The healthcare recruitment sector is facing many grave challenges. Caregiver shortages, budget restraints, rising demand for healthcare professionals, and insufficient means are not new. These problems have existed long before COVID-19. However, the problem has now turned into a crisis.
According to the NHS, a shortfall of 100,000 health workers has been recorded for years in the UK alone. The situation is pretty much the same in Europe as the WHO report suggests a shortage of over two million healthcare professionals all across Europe. To solve this problem, we must first evaluate every challenge’s causes and effects.
Why Is The Healthcare Recruitment Sector Struggling?
One of the biggest flaws in the healthcare recruitment sector is, in fact, not a problem in the recruitment business itself. The real reason why it’s hard to find qualified healthcare assistants is because of the way they’re trained, educated, retained, treated, and of course, rewarded.
This is a huge dilemma, and many times, recruitment agencies suffer because of it. However, that’s just a start, many other reasons make it difficult for the recruitment sector to operate successfully. Below are the top 5 challenges recruitment agencies are facing all across the globe.
1. Adding Candidates To The Pool
Since HCAs in many countries remain underpaid and unrewarded, youngsters often do not feel inclined to join the league. Knowing that there are other jobs out there that are more rewarding and offer better incentives, many of the brilliant students choose other professions.
On the other hand, many institutions give HCAs training that is not aligned with the modern-day requirements of care homes and healthcare organistions. This issue makes it difficult for healthcare recruitment agencies to find high-quality care professionals.
2. Retention Of Employees
Multiple studies have shown that the turnover in the healthcare center has been declining since 2015. A report also indicated that 24% of newly hired healthcare professionals leave within the first year. This trend makes it harder for healthcare recruiters to fill the gaps. No matter how many professionals they keep on adding to their pool, they just can’t keep up with the shortages.
This is again a problem that can’t be directed towards the recruitment sector as it has a lot more to do with how healthcare organisations treat their employees from day one. Without incentives and job security, employee retention is next to impossible.
3. Rising Costs
Everything in the healthcare sector is expensive. From putting up ads to hiring an agency for recruitment, costs are increasing like never before. This in turn raises the costs for agencies in terms of paying memberships of job portals, advertising, and so on. Moreover, finding organisations for good contracts is difficult due to the competition in the market.
With rising costs, many healthcare organisations have stopped hiring agencies. Care homes have started hiring in-house recruitment managers. These managers post jobs on job boards themselves and this eliminates the need for a recruitment agency.
4. Lack Of Innovation
Traditional recruitment tools, methods, and the absence of modern technology make it hard for recruitment agencies to keep track of data. Although many countries now use special tools, CRMs, and dashboards to keep the data organised, there are still many places where technology is still not used for such purposes.
ESGO is reshaping the world of healthcare recruitment in the UK. The platform allows healthcare professionals and employers to connect with each other and settle on terms that work for both parties. Employers can fill in their requirements, set pay, put dates, and shifts, and enter the type of job for which they require a worker. With the ESGO app, staffing solutions are now possible on the go. Thanks to the intuitive platform, registering is quick and simple. To check out our platform or download our app (Android, IOS).
5. Job Portals
Job portals have made life easier for millions of job seekers all around the world. But they have done quite the opposite for the recruitment agencies. With these apps, employers can become members, list new jobs, share new updates, and hire suitable candidates directly. This has made the healthcare recruitment sector less useful for employers.
To stay ahead of this trend, many healthcare agencies have started working in collaboration with these job portals and healthcare organisations but there are still a lot of agencies that are struggling to get contracts from employers.
The time has come for the recruitment industry to start shifting its gear towards a more reliable and efficient source, that is technology. This will not only streamline the staffing process but will also save both employers and healthcare professionals a lot of trouble of wasting time and resources on irrelevant matches.
