At this year’s Healthcare Staffing Summit, hosted by Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), recruitment leaders shared that while the market is still normalizing, they’re cautiously optimistic about the year ahead for healthcare staffing. Jason Niad, VP, Product – Healthcare at Bullhorn, sat down with Ryan Paulson, Chief Technology Officer at Fusion Medical Staffing, and Kelly Duggan, President at Trustaff, Ingenovis Health, to chat about how the largest staffing firms can set themselves up for future growth with the right technology. Read on about how healthcare staffing agencies can improve efficiency and uplevel their teams for the coming year.
Technological transformation
Your tech stack needs to get you through the short term and lay the foundation for the long term. Duggan said, “Nail the basics right, and get in a good, stable technology so when the market does change, we’re prepared to accelerate that growth with a good technology platform.” Specifically, Fusion is investing in the ability to make data-driven decisions across all systems to move more into predictive analytics and, in the near future, prescriptive analytics to better fuel growth.
Healthcare staffing agencies need a holistic strategy when considering a build or buy approach. Fusion assesses multiple factors, such as whether something proprietary would give them a competitive advantage, costs to build and maintain, and the ability to be truly innovative for each use case. Paulson said, “We’ve built our own credentialing tool since 2019. We had to decide whether this would make a huge difference for Fusion, and it has, but others have caught up to what we’ve done. We’re currently transitioning from that platform to Bullhorn. Some areas will take a step forward, and other areas we may take two steps back, but when we looked at what the holistic vision was, it made the most sense to do it now.”
When evaluating the when, what, and how to change the tools in your tech stack, start with understanding what problem you’re trying to solve, learning the different processes and stakeholders across the business, fostering a culture of discovery, and organically leveraging internal champions. Paulson said, “A couple of folks from our Learning and Development Organization spent the last 18 months becoming change management certified, embedding themselves within our projects. They take a lot on because they train others on change and find the champions within the organization that we’re making the changes, being there from day one of the project.”
Building trust with clients and MSPs – and delivering excellence
Winning new clients and strengthening client relationships remain a top focus for healthcare staffing agencies, according to the 2024 GRID Industry Report for the healthcare vertical. Trust is key for improving client and MSP relationships, and technology can support delivering what you’ve committed to. Using Bullhorn VMS Sync, Ingenovis has prioritized VMS automations to submit quality candidates faster. Duggan said, “We’ve made investments, along with some of our key MSP partners, on how do we automate and streamline not only the job ingestion process, but also the candidate submission process. So it speeds up the overall submittal process, it improves quality.”
What will the relationship between agencies, MSPs/VMSs, and their direct clients look like years from now? Duggan said, “It’s changing so fast every day. It’s going back to building out those good relationships with being able to trust one another and help each other get the clinicians to the bedside where they are needed the most, and then leaning into technology to help streamline processes for both sides.”
Reducing friction in the talent experience
To deliver quality candidates to MSPs and direct clients, healthcare staffing agencies need to provide a top-notch candidate experience. With 72% of providers working with more than one staffing agency, healthcare staffing agencies are looking to invest in technology to improve talent engagement and the talent experience overall, according to the GRID 2024 Talent Trends Report: Healthcare spotlight.
Providers want the right jobs – fast. 58% of providers shared their biggest dissatisfaction is job fit, and within that, it was because the recruiter didn’t understand their objectives. For the greatest value recruiters can offer, 21% said it’s faster placement, and 21% said it’s finding the right jobs.
There is an art and science to finding the right jobs for providers, while satisfying client demands. Duggan said, “We grade and classify our jobs. We look at what’s the highest likelihood that if we can make a submission, we’re going to get a placement. Then, on the flip side, here are the jobs that this clinician is most interested in, and how do we streamline that process so we look at it from two different points of view.”
Fusion has dedicated themselves to building the customer journey for direct clients, facilities, MSPs, internal employees, and providers to understand when certain things will happen. With analytics and reporting, they measure success along the way, find areas of opportunity, and fine-tune the experience. Paulson said, “We want to get to the point where if we know a traveler or a potential traveler is on our website, and we know who they are and who they work with, we want to be able to connect them with our recruiters. So notifications are extremely important, but we need to get data from a lot of different systems, because the timing is crucial. The more opportunities you give a recruiter to talk with a candidate about something the candidate feels is important, the better.”
To drive loyalty among providers, healthcare staffing agencies need to combine a high-touch experience with automation to scale. 84% of providers say the firm they’re working with reach out about future opportunities before their assignment ended, and 91% of providers say recruiters reach out more than once a week with new opportunities. Paulson said, “I highly recommend doing surveys to your providers, finding out their touchpoints. For example, before COVID, our touchpoint was 7-8 weeks in for a 13-week assignment to start talking about their next assignment. Now they want to be contacted after week four. It’s now a higher touch relationship. Keep in touch with them. Don’t always rely on what the recruiters are telling you. Speak to your to your providers directly.”
In fact, healthcare staffing agencies saw a 61% increase in candidate loyalty when using automation. It’s important to cater to different preferences. Some providers want a completely self-service experience, while others want a more hands-on approach. Either way, you want those interactions and conversations to be meaningful to get them in their first assignment – and retain them for redeployment. Duggan said, “We’re focused on, ‘How do we remove as much friction as possible from their process from application, all the way through placement, and improve their experience?’ And then it’s also looking at their relationships with recruiters because it’s not just about technology. We’re in a human capital business, and it is about those relationships as well.”
Readiness for AI
It’s never been harder to be a recruiter, and it’s one of the hardest jobs at their staffing firm. Duggan said, “We’re looking for ways to help recruiters find that joy and spark again.” With an AI-powered workflow, recruiters are able to spend more time on relationships and are significantly more productive, leading to better results
Providers are comfortable with AI handling every stage of the recruitment process – but firms have to get AI right. 65% of providers say AI has resulted in faster responses, and 78% of providers would work with an AI-powered recruiting assistant if it sped up the process. Both Paulson and Duggan agreed that their providers have expressed the same sentiments about AI.
The rapid evolution of AI and its widespread availability means healthcare staffing agencies need to stay adaptable. Paulson said, “Everything is changing so fast. If you are a leader in this space today, you could be a follower tomorrow because there are new leaders everywhere. For the candidate journey, I’m a big believer that AI will give us the ability to meet the needs of each candidate, regardless of how different their needs are. That type of hyper-personalization is extremely difficult to do today with traditional technology. Leveraging AI will be a huge benefit to someone who can get it right.”
Learn more about our AI solutions at bullhorn.com/ai.
