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Why SOC 2 Compliancy in Healthcare Technology Matters

by Chelsea Richeson | Mar 9, 2023 | Blog

Security breaches and cybersecurity attacks have devastating effects on organizations. The latest IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2022 Report identified that the average global cost of data breaches reached $4.35 million in 2022 alone – a 2.6% increase from 2021.

Healthcare security breaches run deeper in cost, totaling to $10.1 million for 2022 – a record high for healthcare. In fact, IBM’s report detailed that healthcare breach costs have been the most costly of all industries for 12 consecutive years. Furthermore, these costs were found to accrue in later years following the initial breach, resulting in long-tail costs.

IBM Cost of a Data Breach Statistics Diagram Chart

Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022

Fortunately for organizations using Software as a Service (SaaS) technology, such as vendor management systems or other service programs to manage operations, there are a variety of standards to ensure security measures. One such assurance is a System and Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2) audit and report.

A SOC 2 audit and accreditation is the golden standard for SaaS providers or service organizations to demonstrate their commitment to information security of their clients. A SOC 2 refers to both a set of criteria and an evaluation of a third-party organization’s controls. An organization is thoroughly evaluated on SOC 2 criteria to determine legitimate security practices of their system controls that ensure data security.

This blog aims to clarify what a SOC 2 report is and why it’s critical when managing healthcare operations through external service providers.

What is a SOC 2 Report?

A SOC 2 is both a security framework and audit established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to ensure third-party organizations are managing customer data and system controls effectively and securely.

The security framework of SOC 2 is based on an organization’s compliance around 5 key categories. The Trust Services Criteria (TSC) are the 5 categories that third-party organizations need to be compliant with to successfully earn a SOC 2 report.

The 5 Trust Service Criteria are:

Security
Availability
Processing Integrity
Confidentiality
Privacy

Audits are performed by independent Certified Public Accountants (CPA) that evaluate an organization’s controls based on SOC 2 requirements and compliance to the 5 categories. If successfully compliant, an organization will receive a SOC 2 report that can be shown to clients to confirm safe security measures.

SOC 2 Report Types

There are two SOC 2 Report types an organization can receive. Organizations can opt to qualify for one report or both.

SOC 2 Type 1 Report: controls and systems are compliant at a specific point of time.

SOC 2 Type 2 Report: controls and processes are compliant over a period of time (usually 6 to 12 months).

Why a SOC 2 Report Matters

Using services or software that are SOC 2 certified signals that organization’s commitment to security through ethical and solid security practices. A SOC 2 report is a competitive advantage for service organizations to establish credibility and trust among their clients.

Healthcare organizations routinely use several forms of technology and third-party services to successfully run daily operations. Greater reliance on technology means healthcare facilities need to ensure high levels of safety measures from the beginning to prevent cyberattacks. Failure to invest in proper safety measures or partnering with third-party organizations that neglect to follow best practices can result in devastating costs for health systems.

A Secure VMS

Ensuring security best practices to prevent cyber breaches and protect client data is a top priority for StaffBot. StaffBot’s healthcare-tailored VMS is SOC 2 certified for both Type 1 and Type 2 reports to ensure protection within your healthcare facility. Test drive our user-friendly system and determine if a VMS is the right solution to your contingent workforce objectives. Schedule a demo below!

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What is a VMS in contingent workforce management?

by Chelsea Richeson | Feb 15, 2023 | Blog

A vendor management system (VMS) is a software as a service (SaaS) solution that manages the end-to-end processes of sourcing, acquiring and managing an external workforce. A key feature of a VMS is that it integrates several sources of data within a single, easy-to-use platform to monitor and manage a contingent workforce. With various departments and processes involved in acquiring external labor, this centralization allows for seamless recruitment, management and communication between teams. A VMS also integrates external software and technologies within its platform to further unify data and processes, such as accounting or timekeeping systems.

By centralizing siloed processes, organizations have the added benefit of automating and streamlining processes such as invoicing, process requisitions, and onboarding steps to seamlessly recruit candidates. This allows organizations to improve efficiency and accuracy throughout the hiring lifecycle.

Organizations can use a VMS in conjunction with a service provider to manage a workforce or it can be used on its own for institutions conducting in-house staffing operations.

Using a VMS to Manage a Contingent Workforce

With an increased reliance on external labor within every business sector, procuring, engaging and managing contingent labor effectively must be reevaluated. Traditional methods are inefficient in addressing the rising complexities involved in acquiring and managing external labor. Particularly, technical limitations pose several challenges for organizations utilizing contingent labor including:

Overwhelming administrative tasks
Low workforce visibility
Increased rogue spend
Miscommunication
Fragmented hiring processes
Hindered recruitment

A VMS allows organizations to systematically store information within a single source of record to gain visibility into their workforce and management processes. This allows organizations to transparently see who is working for them, at what rates, where they are working and when their contracts are set.

Centralization further enables organizations to automate and streamline operations to minimize the effects of fragmented hiring processes that lead to miscommunication, increased spend, and hindered recruitment processes. Use a VMS to unify all hiring and management process of contingent labor for an efficient contingent workforce program.

Increased visibility not only applies to knowing who consists of your contingent workforce, but allows organizations to have greater visibility into data and spend within contingent workforce programs. Use data and reporting to understand market rates, spend, performance, and how to strengthen contingent workforce programs, for a profitable workforce model.

Sources: Staffing Industry Analysts | Forbes

VMS Functions in Contingent Workforce Management

1. Data Consolidation: centralize various forms of data within a single source of record for easy access and visibility.

2. Automate and Streamline Recruitment: unified data and system integrations allow a VMS to automate and streamline talent acquisition touch points such as:

Requisition creation and distribution
Interviewing, onboarding and off-boarding
Sourcing, matching and screening candidates

3. Automate Administrative Tasks: with system integrations to your HR, timekeeping and account software, a VMS can easily consolidate data and automate tasks such as timekeeping and invoicing to reduce inaccuracies and save time.

4. Workforce Transparency: maintain candidate, workforce, and vendor agency profiles in an easily accessible system.

5. Track compliance and classification: monitor who is credentialed, those requiring compliance documentation, and upcoming expiring records with compliance tracking tools and integrations.

6. Data Analytics: collect and collate data for powerful reporting to get insights into:

Spend visibility
Past and emerging trends
Market rate analytics
Performance metrics

VMS Features and Tools

Not at all vendor management systems are created the same. Many can differ by its features, tools and capabilities. This can be particularly true if a VMS is configured to cater to a specific industry. Regardless, many VMS’s share related key features and tools. Common capabilities and features a VMS can exhibit include:

Market Rate Tools: rate intelligence tools provide market rate insights of occupations within a given region. It’s AI-powered predictive capabilities often allow organizations to not only see past and current rates for going occupations, but it also provides estimates for future rates to financially prepare an organization.

Virtual Interview Tools: with recruitment increasingly being conducted remotely, video interviewing is an essential feature a VMS must be capable of to help seamlessly recruit contingent labor. Use virtual interview tools to have interview questions prepared and allow candidates to record themselves responding to prompted questions. Access videos at anytime among all hiring members.

Candidate-Match Pairing Features: the AI-powered nature of a VMS enables it to efficiently source candidates within your talent pool that best match candidates to the assignment. Based on candidates’ reviews and the job description, a VMS can sort best-fit candidates to help hiring teams source efficiently.

Custom Integrations: organizations vary in the software and tools they use on a daily basis depending on their industry. An effective VMS is flexible and customizable to integrate with frequently used software to further create a seamless workflow. For example, StaffBot’s VMS integrates with frequently used healthcare compliance systems, such as the American Heart Association or Nursys, to enable efficient onboarding for healthcare systems.

VMS Benefits

Utilizing VMS technology offers organizations several competitive advantages and benefits including:

Visibility: visibility into workforce, organizational spend, headcount, performance, data, trends, and vendors.

Efficiency: streamlined workforce operations throughout the recruitment cycle save time and resources spent on labor-intensive tasks and ensure greater fill rates.

Reduce Spend: with real-time market rates, manage labor costs and avoid overpaying for talent. Have increased spend visibility to help monitor and mitigate rogue spend.

Talent pipeline: build an on hand talent pool ready for quick deployment to fill vacancies and avoid shortages.

Comprehensive data: have powerful analytics to take data-driven action. Create custom, automated, scheduled and ad hoc reporting.

Quality hires: powerful compliance integrations allow organizations to evaluate the qualifications of their workforce to ensure skilled talent and compliancy.

Scale business operations: increase profitability through greater efficiencies, workflows, and cost savings.

How can we help? A healthcare-tailored VMS.

StaffBot VMS specializes in healthcare contingent workforce management. With an ever increasing reliance on temporary nurse staff, a VMS is an invaluable asset in efficiently and cost-effectively managing travel clinicians.

For institutions seeking to conduct internal staffing operations or utilizing managed service provider (MSP) services, StaffBot supports your institution’s workforce objectives to create long-term sustainable workforce programs.

Learn how we can further your goals. With a wide range of services from VMS technology to workforce consultants, StaffBot tackles your healthcare recruitment challenges with custom solutions.

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Rogue Spend in Contingent Workforce Programs

by Chelsea Richeson | Jan 27, 2023 | Blog

The way organizations are conducting work and recruiting labor is a shifting dynamic with an increasing emphasis on non-employee labor, particularly utilizing contingent workers. The contingent workforce in the United States alone consisted of 52 million individuals, making up 35% of the entire workforce according to Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA). The SIA further estimated that worldwide spend on contingent labor spend that same year totaled to $5.4 trillion. An increased use of contingent labor within business operations is essential in maintaining a competitive advantage in attracting labor and increasing workplace productivity.

With increased reliance and popularity of contingent labor, greater complexities of managing an external workforce arise. Particularly, the rise of rogue spend seeps in unnoticeably and uncontrollably, leading to increased expenditures for organizations. It’s imperative for organizations to maximize the advantages a contingent workforce has to offer without unnecessarily increasing costs as contingent labor scales.

This blog examines rogue spend within contingent workforce programs and two effective measures in reducing its occurrence. Two measures that help monitor, mitigate and manage spend include:

1. Automated technological tools, such as a vendor management system (VMS)

2. A proper spend assessment strategy

What is Rogue Spend?

Rogue spend, also referred to as Maverick spend, is the process of sourcing and hiring contingent workers outside of pre-negotiated rate contracts or established guidelines of an organization’s contingent workforce program. These recruitment efforts often result in hiring candidates through rogue methods that are financially unaccounted for or unapproved of.

Generally, self-sourcing and hiring candidates through such means is carried out with the intention to meet staffing demands quickly and cost-effectively. In some instances, people may be unaware of established hiring processes or may find these processes to be too time-consuming to follow. In other cases, employees may intend to save the institution money, unaware that such methods contribute counteractively.

Not only do labor costs increase through rogue hiring methods, but other risks include compliance errors, harm to contracts and vendor relationships, as well as setting the stage for other practices that undermine an organization’s’ guidelines and values.

How rampant is rogue spend when considering the bigger picture? Hiring a candidate here or there through rogue means may not make a significant overall financial impact, however when several people are hiring external staff through their own methods and rates, these contracts begin eating away at budgets when unaccounted for. In fact, it’s reported that in financial planning and budgeting, 60% external labor went unaccounted for.

What Contributes to Rogue Spend?

Rogue spending stems from varying factors, the most common culprits being:

1. Manual Processes: hiring external labor consists of many complexities and processes. Many departments are involved in hiring contingent workers, and each utilize their own software, documents, and methods. In many instances, organizations are operating under archaic, manual processes that include using spreadsheets and files that are scattered throughout various systems and departments. This leaves room for error and unnecessary spend to go unnoticed throughout the organization.

2. Lack of Visibility: with members from various departments conducting their own methods and documentation separately, no one has complete visibility into one other’s methods or documentation. This creates fragmentation – a factor that severely hinders effective recruitment and workforce management. Furthermore, such fragmentation makes it difficult to oversee spend in recruitment and managing a workforce.

Additionally, low market rate visibility fuels rogue spend within organizations. Many hiring leaders are made to guess going rates for an occupation and can be overpaying for talent without knowing.

3. Ineffective hiring strategies or processes: unestablished recruitment strategies or processes force hiring members to create their own methods, unaware of cost. Unstructured hiring fuels greater expenditures for organizations.

How to Reduce Rogue Spend

Tackling rogue spend can be a daunting task for organizations, but a highly effective measure in ensuring greater cost savings. Two methods in effectively minimizing rogue spend include:

1. Vendor Management Systems (VMS)
2. A Spend Assessment Strategy

1. How a VMS Reduces Rogue Spend

A VMS is a software as a solution (SaaS) technology solution, powered by AI technology, that allows organizations to recruit and manage contingent labor within a single, easy-to-use platform. A VMS unifies all sources of data and integrates with frequently used software used by hiring teams to centralize all documents and processes within a single platform. This allows for increased visibility of contingent workers, recruitment processes, worker documentation and labor spend by all parties.

VMS technology is highly effective in eliminating rogue spend as it addresses the common challenges faced by organizations that experience uncontrolled spend resulting from:

Manual Processes
Lack of visibility
Unstructured hiring processes

VMS manual process, visibility, structure hiring process graph

Manual Processes

Centralizing data through a VMS eliminates manual processes in recruitment and workforce management. Manual processes can be riddled with costly errors, fueling rogue expenditures. VMS automation reduces human error in areas where rogue spend seeps through, including time management and invoicing errors that contribute to unnecessary spend.

Visibility

A VMS enables organizations to not only have complete transparency into who is working for them, where they work, when contracts are set, and labor rates – it extends into providing visibility into real-time market rates for cost saving opportunities and provides oversight into organizational spend.

Power cost-saving opportunities and minimize rogue spend through market rate analytics tools. An effective VMS yields powerful market rate features that provide insight into real-time rates for a given occupation within a specific region. Hiring managers no longer need to set presumed rates that contribute to increased spend.

For example, StaffBot VMS equips users to make data-driven decisions to fuel cost-saving opportunities. Users can view market rates throughout the nation by state, city, zip-code or a custom-defined parameter to compare what current trends are. Staffbot’s VMS AI-predictive abilities further allow organizations to anticipate rate changes, allowing them to financially prepare for emerging trends and minimize unanticipated spend.

Centralization of various forms of data further allow for collated data and collective reporting. Organizations can have greater visibility in reviewing organizational spend on labor. Review past expenditures and monitor current expenses to help minimize unnecessary spend. The ability to monitor, mitigate and manage spend enables organizations to create cost-effective business decisions.

Structured Hiring Process

Creating an organization-approved hiring method can help organizations reign in on rogue spend and increase hiring efficiency. A VMS assists hiring teams in establishing an efficient, consistent, and cost-effective hiring method for all hiring members to follow. Automate and streamline recruitment touchpoints including requisition distribution, sourcing, interviewing, and compliance tracking for a seamless recruitment process. Automation ensures efficiency, accuracy, and saved resources on time-consuming tasks. A consistent recruitment method not only saves time and money for organizations, but allows organizations to scale their recruitment efforts.

2. Spend Assessment Strategy

As powerful as automation is in reducing the occurrence of rogue spend, it’s equally important to establish a strategy and process to maximize a VMS’s capabilities. The following section outlines strategies to help tackle prevalent rogue spending within organizations.

Audit

Conduct a thorough audit of previous expenses in order to identify rogue spending habits. Specifically, pinpoint where the source of spend is stemming from and inquire why. A spend analysis helps identify gaps and gain greater visibility to take the necessary steps in minimizing further unnecessary costs.

Assess

Review the recruitment process of your organization to understand the steps and associated expected costs within each stage. Specifically assess labor demand and staff usage of each department and facility to better understand outgoing sources of spend.

Track Spend

Meticulously track current spend and staffing costs. This allows your

organization to understand normal incoming and outgoing sources to establish a baseline budget. Ensure to look for unnecessary costs, such as invoicing errors, that easily slip through the cracks.

Accountability

Holding managers accountable for spend management helps deter unnecessary outflows. Awareness of outgoing costs and who is spending helps employees stay accountable for responsible spend.

Communicate

By precisely communicating contingent workforce hiring policies between departments and employees, everyone can be informed on expected guidelines to help mitigate and reduce costs. Many instances of rogue spend result from employees being unaware of established hiring guidelines set in place. Communicate how guidelines and processes empower your organization’s budget-related goals and minimize unnecessary costs.

How can we help?

An effective VMS targets several challenges. Rogue spending is often a powerful motivator for healthcare facilities to consider turning to automated solutions in order to save in key areas. If mitigating spend and reducing cost is a major factor to your organization, consider the value a VMS brings to all facets of your staffing efforts.

Connect with us using the form below to see how we can help! StaffBot goes beyond being a VMS provider – we are your recruitment partners and consultants. With an array of services, resources, and experience, StaffBot crafts customized workforce solutions in response to your healthcare organization’s unique staffing challenges.

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Healthcare Recruiting Trends for 2023

by Chelsea Richeson | Jan 27, 2023 | Blog

With inevitable shortages looming within the healthcare industry, recruitment strategies are evolving to gain competitive advantages in attracting and retaining talent. Shortages are expected to persist for the coming years as the lingering of effects of the pandemic, coupled with an aging workforce and increased patient needs, continue. Despite these challenges, healthcare industries have remained flexible, adaptable and resilient in addressing growing talent demands.

Sources: American College of Healthcare Executives | The World Health Organization | National Association for Healthcare Quality

Staying informed on the latest recruitment trends unique to healthcare challenges can enable organizations to have a competitive advantage in attracting the right talent and creating sustainable recruitment strategies for the future. For healthcare leaders, employers, and recruiters, this blog details upcoming healthcare recruitment trends to integrate into your workforce strategy for greater success.

Recruitment trends that health systems are increasingly focusing on in the coming year include:

Employer brand
Diversity
Technology
In-house staffing programs
Employee wellbeing
Remote recruitment
Digital compliance
Contingent Labor
Engage with the emerging workforce

1. Employer Brand

Employer brand matters. Now more than ever employers need to distinguish themselves and highlight how they differentiate from the competition. A powerful brand strategy will communicate the organization’s mission, values, unique characteristics, benefits, workplace culture, DEI initiatives, and a commitment to employee wellbeing. This, in turn, can be a valuable recruitment tool.

With endless job opportunities for candidates to choose from, it’s fundamental to not only market these initiatives when recruiting, but to make them accessible at all times for job seekers. LinkedIn’s 2021 Employer Brand Statistics survey demonstrated that 75% of candidates considered an organization’s brand reputation before even applying for a position, suggesting that showcasing benefits and workplace culture on websites or social postings (such as employee videos or pictures of workplace culture) can be an important determinant factor for job seekers.

2. Diversity

Diversity and inclusivity practices are important for job seekers and is often a condition used to evaluate a brand. Lack of diversity initiatives can deter skilled and valuable talent from your organization – talent that organizations cannot afford to dissuade.

Equally, integrating diversity initiatives yield positive results for patient wellbeing, employee happiness, and overall business outcomes. Having a diverse workforce allows teams problem solve more effectively, foster creativity, eliminate health disparities, deliver personalized care, and improve employee morale.

Sourcing from a diverse talent pool helps broaden recruitment efforts. Recruiting efforts should include strategies such as:

Outreaching to diverse talent pools
Crafting job descriptions that encourage diverse applicants and perspectives
Creating standardized interview processes to minimize hiring biases

Tip: Often, traditional hiring methods are restrictive in finding the right person, particularly when traditional methods rely on local sourcing. Try utilizing service providers to source a broader pool of talent and minimize bias throughout the hiring process.

Managed service providers or external staffing agencies often have a large network of applicants, vendors, and resources from across the nation to help healthcare organizations source temporary or permanent staff – this can be helpful in tapping into diverse candidates that would otherwise be difficult to source.

3. Technology

Integrating digital innovations into the workplace can give healthcare brands a competitive edge. Leveraging AI and automation technologies allow brands to save time, streamline recruitment operations, enhance the hiring process, and improve the candidate experience.

The candidate experience is an important dynamic in recruitment. Poor candidate experiences stemming from undefined recruitment and hiring processes leads to miscommunication, delayed onboarding, poor credentialing, and overall inefficiency. This can discourage valuable candidates from moving forward in the hiring process and can hurt an organization’s brand reputation. It’s fundamental to create a smooth and consistent hiring experience that positively reflects your brand’s professionalism.

Overall, having a streamlined recruitment and hiring process powered through automation enables healthcare facilities to acquire qualified permanent and contract labor quickly.

Vendor Management System (VMS) automates recruitment lifecycle chart

Use VMS automation to enhance recruitment processes.

4. In-House Staffing Programs

Coping with ongoing shortages and increasing crisis rates for travel nurses, many organizations are choosing to turn operations into in-house staffing models. Rather than relying on external agencies to acquire travel clinicians, organizations are building their own travel staffing teams to build a pool of talent that can be deployed to various locations.

This internal staffing model has several competitive advantages including cost reductions, creating an on hand talent pipeline, as well as recruiting, retaining and recapturing previous staff. Organizations are able to develop their own packages and offer flexibility to core and travel clinicians.

This recruitment strategy can yield positive, long-term results, however, with technical limitations and an improper strategy, many in-house programs fall short. Consider investing in a vendor management system. Often this powerful, yet easy-to-use technology is leveraged by healthcare service providers and external agencies in their own recruitment strategies for consistency, transparency, and efficiency within recruitment programs.

A VMS empowers in-house programs to:

Automate and streamline recruitment operations
Provide market rate tools for visibility on real-time rates for healthcare occupations in the region
Track candidate and vendor profiles within a single system
Integrate all sources of data within a single platform for program transparency and consistency

5. Employee Wellbeing

The pandemic emphasized the need to acknowledge healthcare employee wellbeing. With increased stress, fatigue, burnout, as well as mental and physical repercussions resulting from healthcare shortages and high workload demands, many clinicians left their position or the industry all together.

52% of nurses surveyed in 2022 are considering or intending to leave their positions, while 60% reported feeling burned out, and 75% of nurses experienced exhaustion and stress.

Source: American Nurses Foundation

Organizations are now shifting priorities to encourage employee wellbeing. With endless employment options available, healthcare practitioners now expect flexibility, greater work-life balance and improved working conditions. It’s important for recruitment strategies to convey an employer’s commitment to employee wellbeing, as well as initiatives and resources to promote employee health and happiness.

6. Remote Recruitment

An emerging trend gaining traction is remote recruitment. Remote recruitment has the benefit of tapping into a larger talent pool, reducing the time it takes to do in-person hiring tasks, and reducing resources spent on recruiting talent traditionally. It’s important for recruitment teams to evaluate or implement a virtual end-to-end recruitment strategy to accommodate a larger audience. Important touchpoints include virtual interviews, onboarding, and training.

Virtual interviews allow candidates to remotely partake in the interview process and are advantageous to both candidates and hiring leaders. With healthcare clinicians working busy schedules, often at non-traditional working hours, trying to establish an in-person interview between healthcare hiring managers and candidates is difficult as time conflictions may arise. Recruitment software, such as a VMS, often include virtual interview tools that allow hiring leaders to set important work-related questions and allow respondents to submit virtual videos of their responses. Videos are accessible at any time convenient to the hiring leader’s schedule. This allows for optimized interviewing for both parties.

7. Digital Compliance

An important touchpoint in the screening and onboarding process is compliance tracking. Compliance tracking and management is no easy feat in healthcare, but to deliver high-quality services to patients and avoid costly penalties, it’s essential to properly credential oncoming employees. Healthcare recruitment trends are turning to digital verification to ensure credentials and avoid the risk of a bad hire. Many automated recruitment technologies will integrate with frequently used compliance software to automatically track needed credentials, expired credentials, and upcoming expiring documents.

See how StaffBot’s VMS integrates with healthcare compliance entities such as Nursys, the American Heart Association (AHA), and Relias to ensure candidates are qualified at all times with a complementary demo.

7. Contingent Labor

Though the use of contingent labor is not a new trend, it can be used in new ways. Many health systems relied on temporary labor to meet shortage demands since the onset of the pandemic. Though rates were driven to unexpected heights at the peak of the pandemic, they have gradually lowered (however, compensation continues to be higher than before the pandemic).

Contingent labor is an indispensable feature that health systems currently leverage and will continue to do so. Systems conducting in-house staffing agencies agree that external, temporary labor through agencies is still an essential component to their workforce strategy.

Rather than relying solely on contingent labor, organizations are seeking long-term solutions to attract and retain staff. Part of these efforts include boosting employee wellbeing, promoting flexible scheduling arrangements, and encouraging PTO. Recruiting a contingent workforce can help boost these efforts by:

Reducing workloads to enable greater work-life balance
Taking over remaining shifts to accommodate core staff work arrangements or time off opportunities
Avert oncoming shortages

Furthermore, some organizations are building strategic float pools consisting of contract and permanent placements to help address unexpected shortage needs throughout various departments.

Learn how MSP’s can help boost your contingent workforce and recruitment strategies.

8. Emerging Workforce

A strategic recruiting approach many organizations are investing in is reaching out to the emerging workforce. Partnerships with nursing programs and universities are allowing organizations to market their job opportunities to the oncoming talent pipeline. Establishing a relationship and offering benefits, tuition reimbursements, and training opportunities allow organizations to secure future talent.

Looking to Boost Your Recruitment Strategy?

StaffBot and our partner brands assist healthcare organizations in boosting recruitment operations from streamlining workflows, providing healthcare-tailored recruiters, building float teams, or consulting with healthcare institutions on successfully running in-house staffing programs for long-term success.

Connect with a workforce solutions expert to discuss how our diverse services can help boost your organization’s recruitment strategy! Sign up below and we’ll get in touch shortly.

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Workplace Diversity Improves Healthcare: How to Foster Greater DEI

by Chelsea Richeson | Dec 30, 2022 | Blog

A major Human Resources (HR) initiative is overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) – a component that lends itself critically important within healthcare. Diversity refers to the varying demographics of people within a workforce that can include differences in race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical abilities and disabilities, political beliefs, religion, language, socioeconomic background, education and culture. Equity entails fair treatment, opportunity, and advancement for individuals of any background. Inclusion determines whether an organization cultivates a culture of respect for individuals from varying backgrounds that allow members to participate and contribute without fear of discrimination or bias.

Current Workforce Diversity Trends

Though patient communities display a wide range of diversity, healthcare systems fall short in reflecting a similar diverse workforce of the communities they serve.

Sources: Association of Medical Colleges, George Washington Today (George Washington University), American Physical Therapy Association, National Nursing Workforce Survey

Promoting diversity within healthcare is imperative, with increased diversity having several ethical and strategic advantages that benefit minority employees, minority patient groups, and healthcare organizations themselves. Greater diversity, equity and inclusion helps deliver effective healthcare outcomes by promoting:

Greater understanding among associates and patients
Increased employee morale and retention
Sparks creativity
Improves team problem-solving
Helps eliminate health disparities
Increases patient outcomes and satisfaction
Improves brand reputation
Enables greater career advancement

Diversity in Healthcare Systems

What is cultural competence?

Cultural competence entails the set of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that equip healthcare practitioners in effectively understanding and interacting with patients from varying sociocultural backgrounds. This ensures culturally sensitive and respectful interactions towards patients, while also providing optimal care and effective communication.

Maintaining a cultural competent workforce yields a wide range of benefits to healthcare organizations from increased employee wellbeing and productivity, to improved patient outcomes and brand reputation.

1. Greater Understanding

Healthcare workforce diversity has direct impacts among coworkers and patients. Exposure to workforce diversity can help create an environment of understanding, compassion and empathy towards those from different backgrounds. Being within a diverse environment itself changes behavior and mindsets. Studies demonstrate that those in the presence of diverse individuals showed greater empathy, as well as a greater capacity for being openminded.

A greater understanding toward work associates and patients from various social backgrounds builds an environment of inclusiveness and belonging, both of which have positive effects on team morale, workplace productivity, employee retention, and patient outcomes (discussed further below).

Exposure to varying backgrounds can also help reduce biases while strengthening relationships between coworkers and patients. Biases refer to internalized prejudices towards someone or something. Biases can be overt or subconscious and can often result in unfair treatment. By acknowledging biases and learning from different cultures, greater team cohesion and patient interactions can be achieved.

2. Higher Employee Morale

Creating a diverse workplace fosters a sense of belonging and inclusiveness for healthcare employees, which in turn creates a stronger workplace culture and community for organizations. Nurturing a safe environment for all employees of diverse backgrounds improves team morale, increases productivity, and improves employee retention.

3. Enhanced Creativity

Diversity enables enhanced creativity in addressing complex problems. A culture-friendly environment that embraces diversity allows minority employees to feel included, accepted and empowered to share ideas while reducing the feeling of being rejected. People with varying perspectives, experiences, and knowledge can contribute their unique input in crafting creative solutions. Adversely, lacking a diverse workforce can cause minority employees to conform. The fear of rejection inhibits employees to contribute their unique talents, creative approaches, and valuable input.

When people are surrounded by those similar to themselves, they tend to assume that everyone holds the same perspectives. This prevents people from challenging viewpoints, limits the range of information exchanged, and creative solutions that would otherwise be reached based on a diverse set of input.

4. Problem Solving

In conjunction to enhanced creativity, diverse perspectives, opinions, and unique information fuel better problem solving and decision-making processes. An array of varying inputs enables teams to identify and reduce blind spots and come to creative solutions to complex problems. Studies frequently demonstrate that teams composed of diverse individuals are greater problem solvers and outperformed their homogenous counterpart teams.

5. Eliminate health disparities

Health disparities among minority groups is a persisting issue. Healthcare providers exhibiting explicit or unconscious biases towards patients of various backgrounds affect the quality of care groups receive, furthering unequal treatment. Some evidence suggests that health providers from various racial groups tend to hold biases unconsciously that display positive attitudes towards white patients and negative attitudes towards people of color. This often results in a distrust of minority groups toward their healthcare practitioners, negative interactions with health providers, and overall reluctance in seeking medical attention.

A key approach in minimizing health disparities is developing a diverse healthcare workforce that reflects the community it serves. Having employees that represent varying groups enables positive patient relationships, establishes trust, and increases positive patient outcomes among minority groups. Additionally, a diverse environment allows practitioners of all backgrounds to better understand and relate to culturally diverse patients and employ culturally competent interactions.

Pregnancy deaths for Women healthcare disparities chart

6. Increase patient satisfaction and outcomes

With a diverse patient population, fostering a culturally-safe environment is imperative for successful health outcomes. Lacking diverse employees can run the risk of patients feeling misunderstood, create distrust, as well as compound language and cultural barriers.

Having diverse practitioners can help patients feel represented and understood. This allows patients to feel safe, less anxious, and more confident about the care they receive. Feeling safe and understood also empowers patients to seek medical attention, speak up, ask questions, discuss treatment plans, and comply with medical advice, allowing for successful patient outcomes and satisfaction.

Diversity among healthcare professionals also allows for communication and cultural barriers to be appropriately addressed for the correct treatment. Language and communication barriers can lead to adverse effects such as a misdiagnosis, poor care, unequal treatment, and noncompliance – all leading to negative patient outcomes. It is essential to have employees that can effectively and accurately communicate all related health information, services, treatment and outcomes.

Lastly, diverse input from a workforce with varying backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge helps creatively problem-solve patient issues. Having limited perspectives can cause teams to overlook critical information regarding patient diagnosis or medical history which negatively affects patient care.

7. Improved Reputation

Fostering a culturally-friendly environment that welcomes varying backgrounds and embraces differences positively improves reputation for healthcare organizations. While strategically it’s wise to include diverse groups in terms of the endless benefits diverse individuals contribute to organizations, it’s also ethically imperative to do so. Having a diverse environment attracts like-minded candidates to join your organization, as well as draws patients from various backgrounds as well. This allows organizations to connect with its community internally and externally in a powerful and meaningful way.

8. Employee Advancement

Greater representation within high-level positions is critical in avoiding tokenism and gives institutions the opportunity to practice inclusion. Simply having a workforce consisting of different people is not enough. In order to truly cultivate and embrace diversity, healthcare organizations need to empower programs and opportunities for career advancement among minority groups. Research consistently demonstrates that businesses and corporations with greater diversity in high-level positions outperformed competitors that lacked any diversity in similar positions.

Furthermore, greater representation in high-level positions allow minority healthcare practitioners to identify with a role model and mentor. Mentorship is an essential component within healthcare as professionals often seek guidance from mentors to help further their careers. Lacking diverse representation can impede employee career trajectories.

Improving Workplace Diversity

Often, HR is tasked with managing diverse teams, promoting a diverse workplace culture, and sourcing diverse skillsets. Increasing diversity is a major initiative and there are several ways to promote and maintain a diverse workforce within healthcare organizations including optimizing recruitment processes, creating a safe and welcoming environment, furthering opportunities for employees, and measuring results to further refine DEI opportunities.

Optimize Recruitment Processes

Auditing talent acquisition strategies is an essential step in understanding how candidates are sourced and how diverse the talent pool is. First, evaluate how job descriptions are written – this may seem trivial, but its content can affect who applies. Create job descriptions that don’t deter a group of people from applying and encourages diverse applicants and perspectives. This helps position your organization as diversity-inclusive and welcoming.

Developing an effective recruitment and hiring strategy that outreaches to a diverse talent pool can boost DEI inclusivity. Utilizing managed service providers or external recruitment agencies can significantly bolster efforts in reaching greater candidates from different backgrounds. Often, external agencies have a large pool of applicants, networks, and resources to source diverse candidates. Additionally, having a third party source candidates on your behalf can help eliminate implicit bias present in current recruitment processes.

Another measure healthcare organizations can consider is standardizing the interview process. Standardizing the interview process so that it is consistent and equal for all candidates helps minimize hiring bias and gives all candidates equal opportunity. For institutions conducting in-house recruitment create a set of standardized questions and processes that all candidates must equally follow.

For organizations using vendor management technology, consider utilizing virtual interview tools that allow a set of standardized questions to be prompted to all candidates. Furthermore, virtual interview tools, such as StaffBot’s, allow several hiring members to have access to virtual interview videos at any point in time. With inputs from several different people, hiring bias can be reduced than when a single person is conducting an interview.

Welcoming Environment

Creating a safe environment that promotes diversity is fundamental in nurturing workplace happiness and long-term retention. Encouraging an environment that promotes inclusivity, support, and valuing all employees helps build a healthy workplace where people can feel they belong. Furthermore, a workplace that takes immediate action in instances of bias and discrimination further helps promote a safe working space for all individuals.

Opportunities

Providing opportunities, resources, and programs for advancement and leadership that is equally accessible, empowers individuals from various backgrounds to join and stay with organizations. It’s critical to go beyond having diverse employees, but to actively include members in greater opportunities that contribute to employee and company wellbeing.

Training Programs

Investing in training resources has several benefits in educating employees and enabling greater understanding. Trainings on cultural skills, cultural differences, bias awareness and effective communication equips teams with essential education and cultural skills in working with members from various backgrounds.

Measuring Results

Creating constructive, fundamental changes in promoting greater DEI for your healthcare workforce is ethically important and positively impacts employees, patients, and your brand. Implementing changes to promote DEI necessitates consistent monitoring and measuring in order to understand whether efforts are working, or if changes need to be made.

Vendor management technology, whether through the use of an MSP or directly utilized by your organization, provides insightful data regarding DEI initiatives (and many more reporting capabilities). With all sources of data integrated within a single source of record, along with its AI capabilities, a vendor management system collates all data from your organization to create real-time custom, standard, and ad-hoc reporting. Such analytics provide powerful insights to institutions with varying business goals. Use powerful insights to monitor progress or pinpoint areas of inefficiencies to create better processes and results.

Let StaffBot help with your HR initiatives

With extensive knowledge on talent acquisition, StaffBot’s multi-faceted recruitment services help source a diverse candidate pool for your healthcare workforce. From MSP services to providing vendor management technology, StaffBot’s total talent solutions works alongside your organization to customize a tailored approach in addressing your organization’s pressing recruitment needs. With StaffBot, we aim for a true partnership. Connect with an expert below to find out how we can boost your healthcare recruitment strategy.

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On Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Building Self-Reliance in Hospitals Using Automation

by Chelsea Richeson | Dec 8, 2022 | Blog

Becker’s Hospital Review hosted StaffBot’s President, Steve Swan, on their Becker’s Healthcare Podcast to discuss empowering healthcare systems and restoring trust through the use of vendor management systems. Steve highlights how organizations no longer need to rely on outdated, misinformation given by external agencies – and can now have greater control and data to make transparent purchasing and hiring decisions.

With several unique features from market rate analysis to automated compliance, this episode demonstrates the shifting landscape in healthcare recruitment to better empower organizations through technology.

Listen to the podcast now

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