The past couple of years have caused the healthcare industry to somersault. Hospitals, clinics, and other types of medical centers have had to adapt to the growing demand for skilled professionals and cope with the difficulty of finding the right talent in time. The good news is these processes could be streamlined with the right technology, such as a vendor management system (VMS).
Staffing Industry Analysts reported in their 2022 US Healthcare Staffing Market Assessment that the healthcare industry has been spending more on talent acquisition technology this past year. According to the assessment, this is partly because the number of job openings in healthcare rose to record levels over the past two years. Travel nurse firms, in particular, increased their spending on online job advertising and candidate engagement solutions during 2021.
Healthcare staffing organizations are now aware that they need technology to automate processes and meet today’s industry demands. Beyond that, they need to guarantee that the professionals they hire are performing at their best and are enjoying a successful work experience, especially since medical professional shortages and staff turnover have become a big concern for the healthcare industry.
Although ensuring such processes might seem like a difficult task when managing a contingent workforce program, with the right technology it doesn’t have to be that way. How can you find and maintain valuable talent for your organization? This article describes four ways in which a vendor management system can help!
1. Rehiring Valuable Talent
When it comes to working with contingent talent, it’s expected that talent will come and go. Keeping a record of the professionals who performed above expectations will make it easier in the future to bring them back.
Rehiring valuable talent reduces the length of the hiring process. With a VMS, you have an automated way to track those former candidates. You can bring back well-trained, high-performing healthcare practitioners that already know the ins and outs of your organization. That way, you reduce the time spent on onboarding or security and training clearances, which ultimately leads to a reduction in the time to productivity. In addition, working with the same people also guarantees lower turnover rates, as you already know the candidate is a good fit for your medical center.
A VMS gathers all the data you need to know if a former worker is a good match for an open role. Moreover, it can also help to automatically rule out those candidates who are not eligible for rehire. Many of VectorVMS’s clients use this to ensure that employees are not trying to come back through different staffing agencies.
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2. Partnering With Experienced Staffing Suppliers
Seasoned staffing suppliers do a better job at finding appropriate candidates for an open role—even more so if you’re looking for specialized medical professionals.
Partnering with these vendors and using a VMS to handle the extended workforce management can help reduce the waiting times to find your ideal candidate. From the VMS, you can specify the skills you require or easily compare candidates provided by your vendors, streamlining the entire process and saving you time.
To maximize effectiveness and refine the candidate search, these staffing suppliers should specialize in hiring for the healthcare roles you’re looking for.
3. Using Direct Sourcing
Sourcing candidates directly saves a lot of time in the hiring process. When you use your brand name to attract talent, you gain a competitive advantage. Any potential hires know exactly who they’ll be working for, and candidates have more visibility around the role and whether they’re a good fit.
Your talent pools are an important source of potential candidates for your entire extended workforce. VectorVMS’s enhanced, partner-powered talent pool functionality enables you to create pools for nurses or other types of medical roles. Through the VMS, you can directly source the contingent talent you need. You can also use it as a strategic advantage to grow your candidate pool and ensure you’ll have the best options available when you need them.
Ultimately, this helps ensure you’re bringing in the right talent, which reduces the probability of turnover.
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4. Offering Competitive Rates
A VMS can reduce the administrative time it takes to find, hire, onboard, and offboard contingent talent. Equally, it can also eliminate or reduce talent finder fees if using methods such as direct sourcing. The cost saving will allow you to offer more competitive rates to potential candidates. This is important in today’s market as rates have been going up due to the increased demand for talent. For example, average bill rates for travel nurses have dramatically increased since the pandemic started, according to the previously mentioned Staffing Industry Analysts assessment.
To ensure you’re offering and getting the best rates, you can use the VMS’s reporting feature. Through an expense report, you can confirm you have competitives rates or determine any rate fluctuations in similar positions across departments. A VMS also helps to simplify the process by setting up billing rules and rate structures to accommodate nurses that enter time in different rate codes, such as regular and on-call shifts.
There’s a wide range of benefits to managing your extended workforce through a VMS.
It’s forecast that the demand will keep increasing. One key factor driving this growth has to do with people embracing the advantages of temporary employment in the industry. Medical professionals are leaning toward more flexible work models, hence why it’s becoming indispensable to have a VMS solution that can help you manage contingent talent.
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If you want to know more about VectorVMS and how we can help you improve the contingent workforce program at your healthcare organization, get in touch. They’re more than happy to guide your though all the benefits of using our solution.
Meet the Expert
Irene Koulianos – Program Manager
Irene Koulianos brings a decade of experience in contingent labor staffing and recruitment to her role as Program Manager. She helps new and existing clients to develop best-fit vendor management solutions for their contingent labor programs. This includes product demonstrations, completing bids, and supporting the product team with roadmap initiatives. In addition to this primary role, she is passionate about building eLearning solutions for clients, partners, and internal VectorVMS staff leveraging Learning Technologies Group products. Prior to joining VectorVMS, Irene worked for large international staffing organizations as well as smaller boutique IT recruitment firms. She has a deep understanding of the contingent workforce landscape which helps her create meaningful solutions for her clients. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
