Associates and the report's author. “Turnover in this nation’s health institutions translates into wasteful and unsustainable cost and people challenges.”
[See also: Workforce management tool helps rightsize nursing staff.]
While the healthcare industry as a whole lags behind other industries when it comes to how it manages the talent it has recruited and hopes to retain, it can improve on its retention of new hires via the use of pre-employment selection assessments, the report noted.
Selection assessments are essentially questionnaires employers use during the hiring process that can determine not only a candidate’s suitability for the job, but also whether their personality is a cultural “fit” for the department or company where they will be working. Determining one or both of these before an offer of employment is extended can dramatically reduce worker turnover.
“Sometimes new-hire turnover is a direct result of flaws in the recruiting and selection processes, which may meet the objectives of speed and cost-effectiveness, but fail in the more important and impactful objectives of ascertaining job and culture match,” said Lamoureux.
In order for a selection assessment to be reliable, healthcare organizations much first create in-depth job profiles that provide a breakdown of the essential qualities needed for the successful performance of each specific job. Using this information, a company can find the proper assessment tool that will be “validated, reliable and predictive" in ascertaining a candidate’s fit with the position and culture demands.
[See also: Providers try new tools to improve staffing, scheduling workflow.]
But healthcare organizations shouldn't see the selection assessment as a beginning and end point in their efforst to improve employee retention.
"What healthcare organizations really need to do is hone in on what the profile is of someone successful in a given role, but that profile needs to go a step further to really look at what someone’s career within that healthcare organization could be," Lamoureux added. "If healthcare companies can also start looking at being more career oriented that would help with turnover."
As an example of how selection assessments can make a significant impact, the Bersin study examined the case of Mountain States Health Alliance MSHA), a growing managed care organization based in Tennessee.
Faced with the need to hire large numbers of new employees to keep pace with its growth, MSHA was also confronted with a daunting fact: one-in-three new hires to the company left within 12 months. Needing to dramatically reduce this high turnover rate, MSHA began using selection assessments as part of the initial screening process for job applicants, for all open positions excluding doctors and senior management.
Within one year, MSHA’s turnover rate was reduced by more than half to 15.2 percent.
“Assessments are no longer limited to evaluating senior-level positions in large, successful corporations,” the report concluded. “Today’s best-practiced organizations of all sizes and industries recognize the returns on investment in evaluating job candidates at every level in the organization. A strategic assessment process will help organizations reduce turnover, increase productivity, and identify employees who can meet job and culture expectations.”
