At the core of any organization is its people - they're the ones creating, communicating, sharing and nurturing the value that your business gives to the world and without your people, your business would be able to offer....well, nothing! In no other industry is this more true than in healthcare, as it's the industry that is most dependent on its employees to operate.

With that in mind, the fact that there is a significant and fast growing healthcare talent shortage should be very alarming to healthcare business leaders. The healthcare industry is currently the largest US employer, and as the national population ages and demand for healthcare services rises, it’s projected that the healthcare sector will add more jobs between 2016 and 2026 than any other occupational group. The number of people taking on healthcare jobs is simply not keeping up with increasing demand to provide service to the growing population of aging individuals.

This naturally has all sorts of impact on healthcare hiring and while we'd love to break down all of the strategies that might help healthcare talent acquisition teams, we'd like to focus on one thing: compensation.

Using compensation to attract healthcare talent

It seems obvious that compensation is an important factor for driving interest among job candidates, but in case you needed some factual evidence here are some statistics based on kununu’s recent Healthcare Job Seeker Behavior Study:

Pay and benefits is the top reason healthcare job seekers start looking for new opportunities.

80 percent of healthcare candidates cite pay as the most important factor in their job search

81 percent said pay and benefits is the biggest influencing factor for whether they would accept a job offer

79 percent said being offered low pay would be a major reason they would reject a job offer

Most healthcare employees are taking this to heart too, as 3 out of 5 healthcare talent leaders expect retirement savings and planning (and) financial benefits to increase in importance to recruit skilled employees, as reported by Society for Human Resource Management in its 2016 Strategic Benefits survey findings.

So what's a straightforward way for healthcare facilities to act on this information?

To start, get familiar with the expected pay ranges for each role that you're looking to fill and do everything you can to budget on the upper end for the roles you're most urgently in need of filling. For some perspective, the median annual wage for healthcare professionals overall reached $66,440 in 2019, as compared to the annual median wage for other occupations at $48,640. At the low end, median pay is about $24,060 for roles like home health aids, while registered nurses and other roles with advanced degrees earn $71,730 or more. The average pay ranges for healthcare facilities management roles tops many of those occupations according to the 2017 Health Facilities Management Salary Survey: for facilities management, operations, and engineering roles the average salary is $104,092 as of 2017, up 5.2 from 2015. 

The next thing you can do, and something that be a true game changer for your recruiting efforts, is to be more transparent about your employee compensation. Yes, salary transparency is a very controversial topic for employers, but in such a competitive healthcare hiring market where the best healthcare talent have the upper hand, any way you can have an edge over your competition is one you shouldn’t ignore. If you don’t want to go the route of showing all of your salary details in all of your job postings, which is the first very clear way to use salary to your benefit when recruiting, you can also use external platforms (such as kununu’s Salary Transparency Tool) to showcase your pay ranges to prospective candidates who are interested.

When compensation isn't negotiable

If your organization can't budge on the compensation budget, you’ll need to consider what other things will matter when recruiting healthcare talent.

For example, you may provide flexible working arrangements in which - depending on their role and tenure - your employees can stretch their wings and take on new responsibilities that they’re interested in. The culture and team environment that you establish and maintain can also go a long way toward encouraging smart, hardworking healthcare facilities management talent to join your team. Here are some specific questions to ask yourself to guide your thinking (and put yourself in your candidates' shoes):

How flexible is your organization about work schedules?

To prevent burnout, you can make it easier for employees to meet their obligations at home (such as picking up kids from school) simply by taking an open-minded approach to their work hours. Maybe you can permit employees to start an hour earlier on some days so that they can leave an hour early, or you can allow for set number of “flex days” for every employee where - as long as they give plenty of advanced notice - they’re allowed to pick their working hours as long as their team members are supported and they hit their required number of hours.  Being less rigid and more amenable to your employee’s work-life balance can make a real impact in attracting talent.

How easy is it to advance within your organization?

One thing that those in charge of recruiting healthcare facilities talent might not recognize is that many of the most valuable candidates they should be interested in aren’t outside of the organization - they’re already working inside the company. If your organization is not able to do anything with employee compensation that would be helpful for attracting talent, then focusing on your internal career development, promotions, and employee support is an effective alternative. Remember to also showcase what you do to develop your employees externally so that, ideally, it’s something you become known for and part of your employer brand. 

Is your culture a nurturing and healthy environment, where being open to new tasks and taking initiative are encouraged and people are fairly recognized for their work?

Opportunities to learn, recognition for their hard work and a healthy team environment are all things that healthcare facility employees care about. And if you want to be totally sure about whether these are the things that your employees would care about, anonymous feedback forms are a really effective way to uncover what your employees like about working at your company and what they’d change about it.

While earning a decent living is going to be a major motivation for people seeking employment in healthcare facilities management, there are clearly other benefits to keep in mind when mounting a new recruitment effort. Money is not always going to be the deciding factor for recruits thinking about accepting your job offer. They will want to see that they can balance life and work in your organization as well. If you offer a workplace environment where your employees feel truly appreciated and can envision growth and advancement, you’ll have a good chance at remaining competitive.

Dr. Sarah Müller, Managing Director of Kununu, an employer rating platform.