Talent management - it's just a fancy term that those people in the human resources department often use, right? Wrong...
If you work in healthcare you should know by now that talent management is as important as anything you do. In short, it describes a company’s strategy and commitment to source, motivate and retain the most talented employees the market has to offer. Easy enough right?
How can you implement a sound talent management solution in your company?
For healthcare organizations, talent management is a long-term business strategy. If done right, it is a guarantee that a business can attract and retain top talent and skilled individuals. Let us walk you through four pillars of talent management and how to implement them.
Differences Between Talent Management and Human Resources
Let’s take an in-depth look at the most important pillars of a successful talent management strategy:
Human resources and talent management – they sound alike and they both deal with employees, right? At first glance, "human resources" and "talent management" might seem synonymous, both addressing employee concerns. But experienced managers understand the nuanced distinction between managing resources and nurturing them.
Let's take a deeper look...
Talent management is how employers ensure their employees are able to complete their duties effectively and for as long as possible. Basically, the simplistic approach of traditional human resources is replaced by the holistic approach of talent management:
- Structure – traditional human resources departments deal with hiring, training and retention directly; in talent management, these tasks are spread over different departments who have a say in the process;
- Responsibilities – while human resources deals with paychecks, time off, complaints and benefits, talent management is focused more on helping employees, offering training and educational programs or tracking performance;
- Implementation – human resources deals with day-to-day management of employees, while talent management has a long-term approach.
The Four Pillars of Talent Management Initiatives
Let’s take an in-depth look at the most important pillars of any successful talent management strategy:
1. Recruitment – getting the top talent for your company
HR departments handle interviews, new employees, and cultivate talent, but they are able to do this properly only if they get quality candidates. With such a hypercompetitive labor landscape, attracting top talent is easier said than done.
Nevertheless, some of the most successful tools that can help you streamline these processes are Managed Service Programs (MSPs) and internal agencies. These types of recruitment software and services help your HR team research, discover and communicate with the best candidates for any position.
Managed Service Programs
MSPs are particularly critical for optimizing the recruitment phase. With the help of an objective, neutral third-party, you will have expert assistance with:
- Managing Contracts: Ensuring competitive market rate structures are in place is critical to attracting talent. A customized MSP will help you strike the perfect balance between offering competitive wages/benefits and maintaining financial stability.
- Interviewing & Screening: Outside experts in the field conduct intake calls to ensure the skills, culture, experience, and background are a fit for your organization. This frees up your hiring managers to make more meaningful decisions instead of having to wade through a pool of unqualified candidates.
- Onboarding Management: Leverage clinical expertise to ensure any certifications, documents, and health information are verified and uploaded in a centralized database that complies with HR requirements.
Internal Agency
It may sound like a big undertaking at first, but establishing an internal agency provides significant benefits down the line and is not as intimidating as you may think. HWL's services are specifically aimed at helping you establish one that provides 15-20% savings on contingent labor, guaranteed.
- Attract Talent: With reduced recruitment costs, more money has the potential to flow directly to the new talent, allowing you to offer more competitive wages.
- Holistic Management: A private label program helps manage all aspects of sourcing, screening, credentialing, compliance, payroll, and invoicing.
- Access Market Data: HWL's services allow you to access real-time local, regional, and national rates to ensure fill rates at the lowest possible cost.
Learn more about creating an internal agency here.
2. Corporate Learning – Education to growth
Corporate learning includes every type of learning or training that is organized in your company. It focuses on the employees and is aimed at educating them, promoting career growth, and other training opportunities. Although most of us think about corporate lectures, manuals or guides, corporate learning has evolved in recent decades.
Now, modern education channels are often employed, such as interactive learning, workshops, integrated learning or experimentation. Currently, the industry trends from content learning to context learning, in which the education process is done through interactions and group activities. Good corporate learning programs can help employees grow and expand their career options, increase satisfaction and retention and provide a more efficient and productive work environment.
3. Performance management – a new approach to employee reviews
In the past, most companies relied heavily on yearly performance reports and reviews for their employees. The days of the awkward yearly review, in which an employee had a one-on-one meeting with the manager, are over.
Modern performance reviews are completely different. Employees are reviewed continuously, but not directly. Coaching sessions, group activities and workshops are often designed to bring out the best in employees. In this model, high performers are created by the work environment, where teamwork plays an important role.
Additionally, an MSP can provide critical business intelligence/insights into overall staff performance as well as vendor performance. Such easy data integrations also enable closer tracking of internal KPIs such as utilization rates, opening further opportunities for cost savings.
Feedback is also critically important in the new performance management system. Employees receive constant feedback for their work, particularly in group settings. Team meetings and discussions handle any drawbacks, errors and promote success. In many cases, reviews are done by multiple managers and team leaders, but also by other employees, creating a more comprehensive performance report for employees.
4. Compensation management
How do you reward your best employees? How do you manage bonuses and prizes? These are just a couple of questions that most managers had on their mind at least once.
You’d be surprised, but many managers or HR departments use Microsoft Excel or similar tools to handle their reward system. Sure, it does work if you only have a handful of employees, but it becomes problematic for larger organizations. Spreadsheets are now obsolete when it comes to compensation management. Modern compensation management deals with financial, non-financial incentives and benefits to attract new recruits, boost performance and increase employee engagement in the workplace.
Specialized software for compensation management links employee performance metrics with a reward or benefit system. It also automates otherwise highly time consuming processes such as data entry, review management, task management and so on. Compensation management software uses multiple elements and factors to determine the reward for your employees and automates the process entirely. Your company will have a strong pay-for-performance environment, where success and skill is objectively rewarded in a fair employee incentive plan. This will help you increase engagement, retain your top talent, empower managers to make decisions and mitigate risks.
Talent Management: A Business Strategy to Develop Organizations
Talent management encompasses an organization's commitment to deal with its human resources, namely its employees. It covers everything from recruitment and hiring to retaining and developing the most talented employees. It also helps promote growth, increase efficiency and manage the reward system for employees.
Essentially, talent management is a business strategy that helps companies get and keep the best talent for their positions. When a company has a good talent management system in place, employees can grow, develop their careers and get more motivated.
A good talent management system should cover and deal with the following tasks:
- Recruitment planning
- Job and position descriptions
- Application reviews
- Interviews: pre-screening, phone interviews, in-house interviews
- Background and credentials checks
- Making the job offer, negotiation, agreeing
- Hiring, training, coaching
- Ongoing employee development, lifelong learning
- Career planning, promotions, transfers
- Termination, retirement
The Benefits of Talent Management Technology: A Healthcare Industry Case Study
Certain organizations are the living proof that correct Talent Management Technology implementation along with the necessary good practices can achieve standardization in all processes related to Talent Acquisition.
With 15,000 beds in 35 states and with the need for mainstreaming contracts, reports and Locums agencies, the company in question was living in a logistical nightmare, juggling vendors and overlapping manual processes.
With a combination of highly intimate Locums VMS technology and forward-looking contracts and rate plan management, they were able to frame an efficient process for locums management that resulted in significantly improved fill rates, while also saving money in the process and raising the staff quality.
Talent management should work as a comprehensive business strategy in your company. It should be closely integrated with every employee related process or system in your organization.
Talent management should normally be part of a company’s credo. It should be a job for every member in the organization, and it should work continuously, as an integral part of every-day business.
Sharing information, educating, giving feedback, attending group meetings, workshops and lectures should be an important part of business. They motivate employees, increase productivity, satisfaction and create a better work environment. They create new opportunities, promote creativity and provide a better career path for your employees.
HWL's Talent Management Initiatives Can Help Your Organization
Talent management software is a specialized tool that boosts performance and streamlines tedious processes within healthcare human resources departments that you simply cannot live without. These software packages help human resources professionals manage employees, organize events, interviews and recruitment.
As part of a larger suite of healthcare talent management initiatives, technology platforms, and locums management, talent management technology is critical to the success of any facility.
Specialized talent management software packages are able to track and manage the entire employee life cycle, from the recruitment phase to retirement. Modern talent management software is cloud-based and is heavily integrated with social media platforms and other management tools. Talent management applications are based on the four pillars (also known as modules), as previously discussed before: recruitment, corporate learning and development, performance management and compensation management.
