In healthcare, staffing demands are bound to change rapidly due to the shifting needs of the population. For instance, the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 is driving the increased demand for healthcare staff. Facilities like hospitals, urgent care centers, and hospices depend entirely on their staff at all levels to keep things running smoothly. 

Unfortunately, the industry faces staff shortages, which is expected to worsen in the next couple of years. According to the American Medical Colleges’ Center for Workforce Studies, there are 45,000 fewer primary practitioners and 46,000 fewer medical specialists and surgeons than needed.

To overcome these shortages and reduce hiring challenges, there is a need to optimize the healthcare recruitment and onboarding processes. Therefore, you need to have an effective hiring strategy at both a macro and micro level, and the smart move is to invest in the right healthcare recruitment and onboarding software.  

In this article, we will explore the use cases and benefits of recruiting and onboarding software to better appreciate the value each offers healthcare organizations.

Healthcare Recruiting Software

The healthcare industry demands staff around the clock, and the staffing process is complex and tedious, especially if your onboarding and recruitment processes rely on spreadsheets and manual paperwork. 

If you haven’t embraced technology yet, it’s highly likely the hiring department, and HR teams are wasting time and resources. The results are inconsistent and unsatisfactory during a time when healthcare organizations are competing for a limited talent pool.

Some challenges you may experience during the hiring process include lack of candidate engagement, shift scheduling and management, credentials validity compliance, and more. Healthcare recruiting software can help solve many of these challenges and automate recruitment to enable your organization to recruit at scale.

Healthcare recruitment solutions help track, engage, and support candidates throughout the hiring process. The most significant assumption is that these solutions exist only to benefit the hiring team. However, these tools also improve the candidate’s experience. Therefore, your recruitment software will depend on the functions you want to automate and streamline.

Recruitment timelines are a major part of the problem. Industry experts like McKinsey and Glassdoor have reported that companies still find it challenging to attract top talent and struggle to fill positions successfully in less than 12 weeks. 

One of healthcare recruiting software's primary functions is attracting talent and managing and nurturing candidates. There are several success factors associated with CRM software. The benefits of effective candidate experience software include:

• Creating a talent network within a single and searchable database.
• Helping you find, attract, nurture and manage candidates
• It creates a central point for all recruitment activities and facilitates smooth processes such as scheduling interviews, background checks, etc.
• Creating a good candidate experience is one of the best ways to help you attract a larger talent pool and fill the position quickly.

Expectations from your healthcare recruiting software

Recruiting software helps with three core functions in the hiring process: 

• Candidate screening, 
• Attracting candidates
• Assessing prospective candidates

Moreover, software should have some key aspects to make a meaningful contribution to your hiring process. Some of the factors behind effective recruitment software include:

• Integration functionality. It should allow you to connect with other programs that you currently use or may need to acquire.
• A SaaS solution. as it is much easier to implement and use. It is also more flexible and does not require an investment in additional hardware.
• User-friendly interface. This should include the critical functions you need as an HR department. Choose software with an intuitive design to take full advantage of all of its features.
• Data Analysis. Consider software that facilitates data analysis to allow you to monitor your return on investment (ROI).

The right solution will allow for some customization to fully meet your organization’s needs.

Another essential feature of functional recruitment software is accessibility and customer support. 

You want to access hiring information from anywhere and at any time. You also want to access data in real-time so as not to delay your operations or decision-making. 

Finally, the software should be healthcare specific. This is critical because this industry faces very specific and complex challenges that off-the-shelf, generic software won’t be able to meet.

Healthcare Onboarding Software

Reports suggest that 93% of employers believe that a first-class onboarding experience is vital in affecting the judgment of a new employee and impacts how long they stay an employee.

Onboarding new employees is a critical process and, similar to recruitment, if you are still basing your processes on spreadsheets and paper, you are behind the curve. You need to be embracing technology. Healthcare onboarding software solutions have been designed to make onboarding streamlined and effective.

What Is Onboarding Software?

Onboarding software is a tool that helps organizations speed up and improve the process of onboarding new employees. This type of software aims to help new hires adjust to their roles more quickly and efficiently.

The ultimate objective of healthcare onboarding software is to help them become productive team members faster. Onboarding software typically includes training management, progress tracking, and communication ability.

It may also include orientation materials such as job descriptions, company policies, and training materials. By using onboarding software, healthcare organizations can improve the quality and efficiency of their onboarding process.

There are many benefits of onboarding software. Let’s look at them in more detail:

Help medical staff adapt quickly to their roles.

Onboarding software can help new hires adjust quickly to their roles by providing all the information they need about their jobs in one accessible location. This could include job descriptions, company policies, and training materials.

Having all this information readily available allows new hires to hit the ground running and start contributing to their team from day one.

In addition, onboarding software can also help ease the transition for new hires by helping them connect with other team members and providing a platform for asking questions and getting feedback.

By making the onboarding process smoother and more efficient, onboarding software can help new hires feel welcomed and valued from their first day on the job.

‍Help New Hires Become Productive Faster

Healthcare onboarding software can help clinical staff become productive faster by providing them with the tools and resources they need to do their jobs well. 

With an LMS, resources can receive job-specific onboarding covering everything from their position's basics to more advanced topics.

In addition, onboarding software can give new hires access to company policies and procedures and contact information for key personnel.

Having all this information readily available allows new hires to hit the ground running and become productive team members more quickly.

‍It saves time for HR and managers.‍

Onboarding software can save time for HR and managers by automating tasks such as sending out welcome emails and scheduling orientations. This relieves pressure placed on HR and managers and allows them to focus on more important tasks, such as getting new hires acclimated to the company culture.

Onboarding software can also help to streamline the onboarding process by providing a central repository for all the information new hires need. This can include everything from the employee handbook to the orientation schedule.

Having all this information in one place allows new hires to easily find what they need when they need it. As a result, onboarding software can save both HR and managers considerable time.

‍Reduces Turnover

Healthcare onboarding software can be a valuable tool for reducing turnover. By helping new hires feel more prepared for their roles and giving them the resources they need to succeed in their jobs, onboarding software can help new hires feel more supported and more likely to stick with their new jobs.

In addition, some onboarding software platforms offer access to employee assistance programs (EAPs), which can help new hires deal with stress and other challenges they may face during their first few months on the job.

EAPs can provide new hires with the support they need to overcome challenges and feel more confident in their ability to succeed in their new roles.

With healthcare recruitment and staff retention so strained, especially post-pandemic, the right onboarding software can play a crucial role in reducing turnover and helping businesses retain their employees.

Increases Employee Engagement

Onboarding software can play an important role in increasing employee engagement. By providing new hires with tools to connect with management, and stay up-to-date on company news, onboarding software can create a connection.

This, in turn, can lead to higher engagement and motivation and improved job satisfaction and retention rates. In other words, investing in onboarding software is an intelligent way to keep your employees happy, engaged, and loyal to your company.

Recruiting vs. onboarding software: Which do you need?

The overriding message is that healthcare recruiting and onboarding software solve different problems. It’s not a case of either recruiting or onboarding software; you’ll probably need both. 

Honestly, there are SaaS solutions that offer both solutions, but right now, the better ROI would be to invest in software solutions that specialize in specific solutions for specific needs rather than generic solutions. Most generic solutions are not healthcare-focused, and this industry, above all else, needs specificity. It faces unique challenges that no other industry faces, at least not quite to this extent, and you should expect software that understands and has solved those challenges.

So the answer is to stay specialized.  If you have the budget, you should look to invest in both software solutions. You’ll get a return on your investment with each, depending on the size of your organization.

What about credentialing?

We’ve discussed the necessity of solution-specific software, especially healthcare-targeted software. You’ll find that both sets of software will mention credentialing, but it’s an “add-on”, a value add. Credentialing is so resource-intensive and well-regulated that you can’t expect a recruiting or onboarding software to offer a solution that could replace your existing credentialing process.

At best, you’ll have some supplementary support, which results in working with two parallel systems, which can lead to potential problems.

If you are working with a credentialing process that is spreadsheet and paperwork-dependent, it’s highly likely that your credentialing process is slow, suffers from bottlenecks, and is a resource drain.

Having a credentialing software solution specific to healthcare created by healthcare professionals will significantly increase your ability to onboard new resources effectively and quickly while managing all re-credentialing requirements on an ongoing basis.

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A solution like Credentially starts by allowing you to integrate the platform with job portals, so candidates' applications are stored within the platform. All the candidate documentation is stored in one place, right from their initial application.

Most healthcare organizations must verify credentials before candidates are selected for an interview. The Credentialy platform automates requesting documentation and allows candidates to upload documents without wasting time on postage or face-to-face meetings. The pandemic has highlighted a potential bottleneck in requiring face-to-face meetings. The more often you can remove them from a process, the more effective and flexible the process is.

Once the candidate successfully navigates the interview process and is offered a position, more professional certification validation is required, including reference collection.

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Managing this stage of the credentialing process is time-consuming. With a platform such as Credentially, you can automate this entire process, including reminder emails to the candidates. 

The platform will simultaneously manage re-credentialing existing clinical staff in real-time. This is where the platform delivers a return on investment. The ongoing task of keeping resources compliant is thankless and never-ending. Having the Credentialy platform manage and automate that process gives you data to manage your resources and understand your risk in real-time.

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Key Takeaways

It’s not a matter of deciding between recruiting and onboarding software; they solve entirely different problems. You need to decide which problem you’re looking to solve. 

Most solutions will infer that they offer both solutions, but the reality is, that recruiting software is excellent at managing the recruitment process and is decidedly mediocre at onboarding. And likewise, for onboarding, managing recruitment is more of an afterthought. 

For similar reasons, neither of these software solutions will help you manage your credentialing process.

Credentialing, recruitment, and onboarding all play a critical role in resource management. In today’s difficult climate where healthcare organizations are competing for resources, being the most streamlined and effective is the going to give you an advantage.