In an era where healthcare organizations are expected to implement complex initiatives within the constraints of limited budgets, quantifying the efficiency and effectiveness of every function – including hiring – is essential.
For healthcare HR teams, hiring metrics have great value. They are a proven method for driving performance management. According to LEAN principles, organizations can’t manage what they don’t measure. Hiring metrics are also indispensable for quantifying return on talent management investments to key stakeholders. Data that demonstrate decreased recruiting costs or improved levels of patient satisfaction are compelling. Finally, hiring metrics are terrific for celebrating success within the HR team. Recruiting is a job that is never done and recognizing achievements helps prevent burnout.
To meet strategic business goals, healthcare organizations should consider implementing three best practices related to hiring metrics:
Generate metrics related to hiring costs to demonstrate where money is spent and its impact on vacancies
With online job boards, many healthcare HR departments have a “post and hope” philosophy. Organizations can move beyond this mindset, however, through the use of job board ROI metrics. These metrics quantify how online advertisements are performing. It is possible to determine which job boards deliver the highest quality applicants, as well as which job families are easiest to source through online media. Job board ROI data helps healthcare HR teams justify media spending to the finance department and senior management.
Cost of vacancy is another key metric that allows organizations to calculate the expenses associated with positions filled temporarily by an agency or overtime personnel. Quantifying the cost of vacancy can support a business case for maintaining or adding recruitment resources to reduce overall expenses.
When healthcare HR teams develop hiring metrics, like job board ROI and cost of vacancy, they generate data relevant to meeting business goals. As a result, there is a much greater likelihood that the executive team will invite HR to participate in strategic discussions.
Use efficiency metrics to improve the flow of hiring
Hospitals and healthcare facilities commonly overlook efficiency metrics and simply track the average time to fill across all positions. However, tracking only one measure that spans all jobs doesn’t tell the full hiring story.
Three additional efficiency metrics are essential for improving hiring: percentage of positions filled in less than 60 days, percentage of positions filled in more than 60 days, and for positions that take more than 60 days to fill – what is the average number of days required to fill them.
David Szary, Founder of LEAN Human Capital & The Recruiter Academy, has noted, “The vast majority of healthcare positions – 77 percent – are filled in fewer than 60 days and have an average time to fill of 24 days. The remaining 23 percent of positions that took more than 60 days to fill, however, had an average time to fill of 112 days. And most of those jobs were critical to the organization.” By taking a deeper dive into efficiency metrics, healthcare HR teams can develop plans that will lead to continuous improvement in the hiring process.
Leverage technologies like applicant tracking systems to streamline development and reporting of healthcare hiring metrics
Hospitals and healthcare facilities that have implemented technologies like applicant tracking systems find it very easy to calculate and report on hiring metrics.
The “seven day stuck” report is a good illustration of how technology can improve hiring practices. After organizations generate this report from the applicant tracking system, they are able to identify positions where the status hasn’t changed for seven days. The report isolates bottlenecks, such as hiring managers who aren’t taking action or positions where no candidates have been sourced.
According to David Szary, “One healthcare organization analyzed its ‘seven day stuck’ metric over a four month period. By examining and addressing blockages in the hiring process, this organization reduced its average time to fill from 118 days to 85 days.” When hiring metrics are easy to report on, healthcare HR can partner with hiring managers to reduce time to fill, especially for positions that are critical, highly visible, or difficult to staff. If, on the other hand, hiring metrics must be generated manually, it is unlikely that they will be calculated at all.
Hiring metrics have the potential to enhance quality at all levels and in all departments of a healthcare organization. HR practitioners and hiring managers benefit from more efficient hiring, while patient care improves as critical positions are filled, and the executive team benefits from knowing how hiring costs affect the bottom line.
Michael DiPietro is vice president of marketing at HealthcareSource.