Working in healthcare was supposed to be rewarding. It didn’t matter whether you were going to be a doctor, working in HR, a nurse, or a cleaner. It was the idea that you were part of something big, something helpful, something that saves lives.

Somewhere along the way, paperwork and manual tasks became too big a hindrance. 

We know that being bogged down in paperwork and processes can make you feel like a chocolate teapot, but times are changing. To help you out, we’ve read the top 20 articles on Google and scrutinised them to shortlist our top 4 HR practices in healthcare that you’ll need to know for 2022. 

1. Hire, train and retain
2. Simplify document management
3. Embrace automation like a grandmother at a picnic - integrated software
4. Number 4 is top secret. We like to save the very best ‘til last.

Hire, train and retain

Everyone’s talking about it. We all know how strenuous the hiring process can be; remember that mad statistic that says the average driver spends 8000 hours of their life stuck in motorway traffic? Well, the average onboarding time feels much longer than that. And if it feels long to you, you can imagine the stress and anxiety of your candidates in the process. 

The Brandon Hall Group, a leading preeminent research firm, states that “great onboarding can improve employee retention by up to 82%”, emphasising life after onboarding and its importance.

You might be used to “the old way of doing things”, but remember that the healthcare hiring process is the difference between a candidate and a clinician. 

Thankfully, the software that speeds up the onboarding process and slashes hiring time and start dates is in full use by thousands of healthcare providers.  Credentially is developed and tailored to healthcare companies and all their staff, across both public and private sectors, to simplify and perfect onboarding and compliance processes. 

The focus on healthcare providers has proven vital, although we’ve seen emerging software platforms, like ClickBoarding and AppLOI, that also simplify the hiring process. These types of healthcare software were made with the sole purpose of making your HR processes faster and more efficient.

The two softwares mentioned above both offer candidate retention rates of over 80%.

They do so by making the onboarding process as streamlined as possible, offering onboarding software that keeps all your candidates’ documents in one place, and specific training videos to add that personalised touch to better their experience. 

As far back as 2017, a Careers Builder Study described the process of transforming the candidate experience as vital to the overall culture of the company. 

Training new candidates, offering them a warm welcome and an easy hiring process is not only a great way of reducing candidate dropouts, going forwards it can work wonders for your employee retention.

That warm welcome and personalisation during the digital hiring process goes much further than candidate retention.

The GIM (General Internal Medicine) also released a study in December that saw 15% of frontline workers say that they “are not at all likely” to work in the medical field in the next decade. 

Software innovation is enabling HR departments in healthcare to take back the power to quickly hire, train and retain clinicians. 

This will give you more time to focus on the jobs you find most important, bettering the lives of doctors and patients by association. Your entire hiring process needs to be perfect, your approach like it’s a matter of life and death, because it really is. 

Take a look at the companies we’ve mentioned, and see how innovating your onboarding can get you back to the grassroots of working in the healthcare industry.

Simplifying Document Management

You ever lose your keys and race around trying to look for them? And when you find them, you vow to yourself that from now on you'll always keep them in the same place? Well, that’s what healthcare specific HR software is doing for your competitors’ compliance documents. 

You might have seen BambooHR and CloudB2B, platforms that are great for digitally managing workforce data document storage, however, they’re not tailored to the healthcare industry, causing potential problems further on.

For healthcare companies specifically, we recommend the likes of ComplyGate or Centric, companies that offer industry information that is more specific to your HR duty requirements in the health sector. 

A company like Credentially takes this a step further, tailoring your entire compliance and onboarding dashboard, including logos, documents, questionnaires, and regulations. Such practices are immeasurably useful and growing in popularity due to the ease, speed, and fluidity that they offer. 

We know what it’s like when you open a spreadsheet to insert information, thinking to yourself “hello darkness, my old friend”. Keeping dozens or hundreds of clinicians compliant shouldn’t feel like a chore, not when the lives and well-being of patients depend on it. Not to mention the mad scramble to update information and chase for documents in the weeks building up to a CQC inspection.

Embracing Automation (Like two old friends in the pub)

In their recent vision for The Future of NHS Human Resources and Organisational Development, our National Health Service has said that making “best use of technology and digital solutions” is part of their plan to deliver great people services. 

Embedding digitally enabled solutions is giving the NHS profound capabilities to equip them for the future. 

Other companies like DCA (Doctor Care Anywhere) have also seen the need to embrace automation, and like most GP providers, their reasons were twofold. 

• Easily recruit & engage candidates
• Rest assured that existing employees are compliant at all times 

If neither of these two points are areas in which you’re excelling, then Houston, we have a problem.  

We’ve already discussed that onboarding practices NEED to be taken into consideration if you’re to keep up with competitors, and storing your compliance documents in one place can save you several hours of work per week. 

We’ve even name-dropped other healthtech companies that can help you achieve your goals, and here’s one more. Credentially is an onboarding and compliance software that not only makes employees compliant, it keeps them compliant. 

Some companies have seen the need to automate their hiring and compliance processes

Well, well wellbeing!

It’s a top trend for a reason. 

Employee wellbeing should be at the core of any HR process. You can’t help others if you haven’t put yourself in a position to. It sounds simple, but if you’re stressed, they’re stressed. 

Statistics show that 1 in 6 people suffer from a common mental health problem (like depression, anxiety, or low self-esteem). That includes your clinicians and their patients. 

Mental health should never be taken lightly. If you, or anyone you know, is going through mental health struggles, Mind provide advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem. Call them. 03001233393

You should be proud that your job is to help people who help people.  

We can’t guarantee you the number of people you can make smile on a rainy day, but we can confidently say that the information we’ve provided is here to make your life easier.